Steven R. April 27, 2019
The Dallas Fuel’s Bud Light Homestand Weekend got off to a very bad start.
The first ever Overwatch League home game was delayed for an extended length of time due to a power outage. The surge left the crowded Allen Event Center in pitch black darkness for nearly an hour, waiting for the showdown between the Paris Eternal and London Spitfire.
The Homestand Weekend is a major occasion for the Overwatch League. While the vast majority of Overwatch League games have taken place at the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, California to this point, the league’s 20 teams have been locking down venues closer to home to serve as home arenas.
The Fuel were tasked with starting this new era with the Homestand Weekend, hosting eight games at the Allen Event Center in Allen, Texas. Obviously, this is not the ideal way to kick things off.
The Fuel hold no responsibility for the outage. According to Team Envy and Dallas Fuel CEO Mike Rufail, the power outage took down an entire section of the city with it.
“Being told an electric substation went down in Allen, TX and took down power in a whole grid of the city,” Rufail said on Twitter. “Unlucky! Hang in there!”
The outage lasted for an hour and while things eventually got back on track, it still sucked a great deal of enthusiasm out of the crowd. Despite the hiccup, the Homestand Weekend is set to continue on in Texas, with the rest of today’s series continuing on as normal and another four-game broadcast taking place on Sunday.