After joining the Flyers, Sixers, Phillies, and Wings at the start of the year as representatives of the city of champions, the Philadelphia Fusion look to make history this week as they prepare to compete for the coveted title of Overwatch League champions.
The grand finals of the Overwatch League mark the conclusion of the first season of the esports league launched by Blizzard Entertainment at the start of the year. Featuring 12 geolocalized teams, each backed by their own set of investors including the likes of Robert Kraft, Jeff Wilpon and Stan and Josh Kroenke.
Sporting the signature orange and black color scheme of the Flyers, the Philadelphia Fusion were formed in 2017 after a multi-million dollar investment by Comcast Spectacor into the world’s first geolocalized esports league as part of the company’s entry into esports. It’s an industry heralded as the future of sports entertainment for the millennial generation.
Drafting players with varying degrees of competitive experience from around the world, the franchise led by Tucker Roberts, the 27-year-old son of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, created one of the most internationally-diverse rosters in the Overwatch League.
When compared to the pre-established lineups of their competitors, who joined the league with prior experience and competed together in amateur-level tournaments, many fans and pundits alike saw the Fusion as an underdog team.
(Philadelphia Fusion/Akshon Esports)
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After missing out on the preseason and having one of their players, Su-min “Sado” Kim, suspended for several months, it was uncertain to what heights this team would be able to reach throughout the season. Especially when compared to fan-favorite teams such as the Dallas Fuel and Seoul Dynasty, who were anticipated to win the entire league at the time.
However, it did not take long for the Fusion to shed this perception as they began to come together as a team with the addition of Josh "Eqo" Corona to the starting lineup. The Philadelphia representatives embarked on an unexpectedly dominant Stage 2 run, coming one map short of securing a stage title in a close series against the NYXL.
After their mercurial rise, many fans looked to the Fusion to continue their campaign as a top contender in the leaderboards for the remainder of the season, but this momentum did not last upon their return from the mid-stage break.
Similar to many of their competitors, the Fusion faced growing pains as they worked with their coaching staff to devise new tactics in the advent of changes to the state of the meta, which included updates to the game ranging from a new map pool to the release of a new hero, Brigitte.
(Philadelphia Fusion/Akshon Esports)
As the playoffs neared with each passing week, the Fusion found themselves in a difficult situation. The coveted end-of-season playoff spots were gradually being filled, and the team was locked in a neck-to-neck race to make the top-six cutoff to keep their Overwatch League season alive.
Luckily, to help the team make the final push for playoffs was their highly-touted Korean tank player, “Sado”, whose suspension from competitive play had finally ended. The addition of a new player who had yet to play on stage all season came with its own set of problems to overcome as most teams had more or less refined their starting lineups and established communication systems after several months of play. However, a change in main tank, a role which had become a major point of contention, was enough to help bring about an upswing in their performance in their final and some of the most crucial games of the regular season.
(Philadelphia Fusion/Akshon Esports)
By the end of Stage 4, it wasn’t the Outlaws, Dynasty or Shock, but the Fusion who were able to break out of a four-way deadlock and qualify for the end-of-season playoffs as the sixth-seeded team.
Heading into playoffs, it was uncertain how the best-of-three quarterfinals series against the No. 3 Boston Uprising would pan out as teams would be playing on a new patch, featuring changes from the reworked Hanzo to a nerf to Brigitte that would put their month of postseason preparation and adaptability to the test.
Building off of the All-Star DPS duo of Jae-Hyeok “Carpe” Lee and “Eqo” in addition to exceptional Mercy play from Alberto "Neptuno" González, Kraft’s Uprising were outclassed with the Fusion ending Day 1 with the first match point. Despite a setback on Day 2 with the second match going 3-1 for Boston, the Fusion managed to collect themselves and focused on denying Uprising’s Nam-joo “Striker” Kwon from creating windows of opportunity with Widowmaker picks.
“I think Striker from Boston was a huge problem. He would flank a lot as Widow and had a lot of killing potential,” “Eqo” said in the postgame press conference. “At first we didn’t make that much attention to him, but as soon as we started losing we had to deal with it and made a few rules that we always had to call his flanks and remind people where he is, and that helped us going into the next match of the series.”
With the final match allowing teams to make a selection of any map from the pool, the Fusion were able to capitalize on the flexibility of their team and interchange tank duos when deemed necessary. This allowed them to shine on maps such as Eichenwalde and Lijiang Tower — a map which they previously lost to the Uprising — to move on to the semifinals where an even greater foe awaited them.
“In Stage 2 and 3 when “Sado” was not available to play, during that time he was obviously practicing on our second squad and playing with (Choi Hong-jun) Hotba, so it made sense to keep those tank duos separate,” Philadelphia Fusion head coach Yann “Kirby” Luu said. “Going into Stage 4 we didn’t have much time to make the big swap with that duo (“Hotba” and “Sado”). Here, when we went into playoff preparations, it made more sense and we had more time to really look into the swaps and that’s why we looked into implementing having our two off tank players play with us.”
From an outsider’s perspective, the Fusion appeared once again to be the underdogs as they only had a few days to go before their match versus the fan-favorite New York Excelsior, who finished the regular season as the No. 1-seeded team and an impressive feat of two stage titles to their name.
The Fusion headed into the semifinals with another handicap as they had exposed some of their strategies in the previous series, making it all the easier for their opponents to analyze and potentially implement countermeasures.
Although the odds appeared to be against them with many fans writing off the semifinals as a clean 2-0 for Jeff Wilpon’s team, synergy with the new meta in combination with their prowess as a team allowed them to overcome their greatest hurdle to date. The unprecedented upset left the community shocked as the Fusion closed out the series narrowly denying the final map point on Dorado and at last finding revenge for the loss handed to them in Stage 2.
“I think this meta favors us because of our play style. We could switch heroes faster than they do on multiple accounts without switching our DPSs,” “Neptuno” said. “I felt like we were stronger on most of the maps today, even on Lijiang where we made so many mistakes.”
The Fusion may have walked off the Blizzard Arena stage for the final time this season bearing smiles on their faces, but also with an immense sense of respect for the NYXL, who challenged them every step of the way despite the decisive nature in how some maps may have played out.
“The season is a test of consistency while the playoffs are a test of who can show up on that day and play the best,” “Kirby” said in a postgame press conference. “The two teams who are in the playoffs are teams with very high talent, us and London, and even though NYXL and Valiant were like the best teams overall throughout the season, that’s not what the playoffs were about.”
Fans from around the world will gather at a sold-out Barclays Center in Brooklyn to watch the Philadelphia Fusion take on the London Spitfire in the grand finals starting July 27 at 7 p.m. to compete for the honor of being crowned the first Overwatch League champion in addition to the $1 million award to the victor.
With upsets occurring on both ends of the playoffs bracket, albeit at different degrees, you can look forward to Overwatch League having an exciting series between a Fusion roster that has never looked stronger and a London Spitfire team that appears to have returned to its dominant form from Stage 1.
Tickets for the event have already sold out, but you can catch coverage via the online stream on Twitch or by tuning into the televised broadcast on Disney XD and ESPN as esports go primetime.