Spitfire Beats Fusion To Win Overwatch League (And a $1 Million Prize)

The London Spitfire franchise has won the first Overwatch League season, picking up a $1 million prize before a live audience of 20,000 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The team faced Philadelphia Fusion in a battle to be decided by the best of three matches, each set being the best of five games. It was a near blowout with Spitfire winning the first match 3-1 and the second 3-0.

Spitfire certainly peaked at the right time with the league’s somewhat complicated format. The season was broken into four stages, each of which saw teams play the other five teams in their regional division (Pacific or Atlantic) at home and away (for 10 games total) before a stage playoff series. Spitfire won the first of these, none of which had any bearing on the post-season.

Instead it all came down to overall performance across the 40 regular games, with three teams qualifying from each of the divisions. Spitfire and Fusion clinched the second and third slots in the Atlantic division, with their identical record (24 wins and 16 losses) meaning they could be split only on ‘map difference’.

Despite the franchising, all seven players on the Spitfire roster are from South Korea. Contrastingly the Fusion roster includes players from England, South Korea, Israel, Finland, Canada, Spain, France, Russia and Sweden.

The BBC notes Jun-young Park, aka “Profit”, won the MVP award for the final, largely for having killed the entire Fusion team with a special attack.

Meanwhile Polygon reports that the crowd seemed a little disappointed with the one-sided affair, though it was still better received than the decision to include a performance by DJ Khaled: “They had paid to see high-level Overwatch, not to listen to cuts of ‘90s and early ‘00s hip-hop.”