Overwatch League Cancels Seoul Esports Matches Due to Coronavirus

Amid fears of the deadly Coronavirus in South Korea, the Overwatch League has announced that they have cancelled Seoul Dynasty events. This cancellation will affect the week 5,6, and 7 OWL 2020 matches together with the home event of the Seoul Dynasty. On Twitter, the league cited that they resorted to this drastic move to protect the health and safety of their players, fans, and the staff at large. 

This comes as another roadblock to the league’s competitive schedule as these cancelled matches were a reschedule of late January games that were to be held in China. After the January Coronavirus outbreak, the matches were postponed and were to take place in Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai for February and March. Initially, league officials were hoping that the virus would have been thrashed by then.

Unfortunately, Wuhan, in Mainland China, where the first case of Coronavirus was reported has now suffered over 70,000 infection cases and a death toll of over 2000. In fear of the ordeal, the matches were moved to Seoul, South Korea, and as a result, China lost its very first chance to host an Overwatch home crowd. 

After infections in South Korea seemed to be on the rise, the league then decided to postpone the matches till further notice as a precaution. On Monday, February 24th, South Korea reported an additional 161 cases of the virus in the city of Daegu, which brought the nation’s total cases to 763, and as of now, there are 7 confirmed deaths from the outbreak. 

However, it looks like this isn’t an indefinite deferral because the Overwatch League added that they would announce where the matches will take place at a later date. Even so, this brings the number of affected matches to 33 in total, owing to virus-related reschedules and cancellations. 

The Seoul Dynasty is the only Esports franchise based in South Korea. The team had planned to host matches from 7th to March 22nd at the capital’s landmark, Dongdaemun Design Plaza. The other Overwatch League matches scheduled in Seoul will start from May 9th to 10th. For OWL, this is their first year hosting an unparalleled global schedule hosting up to 20 homestands in Asia, North America and Europe as well.

Despite all these setbacks, other homestand matches are going full speed ahead as scheduled. The league recently opened its third season last weekend with matches in Dallas and New York. The first two seasons were based around Los Angeles, California for almost all the matches and practice runs.