If Toronto is confirmed, that will make 15 teams in the Overwatch League: the original 12, along with Atlanta and Guangzhou. This allows me to speculate on multiple levels. First, I get to wonder what the teams’ three-letter codes will be (I know, not exciting to most of you, but important to this site! I’m thinking they can keep it simple, with TOR, ATL, and GUA.), but also to wonder what the divisional alignments will look like come the 2019 season.

Blizzard has said that two expansion teams will come from each of the three regions of North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe/Middle East. We already know the two NA teams and one of the Asian ones. Let’s try and group everything geographically (new teams represented by italics):

APAC

• Guangzhou
• Seoul
• Shanghai
• APAC2

Western NA

• LA Gladiators
• LA Valiant
• San Francisco

Central NA

• Dallas
• Houston

Eastern NA

• Atlanta
• Boston
• Florida
• New York
• Philadelphia
• Toronto

Europe/Middle-East

• London
• Europe/ME1
• Europe/ME2

Assuming Blizzard wants to keep divisions the same size, there would seem to be only two possible alignments: 9/9 or 6/6/6. (Hopefully, the overly religious won’t freak out over the second choice.) I’ll also assume that, where possible, Blizzard would like to keep geographically close teams in the same division, both for perception purposes and to provide easier travel once games start to be played in home cities, rather than in the Blizzard Arena in L.A.

This makes the 6/6/6 alignment a little tricky. There are seven combined teams in the APAC/West NA duo. You’d think those teams would be naturals for the same division, but where does the “extra” team go? All three of the U.S.-based teams are in California, so it’s not like one is really more “west” than the others, as opposed to if one was in, say, Denver or Arizona.

Out east, the three EU/ME teams would have to add three East NA teams to form their division, but which ones? And would you have the odd team out in the western squeeze in the same division as a team like Toronto or Philadelphia? As for the two teams I’ve labeled as “Central,” I’d imagine they could be in east or west divisions as needed, as is the case now with Dallas in the Pacific Division and Houston in the Atlantic.

9/9 would be considerably easier to manage, with nine teams, with the APAC/West/Central teams forming an easy nine-pack, and the East/EU/ME teams doing the same. Maybe it’s just me, though, but I feel like nine is a bit too high of a number for divisions in a pro sports league. I’ve seen the four major sports leagues go as high as eight teams to a division, but that seems to be their limit.

Another question would be the schedule. If we assume that Blizzard wants to keep a 40-game OWL season, with a slightly more divisional games than non-divisional ones — but the same number against all your divisional foes — what does that leave us? The best I can come up with for a 6/6/6 alignment is:

5 divisional opponents x 3 games each = 15 games
11 non-divisional opponents x 2 games each = 22 games
1 non-divisional opponent x 3 games = 3 games

or

5 divisional opponents x 4 games each = 20 games
8 non-divisional opponents x 2 games each = 16 games
4 non-divisional opponents x 1 game each = 4 games

For a 9/9 alignment, you’d probably have something like:

8 divisional opponents x 3 games each = 24 games
7 non-divisional opponents x 2 games each = 14 games
2 non-divisional opponents x 1 game each = 2 games

If Blizzard is willing to wiggle on the number of games in a stage or season, there are other options to make things more equitable. For 6/6/6, I like (5×4) + (12×2), for a total of 44 games. That would mean a sixth week in each of the four 11-game stages, with teams playing their regular matchups on Wed/Thu and Fri/Sat used for the stage playoffs. For the 9/9 setup, they could try (8×3) + (9×2) = 42 games, and either have stages of 10/10/11/11 games or have one stage with 12 games.

That said, the first season followed a (5×4) + (2×4) + (4×3) pattern, so I don’t think having a perfectly balanced schedule is high on Blizzard’s list of priorities. It’s fun to speculate, though, on where the new teams will land and what kind of rivalries will develop. As long as none of them pick up xQc.