The Toronto Defiant is an Overwatch team that had a very narrow window of opportunity to be in the contention for Season playoffs. On a stream this past weekend, Andreas “Logix” Berghmans discussed how he and a few other players were unable to prepare for their match against the Philadelphia Fusion. Their loss against the Fusion removed them from playoff contention, and Logix stated that he felt depressed after their loss last Sunday.
In Berghmans stream he talked about how three players, Daniel “Gods” Graeser, Jaeyoon “Aid” Go, and Jin-ui “im37” Hong all traveled to Toronto for a media event centered around Canada’s prominent tennis athletes. At this event in Toronto, the three players from the Defiant did a meet-and-greet style event last Friday which the higher-ups valued over their practice time for a big game. There has been a big issue within the Overwatch League of how teams that don’t represent California can engage with their home fan base. The Atlanta Reign and Houston Outlaws schedule their media events either after the season, or between the stages.
Season 3 will see almost every team traveling pretty consistently which means we may see more players having to balance the life of a traveling sports professional. That being said, it doesn’t make sense for the Toronto Defiant management to schedule a media event in the middle of a weekend where your team will fight for playoffs contention. In a statement to ESTNN Paulo Senra, Toronto Defiant’s VP of Global Content and Communications stated,
“We had the rare opportunity to film content with top, globally-recognized WTA athletes this past Saturday, including one of Canada’s most-recognized athletes, Genie Bouchard. We also held a meet and greet for approximately 200 fans, as we continue to ramp up our engagement with our local market and promote our players to fans in Toronto and across Canada. The evolution of our League will see teams host home games next season, so we were happy to put our players next to global superstars in order to tell their stories and to introduce Overwatch to an audience of millions on social media. As we work to build out a passionate fan base, we’ll continue to engage in unique and compelling content opportunities.”
The Toronto Defiant have seen a massive improvement in performance since the introduction of 2-2-2 Role Lock, but time management is something that the Defiant Organization heads may want to consider closely going into the first ever full Home/Away season for the Overwatch League.
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