I'll give OWL this: they took big swings. Some of them were big hits: I think that first season was really something special. Holding every event live at the Blizzard Arena allowed an organic culture to grow around the league. They had a cast of broadcasters that knew the game, and a broadcast package that looked modern, yet was easy to follow. I'm still split on the regional team names, since the format was always going to be more or less a "travelling roadshow", but there were people who definitely bought in because "well it's Philadelphia".

And yeah, some of this can be laid at the feet of the pandemic, but there were also a lot of mistakes made as well: putting roster roles in place on the pro level makes some sense, but forcing it into the game proper via Role Queue killed off a lot of the casual player base, which meant killing off your pool of viewers. The move to YouTube Live may have meant guaranteed revenue, but the viewership numbers never came close to what they were on Twitch. And, yeah, the absolute fumbling of Overwatch 2 hasn't helped either.