After unofficial information about Blizzard's planned Overwatch League made the rounds yesterday, there is now a statement from the developer.

Overwatch League - 20 million per team

As a small summary: ESPN eSports reported that Blizzard charges $ 20 million per team. In addition, there should be a guaranteed profit sharing for the teams in 2021 at the earliest.

In the past few weeks, several well-known eSports organizations surprisingly withdrew their commitment to Overwatch. For example, Team SoloMid fired 6 players from their Overwatch department last week, now it seems clear why.

The Blizzard statement does not answer all open questions, here are the most important points:

"First, we want to be clear that our ultimate goal is to create an exciting Overwatch esports ecosystem, the pinnacle of which will be the Overwatch League, that's accessible to a wide audience, sustainable, and rewarding for everyone involved. We're doing our best to take great care with building this ecosystem, and as with much of what we do, we don't release information until we're at a place where it makes sense to do so. "

That all sounds pretty positive, but the economic profitability is heavily burdened with an entry fee of 20 million right from the start. Very few teams have such a sum available. Especially before the start of a league, when it is still completely unclear for possible sponsors which audience can be reached.

"Second, we'd like to dispel any rumors that we're ignoring endemics. Anyone who knows Blizzard understands how deeply we care about the communities around our games. The league is built upon the best elements of endemic esports programs and traditional sports, and we're in active discussions with many teams and owners from both worlds because it will take a village to stand up a league with such an unprecedented structure. Those conversations have been going well and there's a lot of excitement around our ambitious plans ”

Blizzard's eSports history is not spotless

Opinions can now be divided about Blizzard's successes in eSports. On the one hand, with Starcraft: Broodwar, the company has practically the grandfather of all eSports in its portfolio. On the other hand, Blizzard did not manage to bring the eSports scene of the successor Starcraft 2 to life.

Nonetheless, the withdrawal of several teams from Overwatch doesn't exactly speak for it. Negotiations may not be going as well as Blizzard would like them to believe.

“Finally, it's important to think twice about statements from unnamed sources, who may try to leverage the media to deliberately spread misinformation as bargaining tactics or for other competitive reasons. We look forward to officially sharing real details about the league and the ecosystem as a whole as we continue the development process. In the meantime we are staying focused on our goal of creating an awesome Overwatch esports experience for players, partners, and fans, and we want to thank everyone for their continued support. "

So there is still no concrete statement about the demands that Blizzard has on possible teams in the Overwatch League. Branding the information more or less as "fake news" would work better if the terms were disclosed.

So even after this statement there are still many questions that will probably only be answered in the future.

The Overwatch League was announced at BlizzCon in 2016 and should start in 2017. In the style of American sports leagues, teams should be connected to their hometowns.