Mentioned in this article Teams: Houston Outlaws Games: Overwatch

You walk into a dark Houston warehouse to escape the bright sun and Texas heat in the middle of May. Immediately, you’re introduced to a slightly dirty floor and a lot of open empty space. As you peer to the back of the seemingly abandoned facility, you notice something—some lights. Navigating the darkness as your eyes slowly adjust from the outside, you’re drawn to the light like an insect to a porch lamp.

When you reach the lit area, you notice that you’re not in a grimy old warehouse anymore. You have reached a store, a pop-up shop.

Now surrounded by cleanly, well-folded clothing you notice what seems to be Houston Outlaws apparel. There are black and green baseball jerseys touting “Houston” on the front. A pair of leggings next to you have a “BAMF” belt buckle sublimated into its waistline akin to Overwatch hero McCree and display Outlaws player Rawkus’ name down the side.

But how can that be? From the start of the Overwatch League, Blizzard has held a tight grasp on how its team’s brands have been marketed. The league started its season with gear only being sold from Blizzard itself with all teams having the same types of merchandise. The league began by selling hats, shirts, and jerseys, and slowly added things like team-branded jackets and shot glasses.

A New Beginning



As the Overwatch League has progressed through its inaugural season, teams like the Outlaws, and their parent company Infinite Esports & Entertainment , have grown eager to help their young, growing brands flex their muscles and reward their fans—and now Blizzard is starting to give them a chance.

“As time went on, A lot of teams expressed their want to be more expressive with their team’s brand. Obviously the Outlaws have a very strong brand image already so we want to be able to give a little bit more back to the fans along that brand line,” said Simon Bennett, Infinite VP of Marketing. “They were obviously nervous about giving the ability to team to make random stuff because they just couldn’t be sure of the quality of those items or what they would be even.”

However, as dialog between the league and its teams continued, Bennett said the league policies began to shift. Adapting to the interests of its teams, Blizzard has allowed teams to begin producing a limited amount of branded gear to be sold to the masses—as long as it doesn’t intersect with what Blizzard is already selling.

Bennett said that Blizzard can’t make and sell merchandise for one individual team, they need uniformity. But uniformity isn’t how a young brand sees growth.

Trenton Pierson, Infinite’s VP of Merchandise and Licensing called the agreement “pretty straight forward.” Teams are now allowed to make 10 SKUs, short for stock keeping units, to be sold online.

Basically, each team can produce and sell 10 unique, team-branded items to be sold to fans, but they need to be something that doesn’t infringe on what Blizzard is making.

“Generic esports stuff doesn’t fit into the area that Blizzard would rather we worked in because that’s the stuff that they’re already producing,” Bennett said.

However, with fashion brands like Sector Six and Third Label under its umbrella, Infinite doesn’t want to produce those sorts of items. They want to use the creativity of their in-house apparel brands to expound the franchise uniquely and reward its fanbase.

Side Quests



“We want to produce the ‘side quest’ idea,” Pierson said of Infinite’s plans. “Blizzard has the main storyline down, and they’re going to produce a lot of high quality things especially with season two, but what we want to do with these 10 SKUs is provide something that Blizzard might not ever make in the future.”

Pierson added that Infinite’s apparel brands are looking to make gear that Blizzard would “never think to produce.”

Infinite officials said that the rule set for online sales are different than the ones they needed to follow for the pop-up shop they produced in Houston.

Because they were making a one-time shop out of a warehouse in conjunction with a Houston Outlaws block party, the team was granted a bit more freedom by Blizzard to create things specifically for their local fanbase. The same goes for free giveaways at viewing parties that teams hold in their hometown. Since they’re trying to build their regionalized fanbase, they get more freedom to give fans more than what Blizzard offers.

Bennett said Blizzard wanted to make sure that teams didn’t “cannibalize” one another by marketing outside of their territory.

“We worked really closely with Blizzard to make sure that we followed their rule set,” Bennett said. “But we also want to make sure that our fans get the coolest gear available to them. We want to be able to get them all kinds of crazy stuff that our fanbase practically demands at this point.”

Bennett said that Sector Six and Third Label have to “walk a fine line” to make sure that they follow the rules that Blizzard has set out.

“We want to respect the brand that they’re trying to develop, but they are also trying to help us develop a brand,” he said.

A Plan to Move Forward



Infinite’s plan is to unveil a Houston Outlaws store online and release some of the merchandise it’s been working on in the coming weeks, and it’s likelysafe to assume that other Overwatch League teams have similar plans.

However, with the Overwatch League shopping around for a licensing agreement for next season, as reported by SportsBusiness Journal’s Ben Fischer, the amount of time that team’s have to produce their own in-house merchandise could be limited.

“We’re fully expecting that to be a very changeable environment over the next few years,” Bennett said. “So we’re trying to make the most of it while we have the opportunity.”

As for what happens if/when the league reaches a licensing deal, Bennett didn’t seem concerned with that negatively affecting team brands.

“They don’t make a decision without the teams’ discussion and vice versa,” he said. “Blizzard is actually remarkably open to discussion from our side of things.”

While the Overwatch League declined to comment, Activision Blizzard President & CEO of Consumer Products Tim Kilpin recently discussed the league’s plans in a press release.

Kilpin said the league “didn’t want to miss a day of the first season,” and that’s why they originally kept merchandising in-house.

“Retailers are eager to figure out how to play in this space, but I don’t know that we have a hard and fast plan in place yet,” said Kilpin. “We all have some more to learn in how it is going to work locally and how fans are engaging in that across the league. And where the right places are to go from a retail perspective hasn’t been completely figured out yet.”