Each country has a National Competition Committee, consisting of a general manager, head coach, and community lead. Blizzard selected each team's general manager, while the head coach and community leads were selected through a two-step voting process, that took place from May 24 to May 30.[3][4]
Any player with a Blizzard account in good standing was welcome to apply for a head coaching position for their country; the country's top 150 players voted for who they would like to be their country's head coach. The top three candidates from the first round of voting moved on to a second round of voting, and the person with the most votes in the second round was selected as the country's head coach.[3]
The community leaders are responsible for "rallying their community and marketing their team to the masses."[4] Like the head coaches, the community lead for each country was chosen through a two-step voting process. A country's entire player base voted for the community lead. After the first round of voting, the top 10 from that round were candidates for the second round; the person with the most votes in the second round was selected as their country's community lead.[3]
They players representing each country were selected by their National Competition Committee. The Committees selected up to 12 players from June 1 to July 5 to represent their country and then had to cut it down to 7 players to be their final roster.[5]
From March 28 to April 28, 2018, Blizzard tracked the average skill rating of the top 150 players from the top 20 countries to determine the countries who qualified for the tournament. The four host countries, South Korea, Thailand, France, and the United States, automatically qualified.[2]
The top 24 national teams were grouped into four different round-robin style groups, with the matches played in Incheon, Los Angeles, Bangkok, and Paris. The top two teams in each group advanced to a single-elimination playoff bracket, with the matches played in Anaheim.[2][11]
To coincide with the event, Blizzard launched the "Overwatch World Cup Viewer," a standalone program that allows users to view World Cup matches in real time in Overwatch's spectator mode, roam around the map in a free camera, and take the perspectives of the players. Users were also able to view replays of each map played in the client.[13]
South Korea
China
Canada
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Finland
Russia
Japan
Chinese Taipei
Hong Kong
United States (H)
Brazil
Norway
Austria
Switzerland
Australia
Denmark
Sweden
Thailand (H)
Spain
France (H)
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Germany
Italy
Poland
