The 2023 Overwatch League will start on April 27, with an opening weekend that will feature drops and high-level competition, but the choice of streaming platform has had fans bothered.
The event’s announcement, made on April 20, received a mixed response from the community. Many fans expressed disappointment over the event being only available on YouTube and not on Twitch, even though the exclusivity deal with the platform expired.
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Many were eager to see the OWL return on Twitch, and in most of the tweet’s reactions, fans complained about the absence of Twitch among the streaming platforms available.
A user even compared Call of Duty League viewership on YouTube and Twitch to make their case, showing how much more popular it got on the latter (45.5K compared to 19K on YouTube). While the CWL returned to Twitch in 2023, it looks like the OWL won’t take the same path, however.
Initially, the OWL was broadcast on Twitch, but it then switched to YouTube Gaming in 2020 with a two-year exclusivity deal. This stirred controversy in the community since Twitch is the biggest streaming platform for gaming and esports and it ripped fans away from making their own choice between both.
The opening weekend designates match days from Thursday, April 27 to Sunday, 30, which will see three best-of-three series played each day. Since there only are six teams in the East region, they’ll only have one match day a week, while the West region will play in four.
In addition, players will get special drops for watching the games live, including a name card and a spray, as well as OWL tokens.
The 2023 Overwatch League will kick off on Thursday, April 27 at 3pm CT with San Francisco Shock playing Toronto Defiant on YouTube.
