DALLAS -- For the first year of the Overwatch League's existence, all but two of the games -- which took place at last year's grand final in Brooklyn's Barclays Center -- were held in the Blizzard Arena located in the valley of Los Angeles.
The two Los Angeles teams in the league, the Valiant and the Gladiators, have seen their presence grow in the City of Angels, the hallway rivalry at the venue being dubbed the Battle for Los Angeles.
The other teams had to rely on the traveling and the converted to build any sort of home-crowd advantage, some thousands of miles away from where their home bases are located.
That all changed at the Allen Event Center in Dallas last weekend, though, as 4,500 fans sold out the venue on back-to-back days to watch their home team, the Dallas Fuel, take the stage for the first time at the first homestand in OWL history. After years of promises that fans across the world would see their franchises live, Blizzard finally made good.
I've watched esports for over a decade and have been in the scene covering it almost just as long. I've been to China at the Bird's Nest for the most-attended esports final of all time when Samsung Galaxy bested SK Telecom T1 to become League of Legends champions in 2017. I've been to Poland, where the most fanatical esports fans in the world packed the Spodek Arena in Katowice to watch the biggest competition in Counter-Strike.
And though the crowd in Texas might have not been anywhere near the biggest, the enclosed, compact seating of the arena along with the low ceiling in the venue contributed to what might have been the loudest crowd I've ever experienced in competitive games.
By any barometer, the Dallas homestand was a runaway success. Fuel fans came out in droves, and the in-state rival Houston Outlaws weren't too far behind in number of supporters, with packs of neon green breaking up the solid wave of navy blue in the stands. Families in matching uniforms walking to their seats, with some adults without children in tow at all, enjoyed the spectacle. One man who appeared to be in his 60s proudly displaying his burnt orange jersey of the Chengdu Hunters.
Without any surrounding context, it was esports nirvana. Fans of all ages enjoying a show, and Dallas, one the premier franchises in the league, showcasing a home-field advantage comparable to that of any traditional sports team.
But nothing is without context, and that includes Overwatch League's first home run with homestands.
The league announced that each of the 20 franchises would be going to its home city in 2020, and with that, a slew of questions are still unanswered.
How will teams, primarily made up of teenagers and 20-somethings, handle constant flight travel, including trips to cities like Paris and Hangzhou, China?
Will the game quality be lessened because of the expected crazy travel schedule?
Wait, how are opposing teams going to have optimal practice? Not just with the travel -- gaming computers to play at the highest level are expensive and aren't the easiest objects to take globetrotting. Will each home arena have a designated practice area for the traveling team?
In a league that has already had to deal with the burnout of some of its star players, won't moving away from the Blizzard Arena make things worse?
Dallas knows the hardships of player burnout more than anyone. The franchise's star DPS player, Hyeon "EFFECT" Hwang, retired from competitive play earlier this year in part due to feeling burned out from the scene and everything that surrounds it. Other players have expressed in interviews and streams similar viewpoints, leading me to have conflicting feelings heading into 2020.
In a perfect world, every weekend is like the one in Dallas. Though not every venue will be as large or as well-attended, the spirit will remain the same, as casual passersby turn into fans overnight, and parents and children are interlocked, finding a new weekly activity to enjoy together. The league, along with the teams, will find a way to make the global travel as painless as possible. Fuel's CEO, Mike "Hastr0" Rufail, told me in an interview that Dallas was already speaking to domestic airline companies about possible sponsorships or private charters.
If only reality were that simple, though. As the memories of the Dallas homestand fade into the distance, the energy of the Texan crowd becoming folklore, the franchise itself will be trudging forward into the unknown. The first homestand was a success, but what about the next? What if the weekly party turns into a wake when the team fails to perform up to expectations for consecutive weeks? It's easy to have a full crowd rocking the building when the team is on the rise and winning matches, but it's a different story entirely when a team is rebuilding and wins are more difficult to find than gold.
The first Overwatch homestand was a resounding success. It's now up to the Overwatch League and its higher-ups to find a way to make every weekend a little like their first time in Dallas. You can never replicate your first love, but for a league that promised home and away matches in 2020, the Overwatch League will do the best it can.