Call of Duty League 2023 debut viewership insights: return to Twitch gave the tournament a new life
The Call of Duty League is back on Twitch. The esports league of one of the biggest franchises in video games history has made its return to the platform, after Blizard's exclusive broadcasting contract with YouTube came to an end. Many fans wanted to see the league back, and they finally saw their wish fulfilled.
Fans celebrated the comeback of the Call of Duty League on Twitch by tuning into it, helping the event reach a great viewership, with 124K Average Viewers, and 192K Peak Viewers.
The event is already the 11th most popular Call of Duty tournament ever, and among only Call of Duty League tournaments, it ranks in fourth place in both the HW and PV metrics. When we compare the event to its predecessor, the Call of Duty League 2022 Stage 1, we can see a clear improvement in the viewership numbers.
Peak Viewership went up an astonishing 137%, with the game between Florida Mutineers and OpTic Texas, being the most popular match of the event so far. However, any game in the top 5, captured the interest of more simultaneous viewers than the Call of Duty League 2022 Stage 1 most popular match. Regarding Average Viewers, the growth was also gigantic, with the metric increasing by an impressive 213%. Despite being only the first week of the event, this year's edition already has more Hours Watched, with 2.8 million HW.
As mentioned above, the viewership of the Call of Duty League improved massively since moving to Twitch. In its first week, the league had over 550K Unique Authorized Viewers. So let's take a deep look at what games and streamers, the Call of Duty League viewers enjoyed watching, in the previous week before the league started. This way we will have a clear picture of what the Call of Duty League viewers like to watch when the league is not on.
Most of the viewers that tuned into the Call of Duty League enjoy watching the popular battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone, with 46.5% doing so. Surprisingly, they prefer it over the recently launched Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. The last entry in the Call of Duty franchise has 20% of the Unique Authorized Viewers, and is not even the second most popular category among the league fans.
That second place belongs to Just Chatting. It's one of the most popular categories on Twitch, and brings together viewers from multiple different games and genres. 36.4% of the league's viewers like to watch Just Chatting content when there is no Call of Duty League going on.
A lot of the viewers watch other FPS games such as Valorant, Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. With the game being a staple in the FPS genre, is normal for players of other games to take an interest in the league. After all, FPS games share many similarities, so it's not very hard for viewers to become intrigued by their esports scene.
If we take a look at the streamers that the league viewers watch, we can see that they are all from North America. Some of them have a past in the Call of Duty esports scene, or are popular content creators of Call of Duty: Warzone, the game which is enjoyed by the majority of the league viewers. Streamers such as Nadeshot played professionally for many years. Others like Nadia, Symfuhny, and Aydan, mostly play Call of Duty: Warzone, with Nadia being arguably the game's most popular female streamer.
Twitch stars KaiCenat, xQc, and Amouranth, are also on the list. These streamers have a huge following base, and Just Chatting is their main streaming category. It's mainly because of these three streamers, that Just Chatting is one of the most popular categories among viewers of the league. Sometimes they also play FPS games, mainly Overwatch 2.
As mentioned above, most fans of the league enjoy watching other FPS games. That's why streamers such as Tfue, and shroud, are two of the viewer's favorite content creators to watch. Both streamers play multiple FPS games at a high level, which captivates viewers interest.
Moving back into Twitch gave the Call of Duty League a new life. It was a breath of fresh air for the product, that in one week achieved some great results. The last edition of the CDL playoffs had 275K Peak Viewers. With the qualifiers for this season already achieving 192K PV, I think we can expect a record-breaking viewership at the end of this season.
When comparing this season with important tournaments from different FPS, we can see it’s outperforming some of them. It had more PV than VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers, which had 192K PV, and more AV than BLAST Premier Spring American Showdown 2022, which had 120K AV. Call of Duty League could not have asked for a better start to their return to Twitch. If things continue on this path, we can see the league achieving some viewership records pretty soon.
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