The Overwatch League (OWL) preseason concluded this weekend and though there was no ‘champion’ per se, there were certainly winners and losers.

The Seoul Dynasty proved they were the team to beat, as many expected. The Los Angles Valiant were a surprisingly strong force to be reckoned with and the Florida Mayhem may need to prepare themselves for a long and disappointing season.

The preseason was split over the course of four days with each team playing twice, except for San Francisco Shock and Seoul Dynasty who each played an extra game to make up for the absence of Philadelphia Fusion. Each series consisted of four matches, with a fifth tiebreaker played in Lijiang Tower if things were tied up after that.

At the end of four days, three teams came out of the preseason with perfect records — Valiant, Dynasty and the Dallas Fuel squad. 

On the flip side, Mayhem, Shanghai Dragons and the Houston Outlaws all failed to win a single match. Of those three teams, it was Mayhem who appeared to struggle the most. Houston put up a good showing in both of their matches, but were unlucky enough to be going up against Dallas and Seoul. The Dragons were fairly mediocre in their match-up with Seoul, but forced a tightly contested fifth game in their battle with a pretty good Boston Uprising team.

The London Spitfire squad is expected by many to be the second best team in the league, but their first series against the Los Angeles Gladiators left a lot to be desired. Spitfire dropped the match 3-2 and we were starting to wonder if the Gladiators were better than everyone expected or if Spitfire were worse. Then Spitfire went on to dominate their second match-up, beating San Fransisco Shock 4-0.   Meanwhile, the Gladiators lost a relatively close one to Valiant, their cross-town rivals, by a score of 3-1. 

Overall, the preseason results suggest the field of teams might be a little closer than most of us expected. Seoul Dynasty will still be the clear favorites going into the season, but they may not be as far ahead of the pack as we thought. Spitfire are going to have to work to prove that their loss to the Gladiators was just a fluke, while the Valiant will be looking to ride their winning momentum into a tough week one match-up against the Dallas Fuel.

Plus, the regular season will grant us our first look at a questionable Philadelphia squad who had to bow out of the regular season due to logistical issues regarding their players.

The inaugural season of the Overwatch League starts on January 10th with a marquee match-up between the Dallas Fuel and the Seould Dynasty. With four stages (not including playoffs, finals and all-stars) there’ll be a lot of Overwatch to check out in the new year. Stay tuned for more coverage as we get closer to the season’s start.