Call of Duty League 2025 received its highest season-opening viewership
The Call of Duty League (CDL) recently started its sixth season, beginning with the Stage 1 Major Qualifiers in December last year. The CDL has changed significantly for 2025, including the brand-new Minors, the first of which concluded early in the morning of January 13. The Stage 1 Minor was a crucial boost to the early season viewership, offering fans extra action to tune into.
For 2025, the CDL is hosting its regular four Majors and respective Qualifiers before the ultimate CDL Championship, but additionally, there are two supplementary Minors for Stage 1 and 2. The Minors’ format is similar to that of the Major events, except the bracket is single-elimination instead of double, and winners of a Minor receive only 30 CDL Points, compared to the 100 received for claiming a Major title. While these events are not as significant as Majors, they still accumulate strong viewership to supplement that of the Major Qualifiers.
On top of these new Minor events, the CDL also announced the removal of franchise entry fees. Teams which had paid entry fees received refunds, and CDL teams now receive an increased share of the in-game sales. These actions are aimed at ensuring a stable future for teams in the franchised league, as well as lowering the barrier of entry to the circuit. This year, Team Falcons entered a team to the CDL, Gentle Mates entered by acquiring existing franchise Los Angeles Guerrillas, and Cloud9 New York began competing after the organization’s merger with New York Subliners owner.
With the new teams joining the competition, the Stage 1 Minor received 169,366 Peak Viewers, enough to become the 16th-most-popular CDL event. While this viewership is not particularly strong for the CDL, in combination with the ongoing expanded Major Qualifiers, this is a significant boost to the circuit’s overall numbers.
The most popular match of the tournament was OpTic Texas’ semifinals match against CAR Royal Ravens (CRR), which saw the former American squad eliminated from the tournament. OpTic’s brand is massively popular, and they contributed three matches to our overall top five. The organization’s popularity was also boosted by their content creators hosting watch parties for their esports teams’ matches.
OpTic’s content creator Seth "Scump" Abner is a professional player who recently returned to become a full-time streamer. Before this, Scump was already a well-established streamer and one of Call of Duty’s most popular esports casters. For his stream of OpTic’s final game, he received 83,442 Peak Viewers, becoming the event’s top streamer; the next game, the grand final between CRR and Atlanta FaZe, saw Scump receive fewer than 40,000 peak concurrent viewers. OpTic’s support in the CDL is huge, and the excitement for the finals was unable to top their loyal following’s viewership.
Gentle Mates’ Gotaga was also a boost to the Los Angeles Guerrillas M8’s viewership. Although the team was eliminated from the event in their first match against Minnesota RØKKR, owned by G2 Esports, their game was one of the most popular of the entire event. The French co-streamer was the third-most-popular broadcaster for the tournament, behind only Scump and the official CDL YouTube stream.
Certain teams were more popular than others, but cumulatively, the tournament earned high overall viewership. The average concurrent viewership for the tournament was similar to older championship events and ahead of most of the previous Major Qualifiers.
Following the CDL having removed its entry fees last year, the league is undergoing a spike in viewership with the newcomers to the stage. The first Major of the year will be held in Madrid, Spain, a prime opportunity to pique interest among European fans again. The timing of this coincides nicely with the entry of European organizations like G2 Esports, Gentle Mates, and even Team Heretics, who entered a partnership with an existing franchise to field the new Miami Heretics. Unfortunately, there was little Spanish-language viewership for the recent Minor, which Miami Heretics were quickly eliminated from.
The CDL’s new accessible system is already showing promise in its viewership results. Together, the ongoing Stage 1 Major and its respective finished Minor reached a higher total watch time similar to the CDL’s most-watched events. This is the most viewership the CDL has received for its opening events, and it shows promise for how the later-season events could perform.
Esports Charts will continue to track viewership data for the ongoing Call of Duty League 2025: Stage 1 Major Qualifiers, which will conclude in about two weeks' time. The tournament has already reached over 208,000 Peak Viewers, and viewership will likely climb even higher for some of the final games.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
