“The vision of the future of the league looks like this.”



Mike Rufail is the principal owner and CEO of Team Envy. This was an international tournament which sold out a capacity crowd of 4,500 people on Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28 at the Allen Events Center, 30 minutes northeast of Downtown Dallas. The league is the Overwatch League, which features 20 teams competing in Blizzard’s hit first-person shooter game. His vision is ambitious.



“Hopefully we can keep building on this and take this crowd from 5,000 to 20,000 attendees per game,” Rufail said. “I think the future is gonna be bright for a lot of the teams here in their own markets. I think fans are gonna be willing to show up all over the world in all these different cities that have teams.”



That’s an ambitious goal. It’s hard to fault Rufail for his optimism after the weekend, which served as a bellwether for the league’s long-term...