The inaugural season of the Overwatch League is coming to a close next month after the grand finals event in Brooklyn, New York and Blizzard has revealed some new information about how aspects of the offseason, such as free agency and Contenders rosters, will work.
Free Agency
On Aug. 1 a signing window will open where teams can negotiate with their current players, affiliated Contenders players, and complete trades with other teams. Teams will have over a month to do so before all inaugural-season contracts expire. This means that any player without a valid contract as of Sept. 9 will become a free agent.
Then, from Sept. 9 to Oct. 7, Overwatch League expansion teams will have an exclusive window where they can sign free agents. Unsigned players will get to negotiate with all of the OWL teams on Oct. 8, which is the official start date for the whole league’s free agency period.
According to Blizzard, each team must have at least eight players under contract by the beginning of December. Teams will have until an unspecified season deadline in 2019 to sign or trade players, though. The season deadline will also determine which players are eligible to compete. Any player that turns 18 years old before the deadline will be eligible to sign with an OWL team for the 2019 season.
Contenders Rosters
The Contenders series will also be changing a bit. In addition to rosters being limited to eight players, OWL teams will be able to reach out to any Contenders players to arrange tryouts or negotiate contracts. However, they must inform the player’s current team a day before doing so.
Overwatch League teams signing Contenders players may have to pay a buyout fee, which was set at 25 percent of the player’s average annual base salary in the first season. But that rate has been removed and a 100 percent cap has taken its place.
Right-to-match clauses can be also negotiated between Contenders teams and their affiliate OWL teams, which will allow the parent team to match any other OWL offer within a week of the offer being made. The league will also be instituting select blackout windows during each season in an effort to “minimize disruption to the competition leading up to and during Contenders playoffs.”
Two-Way Players
Next season, teams will be able to designate players as eligible to compete in Contenders on an affiliated team, thereby making them official two-way players. There is a four-player maximum during each stage and those players must be selected prior to the start of the stage.
The league has set some rules that will hopefully stop some potential issues here regarding the use of players in both leagues consistently.
- Two-way players will count toward the OWL 12-person roster, regardless of where they play, and will count toward the Contenders eight-person roster when they compete for them.
- Two-way players cannot compete in more than two OWL matches in a stage or that player will lose their Contenders eligibility.
- No more than two designated two-way players can compete on the same team in a Contenders match.
- No player will be eligible to appear in Contenders and OWL matches in the same week.