NEW THING: Matcherino now has the Community Prize Pool donation page up, check it out here to contribute!

Greetings, fellow Heroes fans!

Today is a special day for us over here at HeroesHearth. We’ve officially been a happy part of the Wisdom family for exactly one year and have had an amazing run so far contributing to a bigger community and vision. We’ve been working on this since January and we’re thrilled to finally unveil our plans for Heroes Esports for this Winter.

Since 2017, HeroesHearth has been creating community-focused Heroes of the Storm content and we continue to love the game, the community, and the fun things we get to make on a daily basis. After a year of Fight Nights, two five-week seasons of the Celebrity Clash League, a pile of sweaty IHL in-house games, and over 2,000 hours of Heroes streams, we’re proud to announce the next phase of our Heroes programming: the Heroes Community Clash League (CCL).

The intent of the league is to be a solid, part-time opportunity in which each player is uniformly compensated for their time and Orgs have a sustainable and stable ecosystem they can rely on. This is just our first step and we hope many seasons will follow. We will continue to work, listen, and evolve while doing our best to meet the community’s goals and expectations.

*NEW: We posted up an FAQ that we will continue to update over time HERE.

The New CCL:

The CCL (Community Clash League) is a 12-week long league brought to you by HeroesHearth featuring the best players in North American Heroes of the Storm. Starting today, Players who have achieved the rank of Masters and above in Storm League in 2020 will be able to enter the CCL Free Agent pool. Furthermore, Orgs of any size will now be able to apply to occupy a slot in the league.

There are 48 Players slots available and 8 Org slots available, so the competition will be tough, but we’re excited to meet the best and brightest from the Heroes community on both fronts.

TL;DR for Details, Dates, and Deadlines:

• Player applications will close September 15. If you haven’t hit Masters yet, there’s still time!

• Org applications will close September 1. If you’re not an Org yet, there’s still time!

• Orgs will invite 15 Prospects to play in a series of Exhibition Matches (September 21 through October 11) before the draft. During this time, Orgs will have the opportunity to interview prospects, observe their play, and earmark target draft picks. 

• Orgs will then participate in a Live Draft conducted on broadcast (October 17). Each Org will select six rounds of players (five starting players and one substitute player) to compete as their CCL team.

• CCL Pre-Season begins with an Icebreaker Tournament (October 24) with all 8 teams competing in a two-day tournament.

• CCL’s Regular Season and Playoffs will run from November 7, 2020 - January 17, 2021.

• Each team will play one best-of-five match per week during the regular season.

• CCL will be played on Saturdays and Sundays beginning at 4pm ET/1pm PT.

• CCL will be broadcast live (on delay) on twitch.tv/heroeshearth.

• Players will be encouraged (but not required) to stream their perspective during games.

• Community Streamers will be welcome and invited to host co-streams and watch parties.

• Casters for the regular season starting Oct. 17 are Grubby and DoA. Casters for the exhibition season starting Sept. 26 are Bahamut and Khroen.
  
  Please Note: These are very broad TL;DR descriptions of these key points. There is a lot more going with this league than these quick points. In turn, I urge you to dig into the handbooks at the bottom of this blog for complete breakdowns of all the nitty-gritty details, including a full-schedule, rule set, transaction details, and compensation outlines. So be sure to click all the things at the end of this blog.

League Schedule:

Compensation:

Orgs will receive $3,600 USD per season to be distributed evenly to the starting players on their team. Starting players will receive $600 as a minimum seasonal stipend for participation in CCL, which equates to approximately $50 per series played for each player. In addition to this base stipend, Orgs and Players will earn prize money they win based on their seasonal performance.

Prize Pool:

Just like our Fight Nights and previous CCL competitions, the CCL Prize pool will consist of 60% of any contributions made to our Matcherino page throughout the entire 12-week season. We’ve always been amazed by the incredible support the community has provided over the past two years of HHE content and we wanted to make it abundantly clear that the exact same support will continue to be contributed directly to Orgs and their Players. 
 

Why Orgs Should Apply:

If you’re an Org (big or small, new or experienced), there are a few reasons to get involved. The most obvious reason is that Heroes rules; however, we have baked in some monetary and social benefits to help get things started.

• Each of the eight Orgs will be provided with a $3,600 Season stipend to act as the minimum foundation of player pay. 

• At the end of the season, each Org will receive a 3% royalty based on all secondary sponsor revenue the league received during the season.

• Orgs will be allotted one presenting sponsor slot on-screen during their team’s series each week and during the playoffs.

• Each Org will be entitled to one chat command to push both the Org itself, as well as their presenting sponsor.

• Org will be entitled to one logo-based emote for chat and fan use.

• Orgs may retain, at most, 40% of the prize pool distribution that they receive, and the Players receive a minimum of 60% which must be split evenly.
   

Please Note: For detailed explanations of what this all means, check out the Org handbook at the bottom of the blog.

CCL, Blizzard & HGC

CCL is not trying to replicate HGC. As a former owner of an HGC team, and with great ex-Pro/Caster minds on staff like Dreadnaught, Gillyweed, McIntyre and Casanova, I can confidently speak for all of us that we loved and still miss the HGC. But, because of those backgrounds, we also fully understand the massive scope and resources that were required to build a league of that magnitude. We don’t have those resources, currently.

Furthermore, although Blizzard has been very cool in working with us to make sure we’re putting together something they are excited about, Blizzard is not directly supporting, paying for, or responsible for the CCL.

A Work In Progress

This league is designed to be a sustainable long-term effort. In turn, just to start, the first season will be built on a part-time weekend format, where each team competes in a best-of-five once-a week every Saturday and Sunday starting at 4pm ET/1pm PT.

Putting together a league of this size is no small task. The above handbooks for Players and Orgs represent our first Season pass of where we’d like to start, but this current form is by no means written in stone. Although we are confident we have what it takes to deliver on the work we’ve put in over the last two years of Fight Nights and Celebrity Clash Leagues, we have prepared for and hope to evolve this league over time. We have several future seasons of iterations already in the works and we will be listening to the community the entire way.

We’re open to your feedback and suggestions and we’ll be collecting questions and releasing an FAQ in the coming weeks. We’re also going to be out there in the community answering your questions as well. Here’s what we’ve got going on during the week of August 17th:

You will also see a number of Heroes streamers talking about the CCL on their channels with information provided by us:

• AliciaWins

• Aullora

• Grubby

• Kiyeberries

• Kyle Fergusson

• Michael Udall

• Mochrie

• Tatskichu

• Vipey
   

There will be a Reddit AMA scheduled on the Heroes of the Storm subreddit for Tomorrow (Wednesday).

Ian Anderson (Workhorse) and Jules Scott (JulesRPG) of the CCL Management Team will be appearing on Michael Udall’s stream on Thursday, August 20th at 6:00pm Pacific/9:00pm Eastern.

In the meantime, you can ask us any questions in our Discord: http://discord.gg/heroeshearth or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HeroesHearthCCL.

Happy applying!