ODL 2025 + 2026 Plans and updates!

ODL 2025

Unfortunately, we will not be running a full OCE Draft League this year.

We had completed a lot of the prep work earlier this year on a few assumptions that led us down a path that we couldn't turn back from.

Schedule

We had incorrectly assumed the length of the off-season for RLCS based on the last couple of years. We had already decided on a schedule that fit in around worlds ending, and weekends off for PAX Australia, whilst not to delve too late into the year, as thats just been a bad time previously.

Once we learned of the RLCS 2026 schedule, we found there was just no way to realistically fit a full season in. A full season takes up 2+ months of time between announcement -> grand final day, and can quickly lose momentum with lots of breaks or people being unavailable. This also factors in with that most key staff of ODL also have RLCS responsibilities, which can make it hard to balance time between the 2 projects.

Funding

From it's humble beginnings back in 2020 - ODL has been largely self and community funded. Over the years, we've had a smattering of small sponsorships, different community members generous donations, and lots of volunteer work. Prize pools up until ODL SIX were largely funded out of owners pockets.

Whilst this has been great, as the product matures we really want to bring a better experience to everyone who plays. We have reworked our formats to include more players, so as many people as possible get their chance to play, and we want to continue to do so.

The introduction of these changes increases workload. When you think of ODL as a tournament, it is not one big tournament. It is currently actually 3 big simultaneous tournaments (DIV1, DIV2, DIV3) - each with their own challenges of player management, balancing, scheduling, and drama.

All this is to say, that the owners such as myself simply run out of time to cover the short-falls in volunteer work, alongside busy lives such as full-time work, family etc. We got extremely lucky with ODL SIX, with the first ever Epic funding contribution. This funding allowed us to put on the biggest ODL yet - massive prize pool, two manned broadcasts, and plenty of backend workers who ACTUALLY GOT PAID for their time! So many of our volunteers over the years finally got a chance to be paid for their contributions to the community, and as an owner, nothing made me happier! I spent all of Epic's money, and then some, to make sure as much was covered as possible, and I think everyone can agree it was a great season. I came into 2025 thinking 'hey, perhaps we get that funding again', but again, I honestly think the RLCS 2026 schedule dampened any plans for Community Tournament funding from Epic. This is not to lay blame at them - we didn't actually end up applying for any funding due to the schedule changes anyway, but it wouldn't make sense for them to pump funding into tournaments that would have to almost directly clash with RLCS. Whilst we anticipated this as an outcome early on anyway - we did start the process of working with experienced people to help find sponsors or brand deals - we did not get far in the process, but I don hold my skepticism on how fruitful it would be, considering we are our own little niche style tournament in a minor-region. Any sponsorships are great, but I don't believe we'll end up covering all costs and prizepool in this way. Self-funding is still definitely an option, but realistically, inflation in the cost of living has left many of us with less and less disposable income. On a personal level, committing multiple thousands of dollars to a community tournament I love, whilst very rewarding personally, has potential knock-on effects to my household and family, that make it a risky decision to do.

Moving forward, we will always be assuming zero contribution from Epic funding, and putting in the work to secure funding through other avenues to ensure an ODL event can go ahead.

This brings us to....

ODL 2026

Moving into the new-year, we definitely want to take our prep work from 2025 and focus on finding a space for ODL 2026. Over the end of 2025, we may release more updates or questions on how we can achieve this with you, our community. We will be pushing more into trying to secure sponsorship deals, but we may need your feedback and/or commitments on:

• Volunteer work - I know there's plenty of you out there that would love to help out, and we may need to rely on this again in future. It sucks we can't pay everyone without massive funding, and all I can really offer is our thanks and gratitude.
• Community funding - We can always set up a very early prize pool goal from community funding. If we have something open for many months, players could potentially donate small amounts when they can. There will be no pressure to contribute, and we can guarantee that any money raised in this fashion will always be reserved for prizepool distribution, along with potential commitments that any other funding sources should at least match the community contributions to the prizepool, or an even split of some sort to the volunteers, before expanding into other aspects of the tournament.
• Organisations - previously we have charged organisations for sponsoring teams in ODL. There is a fine line between earning some money to support the tournament, and actually attracting orgs in willing to pay that money, so we could potentially work on this a lot earlier to bring in orgs who may be willing to contribute more than normal to help keep ODL going

MINI LEAGUE?

Ah yes, we ran one of these one time didn't we? I think its about time it came back. Well, at least that is the intention. I am currently working on improvements to the odl.gg website to help reduce workload on running a mini league (last mini league was run via spreadsheets and start.gg - it was quite tough on myself and Slendee to manage that tournament). With enough of this automated, we could potentially run many mini league's throughout a year. These could slot in between majors/splits/whatever they might be called in future, and are a great way to keep the community engaged and hyped for a full season later in the year.

We have similar challenges with funding, but the expectation of Mini Leagues would generally be quite lower financial investment, lower broadcast penetration etc. Let's see how we go here.

WHERE ARE MY DAMN JERSEYS?

OK - this is my bad. It has been my bad for TWO YEARS now. I'm sorry.

Skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear my sob story - Over the last 2 years, personally (as in me, Guru, Joe Goldman) have had quite a change in my health, stress and job responsibilities. Two years ago, I was spiralling into a bad place with my health, both mentally and physically, due to demands of a stressful work/life balance. Through a long process over the last 12 months or so in particular, I've improved my personal circumstances a lot. I am on my 3rd job this year (which is odd for me, as before this year I had worked for 2 companies for the last near 15 years), but have settled into something (funnily enough with an old-old employer) that has me looking forward to the future professionally, whilst also doing whats needed to improve my physical health which I'm already feeling the benefits of, but still have a long road to go.

^ Why was any of that relevant? Well thats my excuse for just burying my head in the sand and not dealing with the 'cleanup' work of my commitments over those 2 years. I blew away the old odl.gg website in favour for the new one to help with ODL SIX, and with it lost the setup i had for ordering the jerseys and other merch for the champions and just never got to doing it again (manually or with website upgrades) - so I've neglected the S5 and S6 champions on this a lot. BUT GUESS WHAT? I have mostly written the code to bring this back and will be releasing it in about a week or so - and will be able to push through the orders for the champions jerseys whilst also doing a bulk order for those who may want an elite jersey or a general jersey at a bulk run discount. All of this of course will be possible with our awesome friends at True Apparel - Ace and Ant are some of my favourite guys in the scene and I'm so glad for their support!

FORGIVENESS?

No, I don't really deserve it, not at least until I get you the jersey's in hand. This is all purely my own fault, and I will fix it for everyone. I am working on a little bonus as well (nothing huge, but hopefully a nice thank you for being patient).

CONCLUSION

ODL is and always will be my personal crown jewel of my Esports journey. I will do everything I can to keep it going whilst there is still community interest in it. PLEASE, feel free to reach out with any suggestions, ideas or general interest you may like to see incorporated, either into the events themselves or ideas for promoting or running the ODL on a manpower or financial sense. The more options we have as an org, the higher likelihood we have of being able to put together more events.

ODL is nothing without you - the community, and for that, we love you all.