T-Mobile disappears as CDL & Overwatch League sponsor amid Activision Blizzard lawsuit Activision Blizzard \/ T-MobileIn the wake of Activision Blizzard\u2019s ongoing discrimination lawsuit, it appears that the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League have quietly lost their formerly prominent T-Mobile partnership. On July 22, the state of California launched a civil lawsuit against Activision Blizzard citing a variety of gendered discrimination problems and a general \u201cfrat-boy culture.\u201d From July 29 to August 1, Activision\u2019s CDL hosted its biggest event of 2021: the Stage 5 Major. Interestingly, the league\u2019s main non-gaming sponsor, T-Mobile, seemingly disappeared fully during the event \u2014 despite it being the most-watched broadcast of the season. Upon a deeper dive, the T-Mobile logo seems to have been taped over on players\u2019 jerseys, while the brand was removed from all broadcast segments and from the CDL\u2019s website. Additionally, this seems to have also happened for Activision\u2019s sister league, the OWL. T-Mobile quietly removed from CDL & OWL websites The above screenshots show 1) the CDL website on July 21 and 2) the CDL website as of July 31. As you can see, T-Mobile has been removed in the week since Activision Blizzard was hit with the lawsuit. This also applies to the \u201cPartners\u201d page on the OWL website, which has been similarly tweaked. Another visible change was that players had T-Mobile logos taped over during the Major V broadcast \u2014 while having them seemingly removed from graphics. As can be seen in pictures of the Subliners\u2019 intro graphics from the Stage 4 Major and Stage 5, T-Mobile seems to have disappeared entirely. While some may have noticed players with taped-over jerseys on broadcast, there are two other clear signs of the partnership distancing. One such example is the CDL\u2019s weekly T-Mobile sweepstake, whose FAQ indicates that the final period has been \u201ccanceled\u201d and that \u201cthe sweepstakes has ended.\u201d And, finally, on the OWL side \u2014 the league used to have T-Mobile branding in their \u201cOverwatch League Perks\u201d program (as seen in a May 2021 tweet), but that seems to have changed in early August. There are no wrong answers \ud83e\udd73 With Overwatch League Perks by @TMobile, if you watch 4 hours of the June Joust, you will receive an exclusive OWL skin. Vote for which skin YOU want to earn \ud83d\udc47 \u2014 Overwatch Esports (@OW_Esports) May 24, 2021 It’s that time again, folks! Watch four hours of #OWL2021 to receive an exclusive legendary skin! Vote below to determine which hero gets to rep the league in style \ud83d\udc47 \u2014 Overwatch Esports (@OW_Esports) August 2, 2021 With the CDL hitting milestone viewership (over 100K watched Major 5 live) and both leagues pushing toward highly anticipated postseasons, immediate suspicions arise about the sudden distancing. In terms of timing, the simplest assumption would be T-Mobile distancing from the lawsuit. Whether that is the case or not remains to be known, as neither Activision nor T-Mobile have discussed the split publicly. Dexerto has reached out to both Activision and T-Mobile PR for comment and will update this piece if we receive a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
T-Mobile disappears as CDL & Overwatch League sponsor amid Activision Blizzard lawsuit Activision Blizzard \/ T-MobileIn the wake of Activision Blizzard\u2019s ongoing discrimination lawsuit, it appears that the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League have quietly lost their formerly prominent T-Mobile partnership. On July 22, the state of California launched a civil lawsuit against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}