FiveThirtyEight Sports does a really neat pair of charts for the NFL and NBA that tracks the Elo rating for every team in both leagues, throughout their entire existence since their inception. The main reason I wanted to track Elo ratings for Overwatch League teams was so I could make a chart like that once the season was over.

Hey, the season’s over! Look, a chart!

OK, obviously my chart isn’t nearly as fancy as FiveThirtyEight’s, with the ability to single out teams and pinpoint individual games. On the other hand, I don’t have 50-100 years’ worth of data to include. Maybe by the time OWL gets to that point, I’ll be able to work up something a little more interactive.

In the meantime, just looking at this chart of Elo ratings for the first OWL season lets you identify several memorable trends, such as:

• New York’s season-long dominance
• London’s sharp upward tick at the end of the season, as it won 6 straight playoff match-ups
• Boston’s big winning streak – followed by a substantial losing streak
• Dallas’ surge in Stage 4
• San Francisco’s improved play in the second half
• Poor Shanghai’s steady downward slide

When next season starts, I’ll follow FiveThirtyEight’s custom and move each team 1/3 toward the average of 1500. I’m not sure yet how I’ll handle any new teams that arrive in the league. FiveThirtyEight gives expansion teams a starting Elo of 1300, rather than 1500, to represent their usual weakness early on. It stands to reason that new OWL teams might also be similarly disadvantaged, since the current teams probably have all the best Overwatch players in the world. I’ll see what people say about the quality of the new teams before making a decision.

For now, here are the end-of-season Elo ratings of the current OWL teams, along with their starting ratings for the 2019 season:

New York: 1655 (1603)
London: 1626 (1584)
L.A. Valiant: 1618 (1579)
Philadelphia: 1581 (1554)
Boston: 1567 (1545)
L.A. Gladiators: 1566 (1544)
Houston: 1512 (1508)
San Francisco: 1484 (1489)
Seoul: 1481 (1487)
Dallas: 1394 (1429)
Florida: 1294 (1363)
Shanghai: 1171 (1281)

What else stands out to you?