Team Poland withdraws from Overwatch World Cup due to lack of funding

Team Poland won’t be attending the 2019 Overwatch World Cup due to lack of funding, the team shared on Twitter.

After failing to secure sponsors, Poland is the latest country to withdraw from the event. After sponsorships fell through, the team was left unable to fly to the United States to attend BlizzCon 2019, where the event is being held. Team Poland was set to compete in the preliminaries in hopes of earning a spot in the main event.

The team thanked their supporters and stated that they will do everything in their power to make sure they can compete at the 2020 Overwatch World Cup.

“Sadly, Overwatch is not very big in Poland and our currency being very weak caused us to not be able to secure funds to send the players to the World Cup,” Team Poland general manager Kasia “Xandie” Janoszka stated on Reddit. “We worked together with the Polish Esports Association to find some support for the team but the sponsor that was supposed to fund our trip sadly ended up backing out in the past few days.”

Many Overwatch World Cup teams struggling to attend the event

Xandie stated the team fell $12,000 short of the funds needed to attend the event. The team tried making money by launching a merch line and starting a fundraiser, though this failed to make it off the ground due to complications with Polish websites.

Fans took the opportunity to highlight how little Blizzard Entertainment has been doing to help teams compete at the event. Poland joins a long list of national teams that have withdrawn from the OWWC, with most citing a lack of funding. The lineup also includes Romania, Egypt, Israel, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Greece, Peru, and Malaysia.

This will result in a shortened preliminary schedule for the OWWC. The OWWC main event will begin on November 1.