The 2018 Overwatch League playoffs began on July 11, after the 2018 Overwatch League regular season ended, and concluded on July 28 with the 2018 Grand Finals, the first championship match of the

Overwatch League The Overwatch League (OWL) was a professional esports league for the video game ''Overwatch'', produced by its developer, Blizzard Entertainment. From 2018 to 2023, the Overwatch League followed the model of other traditional North American prof ...

(OWL). Six teams competed in the OWL Playoffs. The winner of each round of the Playoffs was determined by a best-of-three match series, with match determined by best-of-five maps. The Quarterfinals had the third-seeded team playing the sixth-seeded team, while the fourth-seeded team played the fifth-seeded team. In the Semifinals, the top-seed team played the lowest remaining seed, while the second-seeded team played the next-lowest. The winners advanced to the Grand Finals, which took place at

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Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

on July 27–28.

London Spitfire London Spitfire is a Overwatch (video game)#Esports, professional ''Overwatch'' team representing the city of London, United Kingdom. The Spitfire compete in the Overwatch League (OWL) as a member of the league's West region. Founded in 2017, ...

defeated

Philadelphia Fusion Seoul Infernal is a professional Overwatch (video game)#Esports, ''Overwatch'' esports team based in Seoul, South Korea. The Infernal compete in the Overwatch League (OWL) as a member of the league's East region. Founded in 2017 as the Philade ...

in the Grand Finals to become the first Overwatch League Champions.

Map pool and rotation

The postseason map pool consisted of eight maps, with a ninth map as the tie-breaking map (if necessary), and was decided by a lottery system on June 19.

Participants

Six teams qualified for the Season Playoffs based on their season overall records. The two division leaders were awarded the top two seeds, and the following top four teams, regardless of division, were awarded seeds three through six.

Bracket

Quarterfinals

(3) Boston Uprising vs. (6) Philadelphia Fusion

The Fusion pulled off a 2–1 victory in their first match against the Uprising, who had been high in the standings early in the regular season but had lost momentum in the latter half. Fusion used a tank-heavy roster, including Reinhardt played by Sado, which forced the Uprising to move away from their sniper-based strategy. Fusion's Eqo and

Carpe Lee Jae-hyeok (), better known as Carpe, is a South Korean professional ''Valorant'' player for T1. He was professional ''Overwatch'' player formerly. He began his esports career playing ''Overwatch'' for teams such as BK Stars, Selfless Gam ...

also showed skill across several heroes to help with the victory.

(4) Los Angeles Gladiators vs. (5) London Spitfire

The Spitfire had been underdogs in their match against the Gladiators, having never won a regular season match against them. The Gladiators took the first match, 3–0, including a trick play that involved Surefour staying in the spawn room as a different hero until well into the match before changing to his regular Widowmaker hero and readily picking off the open Spitfire players. This was later known as "THE GREAT BAMBOOZLE". The Spitfire responded in the following matches with adaptive changes in their team composition that prevented the Gladiators from maintaining their defense lines. Notably, the Gladiators chose to bench their primary main tank player

Fissure A fissure is a long, narrow crack opening along the surface of Earth. The term is derived from the Latin word , which means 'cleft' or 'crack'. Fissures emerge in Earth's crust, on ice sheets and glaciers, and on volcanoes. Ground fissure A ...

, who came second place for Season MVP, for the playoffs, opting instead to replace him with the team's other main tank player, . The official reason given for this decision was that "the Gladiators believe that the most effective practice and preparation is necessary in order to perform well in playoffs."

Semifinals

After each quarterfinal series, the sixth-seeded Fusion, being the lowest seed of the two quarterfinals winners, faced the top-seeded Excelsior, whereas the fifth-seeded Spitfire played against the second-seeded Los Angeles Valiant. The semi-final saw upsets in both brackets with the lower-seed Fusion and Spitfire winning over the top seeds Excelsior and Valiant.

(1) New York Excelsior vs. (6) Philadelphia Fusion

Fusion had taken the first series 3–0 over Excelsior. While the second set ran for all five maps, Fusion won the series and the spot in the Grand Finals.

(2) Los Angeles Valiant vs. (5) London Spitfire

The Spitfire had kept their traction from the victory over the Gladiators in the previous round, and took their spot in the finals after two matches, winning each 3–1 and 3–0.

Grand Finals

The London Spitfire defeated the Philadelphia Fusion in the Grand Finals series in 2 sets. The Spitfire's Jun-Young "Profit" Park was named the Grand Finals Most Valuable Player;

Profit Profit may refer to: Business and law * Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market * Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit * Profit (real property), a nonpossessory inter ...

was observed to be a key offensive player in the series, in one match using Hanzo's ultimate ability to eliminate five of the six Fusion players.

Winnings

Teams in the Season Playoffs competed for a total prize pool of , with the payout division detailed below.

Broadcast and viewership

On the first day of the season playoffs,

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

and Blizzard announced a multi-year partnership that would bring the league and other professional ''Overwatch'' competitive events to

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

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, and

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, starting with the playoffs and throughout all of the following season. The partnership marked the time that a live esports competition had aired on ESPN in prime time and the first time that an esports competition had aired on ABC.

Nielsen ratings Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...

for the Grand Finals include a 0.18 rating (approximately 218,000 households) for the Friday match airing on ESPN, while the recap of the series airing on ABC on the Sunday after the event had a 0.3 rating (approximately 359,000 households). Blizzard estimated that over a million people were watching the Grand Finals at any time, between broadcast and streaming formats, with a total viewership of over 10.8 million.

Telecast schedule

References

{{2018 OWL season by team

Overwatch ''Overwatch'' (abbreviated as OW) is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ''Overwatch (video game), Overwatch'' was released in 2016 with a success ...

Playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...