A rumor surfaced last month claiming that a new Overwatch League team would be announced for the Canadian city of Toronto. I predicted at the time that, if the report was accurate, it would likely be the last new team to come to North America for the second season, as Blizzard has previously said that it wanted to add two new teams to the Americas in this round of expansion, along with two from Europe and two from the Middle East.

A pair of new rumors reported by ESPN look to blow that theory out of the water, however, as "league sources" told the site today that new teams are also headed to Chengdu, China, and Vancouver, Canada. The rumor comes a day after a report that expansion teams will also be coming to Washington DC and Hangzhou, China.

The Washington team will be owned by a group headed by Mark Ein, a real estate and tech investor who owns the Washington Kapitals of World Team Tennis, while Hangzhou will be held by Chinese video sharing service Bilibili. Huya, a streaming platform partially owned by Tencent Holdings, will own the Chengdu team, and the Vancouver squad will be owned by Canucks Sports and Entertainment, which also owns the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.

Costs for the new franchises aren't known, but are expected to be much higher than the reported $20 million cost of the original Overwatch League teams. The Toronto team was rumored to have cost $35 million, although that—along with the actual existence of the franchise—has not been confirmed. I've reached out to the Overwatch League for comment, and will update if I receive a reply.