Why Call of Duty’s Esports Scene Continues to Record Impressive Viewership Figures
Credit: @codleague on Instagram
Only a few video game franchises have been able to achieve long-term success, and Call of Duty is one of them. It’s led the first-person shooter genre since the release of its first installment all the way back in 2003. Today, fans can play over 20 Call of Duty games—and IGN adds that this figure only counts main entries with single player campaigns.
With so much material to work with, it’s no wonder that a number of gamers have also opted to professionally play Call of Duty. The franchise’s pull in esports circles became so strong that Activision itself decided to establish a dedicated Call of Duty League (CDL) in 2020. Despite the fact that Call of Duty is more than 20 years old, it clearly continues to draw interest, and the CDL consistently records impressive viewership figures. 2024 broke all previous records for the league, hitting nearly 31 million hours watched during its regular season. The CDL is off to a great start this year as well, with more than four million hours watched for January’s Stage 1 Major alone.
This kind of viewership means that Call of Duty continues to cement its relevance in the world of esports—even if that world is dominated by more recently released games like Valorant (2020) and Mobile Legends (2016). That success can be attributed to the fact that Activision doesn’t rest on its laurels. With a few key strategies, it’s fueled the popularity of Call of Duty in competitive settings, resulting in the strong viewership the CDL continues to pull in today.
Why the CDL continues drawing impressive viewership
Providing financial assistance to teams
In a nutshell, the CDL continues to draw viewer interest because Activision sets all the right conditions for creating matches that are truly exciting to watch. That starts with how it treats the teams that compete in the league. Last year, the CDL began offering better financial terms for its teams, including permanently removing the need for entry fees and providing more opportunities to earn revenue via in-game merchandise. That’s made it more appealing for franchise owners to set up city-based teams and join the league, resulting in more exciting matchups—and more viewers tuning in to watch the action. Because CDL tournaments are now more thrilling to watch, they’ve drawn in both casual fans and those looking to more accurately speculate on match outcomes.
Leveraging the popularity of esports betting
In esports betting—a market worth more than $2 billion—Abios reports that Call of Duty is among the most popular titles to bet on, alongside the likes of Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2. That demand has made it easier than ever to bet on Call of Duty, something made especially apparent on the crypto platform Thunderpick. Available on both PC and mobile web browsers, it caters to that rising demand by facilitating everything from live to futures bets on CDL matches using both fiat and cryptocurrencies. Activision has leveraged the growing popularity of Call of Duty sports betting on these platforms through its partnership with Google Cloud. Signed in 2021, the collaboration gave Call of Duty’s esports fans a new feature: data analytics. The resulting project, ActivStat, provides real-time competitive statistics on CDL’s full roster of teams—and makes them available not just to commentators, but to viewers themselves. That gives the latter the information they need to place more informed bets, makes speculating on matches more appealing, and ultimately drives viewership figures.
Incentivizing the viewing experience for fans
On top of everything else Activision has made the CDL accessible, too—meaning it’s easier than ever for Call of Duty fans to tune in to CDL matches, watch truly competitive tournaments fueled by skilled teams, speculate on event outcomes, and even win rewards. All that is made possible thanks to Activision’s collaboration with YouTube, which allows fans to live stream Call of Duty exclusively on the latter’s platform. The streaming partnership further helps Activision incentivize long-term viewership. For CDL’s Stage 1 Major last January, for example, the developer handed out double the amount of XP tokens the more hours fans watched. All the latter needed to do was link their Activision and YouTube accounts and start watching to rack up tokens. These could then be used to buy rewards that simplify the process of making level grinds for new weapons and reaching max Prestige in both Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6. If that wasn’t enough, Activision will be making similar rewards available during all of the CDL’s tournaments in 2025, something that can further drive the league’s current viewership figures to new heights.
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Credit: @codleague on Instagram
Where Call of Duty can improve
Of course, Call of Duty could still be doing better in terms of viewership numbers and hours watched—especially compared to titles like League of Legends, which at 6.9 million peak viewers was the most-watched esports game of 2024. To address that, Activision may need to recognize the fact that gamers now consider it alt to like Call of Duty: because the franchise has gotten so big, it’s hard to release installments that please everyone. That said, the developer may want to go beyond simply altering CDL’s game modes, such as when it switched the league from 5v5 to 4v4 in 2021.
One thing they may want to focus on is team diversity. In an opinion piece for Esports Insider, newswriter Jonno Nicholson noted that the CDL’s current roster is mostly made up of North American teams—despite the fact that Call of Duty boasts significantly large fanbases in Europe and Latin America—and that may be limiting the broader appeal of the CDL outside the continent. If Activision can offer its current teams better financial terms, it may also have the resources needed to boost viewership figures by easing barriers to entry for non-North American teams into the league.
Activision’s exclusive streaming partnership with YouTube may also be harming the CDL’s potential for attracting more viewers. In late 2022, the developer was streaming matches on both Twitch and YouTube. That led to top creators on the former—including retired Call of Duty pro Seth “Scump” Abner—hosting watch parties that drew in large numbers of viewers. The CDL lost that exposure when Activision decided to solely rely on YouTube in 2023. When taking Twitch on as a streaming partner, the developer can put Call of Duty and the CDL in a better position to attract more interest and viewers this 2025 season.
