Six Days in January

As expected, the Overwatch League announced that homestands in China in February and March have been cancelled, due to safety concerns arising from the coronavirus epidemic. I’d like to give a first hand account of what our team went through during the period leading up to this announcement.

We had an eventful off-season at the end of 2019 with multiple critical projects that we were managing concurrently, from free agency, to venue planning for 2020 homestands, to building our esports training facility, to recruiting and hiring to fill key roles in our organization.

By the time our players convened for pre-season training camp in January, I began to see some light at the end of the off-season tunnel. We felt good about our off-season roster moves. We were on track for our first homestand in February. Our new training complex was starting to take shape. We built an awesome organization in Guangzhou with new talents. Our new players were meshing well with our returning players, and our new competitive leadership were thriving in their new roles. We had a solid logistics plan for our two extended trips to the U.S. later in the season. So I finally started to feel as if we were getting over the off-season hump and back into the rhythm of training and competing.

Then came news out of Wuhan.

Around the second week of January, just as our players were settling into scrims, we started to hear more reports about a new strain of coronavirus with an epicenter in Wuhan. Within days, we started to hear about fatalities and the virus spreading beyond Wuhan to neighboring provinces.

At this point in mid-January, we started educating our players on some basic preventative measures such as increased hygiene, wearing facial masks, and reporting any fever or illness immediately to our staff. We identified our local hospital of choice and set up processes around bi-lingual support staff on 24/7 standby to take any sick players to the hospital. Our Assistant General Manager John is an ex Army medic, and we felt that we were in good hands and that things were under control heading into the Lunar New Year break.

On January 22, I traveled with our events director Anne to Shanghai for some business meetings. While everyone was well aware of the outbreak in Wuhan, there was still a seeming sense of normalcy. I’d say on that day only 2 or 3 people out of 10 wore facial masks, but I did see a few heavy duty N95 rated facial masks being worn. I took the subway for my afternoon meeting, and it wasn’t until Xiaotu suggested later on that I avoid the subway that I was reminded of the outbreak.

On the next day, January 23, things spiraled downward quickly, starting from the startling news that travel had been suspended to and from Wuhan. This unprecedented lock-down was a wake up call, and triggered our first thought about contingency planning — what happens if the virus situation gets worse? Or if travel restrictions start to impact the Guangzhou region, or that other countries start to restrict travel to/from China? How do we protect our players, how do we reassure our players’ families who are thousands of miles away, and how do we protect our organization?

Another variable in all this was our homestands. We started to hear that sports and other live events were being cancelled, so could our homestands be far behind? Our first conversation with the league occurred that afternoon, to give our feedback on contingency plans for China homestands (although the league had been monitoring developments well before the 23rd).

The following days on January 24 and 25, we started to look into the possibility of moving the team to South Korea as a contingency plan. Aside from the basics of flights and hotels, it became apparent that our Chinese players and staff would not be able to leave immediately because they did not have Korean visas — our first 2020 match in Seoul is in March, but it never occurred to us that we’d need visas to travel in January. So this contingency plan would be a solution for only part of our team.

Over that weekend, all sorts of shit started hitting the fan, from more news about the rapid spread of the epidemic, to Shantou (a city in Guangdong, our home province) announcing confusing restrictions on travel which was overturned hours later, to reports of neighboring countries considering restrictions on entry from travelers from China, to tourist spots in China and Hong Kong being shut down.

By Monday morning on January 27, our contingency plan was no longer a contingency — our staff (who were home for the holidays) started to book flights, to check on visa timelines for our Chinese players and staff, and to prepare communication plans around our players moving to South Korea. There was a conference call with all four Chinese teams and the league scheduled for the the next morning on January 28, to discuss the status of homestands in China — we decided before then that unless the league went forward with homestands in China, we were moving our training base to Seoul as soon as possible.

And on that Tuesday call, as expected, the Chinese teams and the league quickly aligned on the inevitable, to call off the China homestands in February and March. And we immediately made arrangements to move our non-Chinese players to Seoul that afternoon.

It’s unbelievable, looking back, how rapidly this escalated in six days from January 23, when we heard about Wuhan being locked down, to moving our training base to Seoul on January 28.

But our work has just begun. We need to expedite visas for our Chinese players and staff, so that they can join their teammates in Seoul. We don’t have a place to train in Seoul — our priority was just to get there as soon as possible and we didn’t have time to figure out how to manage training. As I write, our competitive leadership is working on getting training facilities set up in Seoul by early next week. Even then, it’s not optimal from a competitive standpoint because we will have already missed a week of training, just weeks before the start of the season, and because our Chinese players and coaches are separated from the rest of the team, and it’s not 100% clear that they can even join the team in time for the start of the season.

For sure, our pre-season preparation has been adversely impacted, ahead of what was already going to be a challenging season to find enough training time, given the travel schedule. But that’s ok, because health and safety are all that matters right now.

I just hope and pray that by the next time I write about our team, we are all in a better place. That there are no more tragedies from the epidemic, our local staff in Guangzhou and Foshan stayed out of harm’s way, our team will have moved back to our home base, and we’re neck deep in getting ready for our July homestands.

Until then, please take care and stay safe.