ESL to host $100,000 Overwatch tournament at Gamescom 2016

ESL has announced the Overwatch Atlantic Showdown tournament which will take place at Gamescom in Germany this August.
It’s the first international competition featuring Blizzard’s new team shooter to offer a six-figure prize pool – $100,000 to be exact.
Eight teams will take part – four from North America and four from Europe – and travel costs will be covered for the qualifying teams.
The competition will take place on August 20th to 21st at gaming event Gamescom on the ESL main stage in Hall 9.
The first of four open qualifiers for the tournament will begin on June 27th, operated by ESL and hosted on ESL Play. These will be followed by regional qualifiers and a final online qualifier, all of which will be played out and streamed online.
Once the qualifiers kick off, there will be four days of online matches per week throughout July. From Monday to Thursday, Jason Kaplan, Mitch “Uber” Leslie and Leigh “Deman” Smith will cover all of the Overwatch action live from the ESL Studios in Cologne, Germany.
The group stages of the competition will play out live on Saturday August 20th at Gamescom, with the finals playing out on Sunday August 21st.
The Overwatch eSports scene is hotting up – the UK has backed Overwatch with a string of initial tournaments, ESL is hosting UK Overwatch community cups and even Manchester United FC is interested in signing an EU Overwatch team.

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.