Call of Duty League 2022 Kickoff Classic— results of the pre-season tournament
After almost three months since the release of Vanguard, the first official Call of Duty tournament has kicked off as part of a new Call of Duty League season. At the Kickoff Classic 2022, held on January 21-24 at Esports Stadium Arlington in Texas, 12 teams competed for $30K with the winner getting all the money. In a new Esports Charts article we will tell you what the pre-season event was memorable for and how its viewership statistics have changed compared with the previous year.
Before the start of the third season, a brand new team Boston Breach entered the league. The team members are all former players from Toronto Ultra, Los Angeles Guerrillas Academy and Los Angeles Thieves. Also the format of the Kickoff Classic has changed: it used to be a regular series of showmatches, but in 2022 it changed to a full-fledged single-elimination playoff bracket.
Pred and Sib, rookies on the Seattle Surge team, drew a lot of attention at the pre-season tournament. After their first performance in the CDL 2022, both the organization and the players themselves would clearly increase their fan base. The duo racked up incredible statistics and proved themselves to be one of the best in the CDL at the moment.
Seattle Surge defeated Atlanta FaZe in the quarterfinals, which drew much interest from fans of the discipline (63.16K Peak Viewers). SS made it to the grand final, but lost to Toronto Ultra, yet became the most-watched team of the tournament with 297.7K Hours Watched (31% of the event's total).
OpTic Texas, which was formed after the merger between Team Envy and OpTic Gaming, unsurprisingly became the leader in terms of Average Viewers — it attracted 68.54K AV. Also OpTic’s match against Los Angeles Thieves was the most popular in the event, attracting 79.75K Peak Viewers. It is noteworthy that the match between these two teams was the most popular at Call of Duty League 2021 Kickoff Classic as well.
Compared with the same tournament of 2021, Kickoff Classic 2022 increased by 49% in Hours Watched, but this was due to nearly doubling the total broadcast time of the tournament. At the same time, the Peak and Average Viewers numbers dropped by 26% and 20%, respectively. Decrease in viewership is mainly due to the early elimination of teams with a huge fanbase, as OpTic Texas and Atlanta FaZe only took 5th-8th places.
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The start of the CDL 2022 was overshadowed by the fact that several participants were tested positive for COVID-19 after the event. Safety precautions of the league are now questioned by the community, and it's unclear how it all will affect the official start of the Call of Duty League 2022, which is scheduled for February 4-6.
In 2022, the CDL will compete with the Halo Championship Series in terms of audience attention. We should remind you that the first major LAN tournament HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021, held from December 17 to 19, attracted more viewers than the previous year's Call of Duty League Finals. Read more about it in our article.
