Canucks owner names its new E-sports team the Vancouver Titans

New E-Sports team coming to Vancouver The owners of the Vancouver Canucks debuted the name and logo for their new Overwatch League team Saturday.

A new sports team is coming to Vancouver, but it won't be hitting a field or skating on ice.

The team will be playing on a big screen, and thousands of local fans are expected to pay to watch them play.

The Vancouver Titans are the newest franchise to join the Overwatch League.

The team’s name and branding was announced during the second intermission of the Canucks game at Rogers Arena Saturday.

“We wanted to create a name that represented strength,” said Stephen Maida, CEO of Luminosity gaming. "The Aquilini group approached me early this year and said, ‘We're looking at getting into the E-sports,’ and through our conversations we kept bringing up over and over again the Overwatch league."

The team shares colours with another Aquilini property – the blue and green of the Vancouver Canucks – and its logo is a Sasquatch; fitting to the Pacific Northwest

The Overwatch league is just like any other sports league in North America, with each city having its own team, its own logo, and its own fans.

The wildly popular game pits teams of six against each other in competition for big money prizes, and it's filling up arenas with scores of fans.

"On a global basis we've got almost a billion people that would declare themselves enthusiasts of e-sports,” said Chris Overholt, CEO of Overactive Media.

Overholt heads Toronto’s expansion team in the Overwatch League.

In an interview with BNN Bloomberg in November, Overholt explained that billions in sponsorship and advertising dollars are spent on E-sports events.

Team staff expects thousands of people excitedly walking through the gates at Rogers Arena, and said the experience will be similar to a hockey game.

"You see the excitement when people come close to scoring a goal or score a goal, kind of that same feeling will be replicated at these Overwatch league games. When teams score a point everybody cheers," said Titans team coordinator Harsha Bandi.

"I think there's a lot of people that are hyped for this in Vancouver,” said a Elom Paradis, a local Overwatch fan at Rogers Arena Saturday. “There's a huge audience, maybe more hidden online than in person, but these sorts of events are going to bring those people out.

The first Overwatch League event at Rogers Arena is expected to take place in 2020.