Overwatch 2 team owner slams Blizzard & claims they wasted OW2’s esports potential

The now former owner of the Toronto Defiant Overwatch 2 team revealed why he chose not to return to the esports scene for the game, claiming that Blizzard has mishandled the esports scene and wasted its potential.

Toronto Defiant team owner Adam Adamou joined Overwatch caster AVRL for an interview on January 10 to discuss why Toronto Defiant will not return for the Overwatch World Championship Series.

Toronto Defiant had a wildly successful year with four different 1st place finishes and 3rd in the World Finals, but despite this momentum, Adamou revealed Toronto Defiant will not return for 2025.

Adamou discussed several reasons as to why they will not return to Overwatch eSports, but much of the blame sees to lie with what Adamou perceives as an overcautious approach from Blizzard and Team 4, despite his belief that Overwatch can become much bigger in the eSports scene.

Overwatch 2 team owner explains why he’s leaving OWCS

Toronto Defiant opted not to sign up for the new OWCS Team Partner Program which would share revenue from in-game cosmetics to teams who enter the program. According to Adamou, in-game cosmetics are how teams like Toronto Defiant can profit in eSports, while funding for the overall club can come from sponsorships.

There were a couple of reasons why Toronto Defiant will not be returning in 2025. For instance, according to Adamou, the team was not able to sufficiently provide value for their sponsors, stating “the assets that [we] were able to deliver [for our sponsorships] were insufficient.”

But a larger reason revolves around a lack of financial incentive as Adamou believes the Team Partner Program is not sufficient enough for investment.

“[Riot Games] and Activision with respect to Call of Duty have shown a greater willingness to invest in the ecosystem to make it viable for teams and partners,” Adamou said. “Overwatch is moving in that direction but rather slowly.” He went on to state he felt as if the teams were “subsidizing their indecision.”

Adamou believes that, with more investment, Overwatch can become a “tier one” esport amidst the likes of League of Legends, Call of Duty, and Counter: Strike, but is lacking the conviction from Blizzard to do so.

“We don’t believe that [these] games are big enough in terms of the user base or in terms of the support from the publisher to allow teams to generate sufficient revenue from the MTX (microtransactions) side of the business.”

He said it’s up to Blizzard to decide whether or not they want to make the push for Overwatch to become a tier one game.

“I think at this point, they’re unsure,” Adamou said. “Team Four is part of a trillion dollar organization and they’re being tentative and they’re taking small steps, and they’re not investing heavily. And so the burden falls on teams.”

He later went on to state that it’s up to the company to “establish the guidelines and provide visibility to the revenue that [they] can get.” The Team Partner Program currently lacks more transparency on the specifics of the revenue split between Blizzard and teams.

“It’s not clear to me whether you’re sharing $500,000 across nine teams, which would obviously be very low per team,” he said.

For Toronto Defiant to return in 2026, Adamou hopes Blizzard would be willing to further invest in teams that currently rely upon sponsors for most of their revenue.

“The burden falls on [teams] that take the risk,” he stated. “That’s just not our business…It’s not our business to subsidize trillion dollar companies.”

Still, this revenue share program is a step in the right direction and a sign that Blizzard is still willing to invest in esports. The return of team skins shows that they’re at least somewhat committed to keeping the competitive side of the game alive.