AUSTIN, Texas -- Anthony and Eddie sit in the front row as a crowd of more than 300 engulfs the room at the Austin Convention Center behind them.

It's St. Patrick's Day, and a few blocks away, on Austin's bar-filled Sixth Street, the road is almost impassable. At this point, the Convention Center is much of the same. Both are a sea of green, but at the Convention Center, there are no leprechauns, and there are no beers. The smell of spilled alcohol and marijuana wafts between bars and cops on Sixth; the Convention Center, the home of SXSW, is littered with children and teenagers glued to an Overwatch Game on a large TV screen.

SXSW, the annual music, arts and film festival, has taken over the Convention Center for the past week. Since 2013, it has featured a dedicated gaming portion of the event, and this year, it has hosted a viewing party of the Houston Outlaws -- one of Texas' two Overwatch League teams, and the one that, aptly for this Saturday afternoon, has a color scheme of black and green.

The Houston Outlaws are facing off against the San Francisco Shock nearly 1,400 miles away in Burbank, California. The Outlaws will not visit Austin -- or its regional cities of San Antonio or Houston -- for the first time until March 27, but the crowd of young men and women and their parents would have you believe otherwise.

"Defense! Defense!" the crowd cries as the Shock beat down on the Outlaws.

And when the Outlaws, in turn, get kills or move on to a point, cheers of excitement light up the room.

Adjacent to the area is a grand stage that plays host to a Clash Royale tournament. More people, by a margin of well more than 100, are gathered to watch the Outlaws than they are to see the popular mobile game's esports event. More than 600 people attended the first Outlaws viewing party in Houston in January, and at SXSW, a couple months later, the excitement is still palpable.

Overwatch is in, and this crowd is loving it.

Anthony and Eddie, 16 and 14, respectively, queued for more than an hour to be able to get their front-row seats for the watch party. Anthony, from Houston, and Eddie, from Austin, both have watched professional sports (Eddie specifically mentions football) but said they've never had a true connection to a regional team that they could identify with.

The Dallas Stars, Cowboys and Mavericks? Nah. The Houston Rockets and Texans? Nope. And the Texas Rangers aren't en vogue with these kids, either.

But Overwatch, a game they both played before the city-based Overwatch League debuted in January, is something they can connect with.

"I've always been into video games, so having a Houston Outlaws Overwatch team in video games, it actually got me out there and got something for me to look forward to and to look up to," Anthony says.

"When I was looking at the website, I had seen a lot of teams for other big cities," Eddie says. "Of course, I was hoping for an Austin team. Houston and Dallas were both also great. Two teams in one state was really awesome. Both of the teams are really fun teams; they have great players.

"Dallas isn't doing too well, but Houston is, and that's great. It was really exciting to have another team to root for."

Anthony mentioned that his family, particularly his mother, has been supportive of his desire to travel to gaming festivals and that he has even gotten her to care about the Outlaws.

"She got me this jersey, she's been watching their games, she's been updating me with new info on the Outlaws," Anthony says. "She's been wanting to meet the players ever since and wanting to bond with them ever since. My mom is really supportive of all of this."

Anthony's mom is not alone. As a 57-year-old father, Austin-based record producer Stuart Sullivan -- who has attended SXSW before because of his background in music -- brought his 12-year-old son to participate in the Outlaws Southwest Showdown fan tournament. His son is wearing three Outlaws jerseys, each on top of the other, Sullivan says.

"He has a group of friends, and they play Overwatch constantly," Sullivan says. "They're always on, talking to each other, doing strategies and playing games. They love the Houston Outlaws; that's their local team, essentially. When the gaming thing came on, they were all about it. They've been here all three days, a whole group of their friends, and they are really obsessed with Overwatch. It is the hottest thing for them: All of their friends play Overwatch.

"It's how they interact with each other, and that's how they socialize as much as anything else. It's a new thing, because in my world, growing up, we socialized in the woods. It's a great for them to both experience the ups and downs of friendship but all the competition and the excitement.

"It's something they're very, very captured by."

Overwatch's player base skews younger compared to other first-person shooter games, and its players and fans are more diverse in gender as well, according to research firm Quantic Foundry. Women make up about a quarter of the crowd watching the Outlaws at SXSW. And one of those girls, 14-year-old Kieryn Visgaitis, competed in the finals of the Southwest Showdown, the in-game fan competition that Outlaws parent Infinite Esports & Entertainment hosted as a part of the activation at SXSW.

"It was really nerve-racking, but it was a good experience," Visgaitis says. "I'm glad that I did it. It's crazy. I can't imagine playing in front of a large group of people like everybody watching them live. It was nerve-wracking playing around 100 people, maybe."

She says she can't imagine what it's like for the Outlaws.

Overwatch is the newest of its esports peers. It released in 2016, while games such as League of Legends, Dota and Counter-Strike -- the three esports more watched than Overwatch in February, according to data collected by Newzoo -- have each been around for at least nine years. Overwatch has provided opportunities for teenagers and children to connect into the esports community simply by the nature of the game's youth. And kids like Anthony, Eddie and Kieryn -- who still lack the buying power of most fans of other esports -- are turning watch parties and Overwatch streams into marquee events.

For them, though, the future of the game and its rise in popularity doesn't matter much. What matters is that a tradition of rooting for city-based sports teams looks to live on, but not by any traditional means. As traditional sports fans continue to age, esports -- and particularly Overwatch -- provides an opportunity for youth to buy into an age-old model.

The Outlaws lose to the Shock 3-1. The crowd, and the kids, seem bummed. But the sea of fans and the atmosphere at SXSW can't help but feel like a win for the organization.

"Don't worry," the emcee says over the sound system, "we will come back stronger."