London Spitfire have qualified for the Overwatch League 2023 Playoffs in Toronto after successfully progressing through the play-ins.
They pulled off an impressive lower bracket run in the West play-ins after beating San Francisco Shock and losing to Boston Uprising in the upper bracket.
In the lower bracket, Spitfire defeated Washington Justice and Vancouver Titans 3-2, before beating Toronto Defiant 3-1 to secure their passageway to the Overwatch League 2023 Playoffs.
Spitfire are one of eight teams in the OWL playoffs, with the others being Boston Uprising, Hangzhou Spark, Seoul Infernal, Dallas Fuel, Houston Outlaws, Florida Mayhem and Atlanta Reign.
The news comes a few days after a Ukie report on UK esports found London Spitfire and Fnatic to be among the most followed esports organisations in the UK.
OWL playoffs format ‘horrible’ – UK Overwatch caster Jace
UK caster and ENUK writer Jace offered us his thoughts on the news.
Ahead of Spitfire reaching the playoffs, Jace said: “This new patch added illari, the new hero to the meta, with some of her nerfs. I believe Flashpoint has also been added as a playable game mode which a lot of people think is good for the Spitfire due to its nature benefitting high tempo fast paced rush type gameplay.
“London always do well against teams when new patches drop because they dont play the new patch/new meta they, just go rush, and the meta at the moment seems to be very backline-focused and spam-heavy.”
After Spitfire reached the playoffs, Jace added: “As the playoffs look to be starting with the brackets finalised, London put the fear of rush gods into the Seoul Infernal as they chose to send them into the other side of the bracket so they didn’t have to play the inaugural champs.
“It’s almost universally agreed upon that this OWL playoff format is pretty bad. It’s confusing, the Hangzhou Spark over in the APAC had a terrific run finishing 20-4 and were somehow second seed as the Infernal at 16-10 leapfrogged them? Why?”
Jace
“No one has any idea including all the teams involved and the desk talent as they presented the preview and post-game show.
“Nonetheless, with this needlessly convoluted and ultimately unfair bracket, all the top teams still have a great chance at winning. But I think it’s just boring how it turned out.
“None of the match-ups are new, apart from both true first seeds of the East and West playing each other in round one. Why? I dont want to see Boston vs London again or Dallas vs Infernal again. We had a 4/5 month long regular season for that.
“Ultimately, if the rumours are true and this is the very last Overwatch League season, it will be quickly forgotten and it’s thanks mostly to this horrible playoff format.”
There’s more on the OWL 2023 playoffs format here on GG.Recon.
Overwatch League 2023 Playoffs and Grand Finals head to Canada
Toronto Defiant parent company OverActive Media, in collaboration with the Overwatch League, will host the Overwatch League 2023 Playoffs and Grand Finals.
This will take place at The Mattamy Athletic Centre, Toronto, Canada, from September 28th to October 1st 2023, from 1.30pm ET to 7pm ET.
The event marks the first time the championship will take place in Canada, with the world’s top Overwatch League players across eight teams competing for a prize pool of over $1.8m.
Last year’s Grand Finals saw more than half a million people tune in on YouTube to catch the action.
For the upcoming playoffs, the top five teams in the West region and the top three teams in the East region will be drafted into groups of four. After competing in two concurrent double-elimination brackets, two teams from each group will advance to the single-elimination Grand Finals bracket.
Then, for the grand finals, four semi-finalists will play for a spot in the 2023 Overwatch League Grand Finals taking place October 1st, live from the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
The 2023 champion will take home a $1m prize and the championship trophy, while the runner-up will earn $400,000.
Tickets for the OWL 2023 Playoffs are on sale at ticketmaster.ca
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.
