The Overwatch League 2020 has had to cancel events for March and April, and have revealed a revised schedule for both months of online matches, to be available live and on demand on YouTube. You can check the updated schedule over on the official website.
The schedule has been constructed to eliminate travel while maintaining a level playing field for teams, so matches will be taking place based on team region. This weekend will see all United States West Coast teams, the Los Angeles Gladiators, Los Angeles Valiant, San Francisco Shock, and Seoul Dynasty, playing.
Teams will be competing in three regions to minimize latency issues for online competition. Vancouver Titans and Dallas Fuel will be playing against the West Coast teams as well. China teams – the Chengdu Hunters, Guangzhou Charge, Hangzhou Spark, and Shanghai Dragons – will play each other. Last but not least will be the Atlantic Conference teams – Atlanta Reign, Boston Uprising, Florida Mayhem, Houston Outlaws, London Spitfire, Philadelphia Fusion, New York Excelsior, Paris Eternal, Toronto Defiant, and Washington Justice – will compete with all of them in East Coast United States, and in Texas.
For this portion of the 2020 schedule, each team will be playing the amount of necessary matches to match the midseason point of the original schedule. Pacific Conference teams will generally be playing more frequently than Atlantic, for maximum fairness between teams, in this scenario.
The original Overwatch League 2020 schedule before the online match changes for March and April, would have seen teams play against their own conference twice (18 out of 28) and once against the other conference (10 of 28). The regional location now makes this untenable, so some teams will have to play more than two matches against other teams and some won’t play each other at all. Changes to the 2020 playoff structure are being evaluated to account for the change.
The League appreciates everyone’s support and understanding as plans and schedules are updated accordingly based on new developments. Team-hosted homestand competitions are planned as soon as it is safe and logistically possible. March and April matches will be using the updated Hero Pool selection process and the following map set: