Former Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris Overholt will become the President and CEO of Overactive Media, the controlling group of Toronto’s new Overwatch League expansion team.

Overholt, who stepped down from his COC position after seven years at the helm, will lead Toronto’s newest esports franchise after a successful career in traditional sports. In fact, he’s so well qualified for the position that the approval of Toronto’s expansion bid, according to Sports Business Daily’s Ben Fischer, was predicated on his acceptance of the leadership role.

 

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Overwatch is a video game, but it’s also an entire league.

Overwatch is a first-person shooter game in which players form two opposing teams of six and use different hero character combinations to compete toward various objectives, such as capturing a checkpoint. Made by Activision Blizzard, which is famous for such titles as Starcraft, Overwatch became the company’s fastest-growing game by garnering 30 million players in its first year.

The Overwatch League, first announced in late 2016, burst onto the scene in its inaugural season in 2018. The league earned over $200 million (all sums USD) in sponsorships and broadcast rights, according to ESPN’s Jacob Wolf, and the league struck a deal with Disney to bring the league to ESPN and ABC.

“As owners, we have been totally blown away by the professionalism and care that Pete [Vlastelica, CEO of Activision Blizzard] and Activison Blizzard and Major League Gaming have brought to this,” Overholt said. The Overwatch League, he declared, is the world’s premier esports league.

The Overwatch League is similar to a traditional sports league in that its players have contracts ($50,000 minimum) and compete for a prize pool ($3.5 million in total for season one). But the esports league transcends traditional sports by bridging continental divides: its Pacific Divisions contains teams both in the United States and in China and South Korea. For season two, Blizzard has added teams in the US, Canada, and China, and several reports indicate that Paris has bought an expansion slot.

Still think the league isn’t serious? The Toronto buy-in fee was reportedly $35 million.

 

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Overholt isn’t too worried about the price tag.

“[Esports] isn’t arriving, it’s arrived,” he told TSN.ca. He’s right: the field is poised to eclipse $1 billion in revenue this coming year, and Newzoo, the leading esports research company, estimates over 580 million esports viewers by 2021.

Canadian entrepreneur Michael Kimel funds most of the expansion bid, but the day-to-day operations will fall to wide-ranging esports organization Splyce. That will enable Overholt, who first began following esports in early 2017, to focus on the big-picture.

Overholt is experienced in building the identity of an organization, from branding to market integration. He began his career by working his way up the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment ranks after joining the Raptors before their second season in the NBA. He also served as a Vice President for the Florida Panthers and the Miami Dolphins.

“We’re so proud and honoured to have been included in this,” Overholt said. The former Raptors staffer and MLSE Vice President, returned to where his career began, is determined to turn Toronto into one of the premier franchises in the league.

He won’t do it by playing, though. Overholt admitted that while he has started playing the game, he’s still, in his words, “terrible.”

He’ll soon be able to ask for gameplay tips from a whole roster of Toronto Overwatch pros.