The eyes of the esports world will be on the Overwatch League in 2020.

When you look closely, you’ll see the biggest fusion of gaming and traditional professional sports leagues to date.

It’s a pivotal season for the future of the league, which will enter its third year, and also for the new world of competitive, geo-located gaming on a global scale.

Fans can watch their teams compete in their home markets, but they can also travel to 19 cities across the globe for different gameday environments. It’s a key step in driving esports more into the mainstream, as the league continues to mold itself after already established professional sports leagues.

The full 2020 regular-season OWL schedule was announced Tuesday, giving fans, players and potential investors/sponsors the latest look at what could be the new norm in esports.

Related: Overwatch FAQ: What Dallas Morning News readers need to know about the esports league and the Dallas Fuel

“We’re really breaking ground with every match being a home and away match at cities around the world,” said Jon Spector, OWL senior product developer. “I do think we’re going to have a lot of eyes on us next year.”

The league showed its commitment to home matches, building off the success of the first two homestand weekends in 2019, but also a willingness to adapt. It kept the 28-match regular-season schedule, but eliminated stage playoffs and weekday matches.

And with all eyes on OWL in 2020, the Dallas Fuel will be front and center.

The 2020 season

The Metroplex will be the primetime home of the first OWL weekend in 2020.

The first OWL home matches of 2020 will be in the Dallas-Fort Worth and New York markets on Feb. 8-9, with the Fuel playing at 6 p.m. both nights. The 2020 regular season begins Feb. 8 and runs through Aug. 9, and each team plays 28 matches.

The league is still split into two 10-team conferences, with two five-team divisions in each. Teams play opponents in their conference twice and in the other conference once.

The Fuel, who along with the Washington Justice and Guangzhou Charge host a league-high five homestand weekends in 2020, will play in three unique locations in their first three home weekends. Their final two venues are still unannounced.

Dallas hosts matches at Esports Stadium Arlington, the Toyota Music Factory in Irving and the Allen Event Center.

With the expansion from three homestand weekends this season (Dallas, Atlanta and the upcoming Los Angeles event this weekend) to 52 in 2020, the Fuel, owned by Envy Gaming, can afford to experiment with different venues.

“DFW is a venue-rich marketplace because there’s a lot of sports and entertainment events that call this place home,” said Geoff Moore, Envy Gaming President and COO.

The venues vary in their intended OWL capacity (2,200 for Esports Stadium, about 4,000 in Irving and 4,500 in Allen, Moore said) and setup. Toyota Music Factory is a concert venue, while the Allen Event Center is home to the Allen Americans, a minor league hockey team, and the Dallas Sidekicks, an indoor soccer team.

Between four and eight teams will be at each homestand weekend, playing in one or two matches apiece. All Fuel matches will be on Saturday and Sunday evenings, with the exception of overseas trips timed to their local audiences.

“An interesting part of having each event at a different place and not having a home is it does lend itself to having each event be more unique,” Moore said. “You’re trying things and bringing them to that event, and essentially fans can vote in their participation in that event whether or not that thing comes back or not.”

Location, location, location

The Dallas Fuel team walks out for the Overwatch League match between the Dallas Fuel and LA Gladiators on Friday, August 9, 2019 at Blizzard Arena in Burbank, CA. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News) (Patrick T. Fallon / Patrick T. Fallon)

The return of the Fuel to the Allen Event Center seems like a no brainer. Short of a power outage unrelated to the homestand, it was a sold-out success. Envy knows what it is getting into in Allen.

Moore declined to discuss the exact cost of putting on the weekend, but ballparked it at a “couple of hundred thousand” dollars. When asked if they made money, Moore simply said, “We did.”

The movement away from the neutral Blizzard Arena site in Burbank, Calif, means teams can make money off their home matches, provided they are putting on a show for their fans. And it’s not just ticket sales.

“The way that the league is set up, teams rely heavily on local revenues as we build out our business models here,” said Moore, who declined to go into specific financial impacts, “so playing in our local markets is a benefit to us and it’s one that we’ve been looking forward to.”

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News earlier this year, Moore likened the future of live esports events to musical festivals.

Hosting home matches at the Toyota Music Factory is a logical progression. Moore said the venue was one of the options for the 2019 homestand.

Spector, who previously worked for the NBA, said concert venues are a good match for OWL home matches. There’s usually already spacious video boards, quality sound systems and room for creative shows.

The league did not handcuff teams with many rules for their home venues in 2020, Spector and Moore both said, though obviously the venue must be able to meet the technical aspects.

Other than that, it’s really up to each franchise.

