The new Overwatch League rules stipulate that participating teams are required to create specific geographically tied brands, according to the city slot bought by the owner. This means that we will be getting at least nine new team brands, related to the following cities:

City	Owner	Related Business
Boston	Robert Kraft	New England Patriots, New England Revolution
New York City	Jeff Wilpon	New York Mets
London	Jack Etienne	Cloud9
Los Angeles	Noah Whinston	Immortals
Los Angeles	Stan & Josh Kroenke	Los Angeles Rams, Arsenal FC
Miami-Orlando	Ben Spoont	Misfits
San Francisco	Andy Miller	Sacramento Kings, NRG eSports
Shanghai	NetEase
Seoul	Kevin Chou	Kabam, KSV eSports

Even the four esport-indigenous brands: Misfits, Immortals, Cloud9 and NRG will have to come up with new brand names for the Overwatch League. Geographically binding team names according to city of origin recalls the initiatives of the Championship Gaming Series, an ambitious, cross-game esports league taking place in 2007 and 2008. The CGS had 18 teams from 12 different countries, and although it didn't last long, perhaps the new Overwatch League team owners can get some ideas from their naming conventions:

 Carolina Core
 Chicago Chimera
 Dallas Venom
 Los Angeles Complexity
 New York 3D
 San Francisco Optx
 Mexico City Furia
 Rio Sinistro
 Berlin Allianz
 Birmingham Salvo
 London Mint
 Stockholm Magnetik
 Dubai Mirage
 Wuhan Dragon
 Singapore Sword
 Seoul Jinhwa
 Kuala Lumpur Taufan
 Sydney Underground

As with the Overwatch League, several of these brands came from owners of pre-existing organisations. Los Angeles Complexity and New York 3D are prime examples, only the former of which still exists, as owner Jason Lake opted to re-purchase the Complexity brand back from the CGS to keep his brand running after the CGS' demise. The CGS was a huge, albeit shortlived paradigm shift in the world of esports, as it attracted top tier talent from the games played, as well as high profile team owners, such as Team Dignitas' Michael O'Dell, and NiP CS legend Emil "HeatoN" Christensen.

We've also seen grassroots independent esport brands outside of organised leagues getting named after their cities of origin, with or without official affiliation with the city. These include the likes of  Roskilde Ravens,  London Conspiracy,  Oslo Lions,  Miami Flamingos,  Copenhagen Wolves amongst others. On the other hand, some organisations avoided localisation at all costs:  F.C. Copenhagen's CS:GO team opted for the name 'North', rather than anything specifically related to its home city.

Whether geo-located branding works in esports remains an entirely unproven venture. Esports fans have been identifying with international, fan-favourite brands such as Fnatic, SK Gaming or Liquid for over a decade; Asking esports fans in Los Angeles to support six South Koreans just because their team name contains 'LA' seems to be somewhat of a tall order.