Market research firm Cowen & Co. "reduced its rating for Activision Blizzard shares to market perform from outperform, citing the risk" its new esports Overwatch League "will do worse than expected," according to Tae Kim of CNBC. Cowen Managing Dir and Senior Research Analyst Doug Creutz said that this is the firm's "first downgrade of the video game maker in nine years." Creutz in a note to clients wrote, "We remain confident about the trajectory of Activision's core business, with Call of Duty likely to rebound this year and Black Ops 4 likely due for release next year. However, we have a significant bit of nervousness around the debut of Overwatch League." Activision's Overwatch esports league is "slated to launch on Dec. 6 with 12 teams." Creutz wrote, "As this is the first time a publisher has ever attempted to launch a major esport from scratch, we expect OWL 1.0 to be a learning experience, and thus believe that the probability of reality failing to meet investor expectations is relatively high" (CNBC.com, 10/9). At presstime, shares of Activision were trading at $61.33, up 0.25% from the close of business yesterday (THE DAILY).
