?Paris Eternal denied us a winning bet with our OWL betting predictions for Friday with a very strong performance in their 3-1 win against Vancouver Titans. They lost their next match 1-3 against Houston Outlaws, but it wasn’t like the Eternal played poorly. They lost the final two maps with minimal margins – 2-3 on Assault (Volskaya Industries) and 3-4 on Hybrid (King’s Row).

Their next opponents are Atlanta Reign, who have yet to win a single match this season. We sided against the Reign in our betting predictions for the first week of play, which proved to be the right choice, and we are very tempted to do it again here.

Atlanta look like the stronger team on paper, but they haven’t played a single match in a week. They��re also struggling with their form, so there is a strong case to be made for the outsiders to at least keep this one close.

?Along with the Titans, Boston Uprising are a strong candidates to end the season as the weakest team in the OWL. They’re 0-2 with a 0-6 map differential after two clean sweep losses against Los Angeles Gladiators and Dallas Fuel.

Washington Justice have the better form line, but they are yet to be properly tested. Their two games thus far have ended in 3-1 victories against the Fuel and the Titans, so we don’t really know at this stage how good the Justice are.

Boston looked lost last week, and unless they find a way to improve, they will struggle to win a match in the May Melee. That said, they have good enough players for us to steer clear from betting on the Justice to win 3-0.

Washington are clearly the better team, but they dropped a map against a Vancouver team that looks just as weak as the Uprising. Boston can steal a map, but we don’t expect much more. Expect a 3-1 victory for the favourites.

?The Vancouver Titans are likely the weakest team in the Overwatch League, but there is a chance the Titans could pick up a win on Friday. We haven’t seen the Paris Eternal in action yet, so there’s a lot of guesswork that goes into figuring out how well they will perform, but it looks as though this team won��t be very successful this season.

Dani?l “Daan” Vincentius Paulus Scheltema is the only player on the Eternal roster that we have high expectations for. Rookies make up a significant portion of this squad, so while Paris might have a high ceiling, they likely won’t reach their full potential for a while yet.

Even though we believe the Eternal are slightly stronger, betting at these odds on a team that has yet to play a single match makes no sense. Vancouver should be competitive enough to win at least two maps.

?The last two years were a little rough for the London Spitfire, yet we can��t help but be optimistic about this team heading into the 2021 OWL season. They have a lot of upside, but it’s hard to say whether the Brits will reach their potential this year.

Most of London’s roster is the British Hurricane squad from Overwatch Contenders, but that’s hardly a bad thing. It’s no secret the Cloud9-owned team are putting a lot of resources into developing young talent, and they��re doing a great job. Whether they can compete in at the highest level, however, remains to be seen.

The Los Angeles Gladiators were regarded as one of the strongest OWL teams ahead of this season, but they have so far failed to live up to the hype. Losses to the San Francisco Shock and the Dallas Fuel leave them in a precarious position heading into their third fixture of the May Melee.

While we believe the Gladiators have a lot more to show, we can’t agree with their short price in the OWL betting markets. The Spitfire’s roster might be inexperienced, but this squad lost only one out of 15 Contenders tournaments in 2020, so they’re clearly good enough to compete with the top dogs.

The series kicked off on Monday, June 29 with 20 teams divided into two regional brackets. The North American region featured 13 teams, including Paris, while only seven Overwatch squads fought in the Asian bracket. London Spitfire and New York Excelsior appeared in the Asian tournament, as both have moved their training facilities to South Korea.

The Asian bracket matches began on Saturday, July 4 with the quarter-final fixtures. Shanghai Dragons were excluded from that stage since they received a direct bye into the semi-finals, whereas the remaining six teams had to battle it out for a place in the last four.

Chengdu Hunters were the first team out of the tournament after they have suffered a 0-3 loss to Guangzhou Charge, while London Spitfire and Hangzhou Spark followed suit after they fell flat against Seoul Dynasty (1-3) and New York Excelsior (0-3) respectively.

In the semi-finals, we saw Shanghai Dragons stomp the Dynasty (3-0), while the Charge showed no mercy to Excelsior (0-3). Even though it was somewhat shocking to see such one-sided affairs in the semi-finals, the dominant performances from the Dragons and Charge set the scene for dramatic and exciting grand finals.

Shanghai entered the OWL Summer Showdown finals as favourites after winning the May Melee, but Guangzhou had other plans. Jungyeon “Chara” Kim and co. got off to a flying start and won the opening three maps on Ilios (2-0), Hollywood (3-2) and Temple of Anubis (2-1). They stumbled a bit on Watchpoint: Gibraltar (1-3) and Busan (1-2), however, which allowed the Dragons to reduce the gap to 2-3.

With the title slipping between their fingers, the Charge switched into a higher gear and eked out a 2-1 win on Blizzard World to seal the series and claim the US $65,000 grand prize.

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, there were upsets aplenty as 13 teams battled for the North American Overwatch Summer Showdown title.

Los Angeles Valiant, Los Angeles Gladiators, Florida Mayhem and Dallas Fuel all suffered early elimination and failed to reach the quarter-finals, where the top-seeded San Francisco Shock, Vancouver Titans, Philadelphia Fusion and Atlanta Reign awaited their opponents.

There was no shortage of exciting games to watch, it was Toronto Defiant who took all spotlight with their performances. Reaching the quarter-finals was a huge achievement on its own, but they went above and beyond everyone’s expectations when they edged out a 3-2 win against Atlanta to punch a ticket for the semi-finals.

There, Jooseong “RoKy” Park and his crew met with Philadelphia Fusion, who advanced with a 3-0 win. However, the final score does not tell the whole story. All three maps went down to the wire (2-1, 4-3 and 1-0), so Defiant will have regained some confidence after their disappointing ninth-12th finish at the May Melee.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO BET ON OVERWATCH ESPORTS

The second semi-final saw Paris Eternal claim a stunning win against the reigning Overwatch League champions, San Francisco Shock (3-2). A lot of Eternal’s success came down to a phenomenal performance from Yeong-han “SP9RK1E” Kim, who picked up the MVP award.

Thus, it was Paris Eternal and Philadelphia Fusion in the grand finals of the North American OWL Summer Showdown. Fusion started as favourites after two dominant displays in the knockout rounds, but the underdogs made it clear from the off that they would not go down without a fight.

Paris took an early lead on Lijiang Tower (2-0), only to drop two maps on King’s Row (3-4) and Volskaya Industries (2-3). Trailing 1-2, Eternal picked up the pace and won on Watchpoint: Gibraltar (3-1) and Nepal (2-0) to go within one map of winning the whole thing.

Fusion managed to win on Blizzard World (4-3) to tie the series at 3-3, but that only delayed the inevitable. Eternal put the final nail in the coffin on Rialto (2-1) to claim the title and $70,000 in tournament winnings.

The series was hyped as a must-watch duel between SP9RK1E and Fusion’s Josh “Eqo” Corona, but it was Eternal’s 18-year-old DPS, Ki-hyo “Xzi” Jung, who stole the show and snagged the MVP award for the OWL Summer Showdown grand finals.

The Overwatch League will now take a short break and return on Friday, July 17. The next scheduled regional tournament is the OWL Countdown Cup, which will run from August 7-9 with a $275,000 prize pool.