“One of the things that’s honestly really exciting for us is I think there’s a lot of different venues that can be used for the Overwatch League,” Spector said, “and there’s a lot of local taste and preference that can come into play.

“Fans in Shanghai have different expectations from a large event than fans in Dallas.”

The bigger the better?

Dallas seemingly has a head start in growing its esports audience heading into the 2020 season thanks to its proximity to the largest esports-specific stadium in North America.

The Fuel already have taken advantage of events at Esports Stadium Arlington, and the gaming-centric center is well positioned for the first weekend of 2020.

Esports Venues, LLC, which runs the facility, has a 10-year lease agreement with the city of Arlington that is still in its infancy.

“We’re a dedicated esports facility,” said Jonathon Oudthone, president of Esports Stadium Arlington, “and we have a lot of the infrastructure and technology built into the space, so it makes it easier for esports groups to come in and activate.”

The main arena at the stadium usually seats about 2,500, but Oudthone said it will be scaled down to about 2,200 to allow for a premium experience.

All three venues will sell tickets at different price points, Moore said, in an attempt to create as few barriers to entry as possible. Tickets are not on sale yet.

The first home weekend of 2020 is expected to be a social experience, Oudthone said, since it is at a venue dedicated to all things gaming.

“(Esports fans) are very engaged with what’s going on,” Oudthone said. “They don’t mind being in the building for four to eight hours at a time. They’re just like any other sports fan in they develop a huge fandom for the teams and the actual esports itself.”

Teams are showing a willingness to go small before they go too big. The smaller venues cater to that.

The Fuel, like every other team in the league, will learn what their audience and returning fans wants out of a home match. The idea is to one day have a permanent home arena for the Dallas Fuel, but before Envy can start building, it must continue to find out what works and what doesn’t with the venues -- similar to what the league is doing with its schedule.

Industry veterans often speak glowingly of the days when a dozen computers were crammed into one room as the beginning of competitive gaming came to be. Over the last 20 years, monumental steps have been made. But the league is cautious of growing too big too quickly.

“Someday when we’re going to AT&T Stadium for Overwatch,” Moore said, “people will reminisce about the times that they watched it at a 4,000-seat venues.”

But almost more important than the venues is the format of the schedule itself. The 2020 schedule is an attempt at moving to home markets while also meeting the needs of the talent base.

International concerns

The San Francisco Shock win the third game during an Overwatch League match between the Dallas Fuel and the San Francisco Shock on Sunday, August 11, 2019 at Blizzard Arena in Burbank, California. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

Two months ago, Fuel players spoke about their hopes ahead of the 2020 season. Each player came to a common point when discussing their worries about the home-and-away format: international travel.

It’s a legitimate concern to have. The Fuel will play in five different countries in 2020, though each trip abroad has a two-week buffer before and after. (The exception is when the Fuel head to Canada to play in two Vancouver home weekends).

Dallas will have its Asia roadtrip right after the first weekend of the year and will travel to Paris in mid-June.

Moore, who previously worked with the Dallas Stars, knows travel can be tough for a team, especially for young players who aren’t used to it. But he also knows that roadtrips can sometimes be a time when a team comes together and gets out of a rut, without the distractions of home.

He knows there are bound to be hiccups, so limiting them is key.

“Originally I was actually concerned with how the schedule would be because of the nature of the logistics with trying to make this work,” Fuel head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said. “But I’m actually really pleased and I think that the way that it’s laid out is probably the best way that they can do it in terms of making it easy for travel for all the teams.”

Spector, who was previously involved with NBA scheduling and launching the NBA 2K League, said international travel was one of the biggest hurdles to clear, as well as ensuring each team was in a position for success.

They wanted to offer flexibility to the teams because of how big the jump will be in 2020, which is why some teams only have two weekend homestands.

The league has made a habit of not trying to do too much until it knows some of the challenges. For example, the 2020 playoff format has not yet been announced. It makes sense, though. The league can use this year’s playoffs to see what changes need to be made.

“I’m super excited about 2020,” Spector said, “but I know that there’s going to be things where we look at it in six months from now or 12 months from now and say, ‘yeah, we could do that a little bit differently.’”

In the meantime, OWL is charging ahead. Spector is focused on 2020, but he knows that it will play a key role in 2021 -- and beyond.

“It starts with the fan experience around the world,” Spector said. “and I think the real North Star for us and all our teams is delivering an amazing Overwatch experience in 19 different cities around the world next year.

“It’s really hard, and I’m not taking anything for granted that everything’s going to go perfectly, but we’re going to learn a lot at every event we run next year.”

And it starts with the Fuel on Feb. 8 in Arlington.

On Twitter: @TommyMagelssen

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