Guangzhou Charge revealed as latest Overwatch League franchise

09 November 2018

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Guangzhou Charge is the fourth of eight expansion franchises in the Overwatch League to be unveiled.

Owned by the Nenking Group – the umbrella company of Zhong Naixiong and the ownership group of the Guangzhou Long-Lions basketball team – the Guangzhou franchise’s branding was officially unveiled on October 9th.

Guangzhou Charge

The official logo didn’t take a long time to come up with by the looks of things. A pale blue ‘GZ’ makes up the logo, with a lightning bolt forming between the two letters. The simplicity was on purpose, however.

Chris Hwang, Marketing and Creative Director of Guangzhou Charge discussed the branding in a statement: “We want to build an international organization and fanbase, so the goal for our team brand was to create a symbol for Guangzhou that people from all of the world can instantly recognize. We took inspiration from iconic sports logos where simple letters have grown to represent an entire city.

“We have a large home region that stretches from the coast to the mountains, and we drew inspiration from dark blue waters, light blue skies, and lush green hills for our team colors. We’re so excited to unveil these elements to our fans, and it’s now our job to build this team brand into something that everyone in our region can be proud of.”

In October, the franchise found its CEO, COO, and General Manager ahead of its very first season. Sonny Xiao, President of Basketball Operations for the Guangzhou Long Lions was appointed at CEO. Eddy Meng, the former Managing Director of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia at Activision Blizzard, was named COO. Ethan Liu, formerly of Machi Esports, boarded the team as its General Manager. 

Guangzhou Charge is the fourth expansion team to be unveiled. In October, both the Atlanta Reign and the Toronto Defiant were presented to the world. On November 8th, the Paris Eternal were showcased at an event in – you guessed it – Paris.

The second season of the Overwatch League commences on February 14th, with teams now only playing 28 matches instead of the 40 that were played by each side during the inaugural season.

Esports Insider says: This is the most underwhelming unveiling yet: simply releasing a simplistic logo through a video on Twitter. Not only that, but this is yet another team that’s primarily represented by the colour blue – it all just seems a little unimaginative at this point.

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