What is Overwatch's Pro League Potential?

Overwatch is has popularized the hero shooter genre, a genre that has always been begging for an active pro scene, and Overwatch has created that scene. First off, some basic definitions and explanations. Overwatch is a team-based fantasy/sci-fi hero shooter that involves two teams of six fighting it out to capture objectives and push payloads. If you want more details, go check out my review of Overwatch. A hero shooter is a game that has "heroes" who each have unique abilities and weapons that define who they are and what they do, as supposed to classes in a game like CoD where really all you're changing is little differences. Heroes rely on team strategy to shore up each others weaknesses, forming deadly team compositions, or comps. This creates a higher level of strategy than games such as CoD, although some classic FPS games can compare to it (such as Rainbow Six Siege). Also a term I use a little bit is metagame, or simply meta, which defines the most popular strategy, or the perceived interaction between popular strategies.

Now for some history and basic structure: Overwatch has three main competitive scenes, with the primary one being the Overwatch League (or OWL). The other two leagues are semi-professional/amateur leagues that serve as lower level entertainment and as recruiting scenes for OWL teams. OWL is right before its second season right now, with eight new expansion teams joining the existing twelve teams from last year. Last year's regular season ran from January to June, and the expectation is that this one will be similar. Playoffs were in July, and an all-star game ran in August. The League is split into two divisions, with each one having ten teams. Teams compete throughout the regular season, with the highest record (wins vs. losses) teams going to the playoffs. The regular season is split into four stages, with each stage ending in a stage championship (except for the last one, which ends in the playoffs). Each stage lasts about five weeks, and during this time the game "build" (or version) is not allowed to be updated. This is to avoid huge change ups in the metagame immediately before a game. This season system feels a little like the NFL, and for good reason, as  It was created to emulate major conventional sports seasons.

The season structure isn't the only thing the game has in common with conventional sports: some of the teams are owned by NFL, NBA and MLB owners. The Boston Uprising are owned by the Kraft Group (owners of the New England Patriots), the New York Excelsior is owned by a sister company to the New York Mets and the San Francisco shock is owned by NRG Esports, a company that has shared ownership between people such as Shaquille O'Neal and Alex Rodriquez. Finally, Misfits Gaming, who owns the Florida Mayhem, is partially owned by the Miami Heat. In short, Overwatch has no shortage of support from people and organizations that are intimately familiar with professional sports. In addition to all this, Blizzard has struck deals with ESPN, ABC and Disney XD to broadcast games on their networks, with Season 1's playoffs already being broadcast.

In short, I think that Overwatch's competitive scenes, and OWL in particular, have huge potential to become the next big pro scene in esports, and indeed are on the right track to do so.