Four new teams from Overwatch League would be on their way

Last month, there was a rumor of a new Overwatch League team for the Canadian city of Toronto. I predicted at the time that if the report was accurate, it would probably be the last new team coming to North America for the second season, Blizzard having already declared that it wants to add two new teams to the American continent. . of expansion, two from Europe and two from the Middle East.

A pair of new rumors reported by ESPN seem to blow up this theory, as "league sources" told the site that new teams were also heading to Chengdu, China, and Vancouver, Canada. The rumor comes a day after a report that expansion teams will also come to Washington DC and Hangzhou, China.

The Washington team will belong to a group led by Mark Ein, a real estate and technology investor owning the Washington Kapitals of World Team Tennis, while Hangzhou will be owned by the Chinese video sharing service Bilibili. Huya, a streaming platform partly owned by Tencent Holdings, will own the Chengdu team and the Vancouver team will be owned by Canucks Sports and Entertainment, which also owns the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.

The costs for the new franchises are not known, but they should be much higher than the $ 20 million cost of the Overwatch League teams. According to rumors, the Toronto team would have cost $ 35 million, but this has not been confirmed, as well as the very existence of the franchise. I have contacted the Overwatch league to comment and will update if I receive an answer.