It's Friday evening and Bremner Boulevard in downtown Toronto is buzzing with foot traffic. Fans donning their hometown's jersey have packed themselves inside of Real Sports, a bar known to show the city's largest sporting events on any given night.
The house is packed.
The event? Toronto Defiant's inaugural match in the Overwatch League.
In what will go down as a landmark moment on the Canadian esports scene, Toronto Defiant and the Vancouver Titans will both play their debut match this weekend to start off the 2019 Overwatch League season.
Overwatch, a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, first launched in May of 2016. The game quickly rose to prominence, receiving numerous Game of the Year honours, and almost immediately became one of the most popular competitive shooting games in the eSports industry. Just months after Overwatch's initial release, Blizzard Entertainment announced the Overwatch League -- an esports league that would kickoff in 2018 and feature 12 franchises from 12 cities across 3 different continents.
After a successful first season, 8 more franchises joined the Overwatch League for the 2019 season. With Toronto and Vancouver joining the likes of Paris, Washington, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Atlanta, and Chengdu, to bring the league to a total of 20 teams.
Defiant and the Titans join Raptors Uprising GC (NBA 2K League) as the only three Canadian franchises attached to a city to currently compete in a top-level esports pro league. And while the NBA 2K League had a strong showing in its first year of existence, Overwatch is a game with an even stronger presence in the world of competitive esports titles.
Host of Digital Sports SportsCentre and esports personality, Marissa Roberto, saw Friday as a true welcoming party for esports in Canada. "The fact that Toronto and Vancouver now have a stronghold in this league is so important to us as fans in this country who have been supporting and rallying for esports to come to Canada," said Roberto.
Discussing the possible cultural impact that both Defiant and the Titans inclusion to the Overwatch League will have on young esports fans in Canada, Toronto esports head coach, Ronald Ly only had to look up at the next table.
"There's a kid right in front of me as I speak, and he's enjoying this. I think this kinda shapes the way he's gonna not just view what he can do in the future, but also that he shouldn't have to be ashamed of the thing that he's passionate about. Nerd culture's cool again and that esports is very much legitimate," said Ly.
Viewed as underdogs in their opening match against the Houston Outlaws, Defiant pulled off a remarkable 3-2 comeback victory to capture the franchise's first win in the Overwatch League.
Fans in Vancouver will have to wait until Saturday (7pm ET) to see if their squad can replicate that same early success. You can catch Overwatch League action on TSN all season long, streaming live on TSN Direct.
