Call of Duty League 2023 Playoffs continues trend of growing first-day viewership numbers

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The Call of Duty League 2023: Playoffs got underway at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas yesterday. The top eight teams that qualified from the Regular Season are battling it out for the label of the champion, benefitting the event by helping it continue its growing trend of improving first-day viewership numbers since 2020.

The first day of action saw four matches take place in the Winners Round 1: Atlanta FaZe 3-1 Seattle Surge; Toronto Ultra 3-2 Los Angeles Thieves; OpTic Texas 3-1 Boston Breach; New York Subliners 3-2 Minnesota RØKKR. The competition carries a prize pool of $2.3M, with the winner taking home $1M and the runner-up pocketing $660K.

  Viewership comparisons between the last four CDL Post-Season Championships   

Day 1 hit 229K Peak Viewers during OpTic Texas’ — the most popular Call of Duty side worldwide — win over Boston Breach. Despite much hype and expectations on the organization across the Regular Season, it failed to clinch any of the five majors, so there will be hopes that it can win the Post Season championship and end the 2023 season on a high.

The Call of Duty League 2023: Playoffs also did 1.2M Hours Watched and 167K Average Viewers over eight hours of airtime, by far the highest stats over the last four editions of this showpiece Post Season tournament. In fact, its watch hours count almost overtook the combined tally of the three previous iterations combined, thanks in no small part to the streaming of the live action on Twitch and YouTube.

In fact, since the Call of Duty League 2020 Finals, these three metrics have been on the ascendency with each passing end-of-season event. What has also helped is that other favored sides like Atlanta FaZe, New York Subliners, and Toronto Ultra have been consistent enough to keep fans invested and hungry to see more success from their favorite teams.

When looking at the three competitions from 2020 to 2022, the growth rate was pretty steady, with the 2021 version doing 101%, 51%, and 59% better than its predecessor in terms of HW, PV, and AV, respectively. The growth to 2022 was 113%, 27%, and 21%, meaning the airtime went up but the rate of growth slowed down a bit when it came to peak and average viewerships.

However, the numbers picked up once again this year, doing 33%, 51%, and 74% better than last year, with the airtime reduction being one reason for the slower watch hours growth. Clearly, there have been more people watching each stream at one point in time and across the streams than in 2022, leading to some highly-lucrative numbers that Activision will take hearty from heading into the new season.

Also contributing to the viewership success of this year’s Call of Duty competition have been the rewards made available by the organizers for audiences on Twitch, YouTube, and the official website. The list of prizes includes XP Tokens, Calling Cards, Stickers, Emblems, and weapon skins, helping draw watchers in and keeping them on the stream for longer.

The Playoffs will run till June 18, with Atlanta FaZe facing Toronto Ultra and OpTic Texas taking on New York Subliners in the Winners Round 2 on June 17. Down in the Elimination Round 1 (on June 16), Seattle Surge will face Los Angeles, and Boston Breach will battle Minnesota RØKKR.

Fans can catch the action live on Call of Duty’s official Twitch and YouTube channels, while the official Call of Duty League handle on YouTube will also be broadcasting the games as they happen. With community casting also available, fans can catch their favorite teams playing on their favorite streamers’ accounts, including the likes of scump, zoomaa, and methodz.