Call of Duty League Championship 2022 results — final stats of Blizzard's main esports league

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The final stage of CDL 2022, the premier Call of Duty esports series, ended on July 7 in Los Angeles. The top teams in North America competed for a share of $2.5 million prize pool with matches being played on the stage of Galen Center. In the decisive match, Los Angeles Thieves defeated Atlanta FaZe on a home soil with the score of 5-2 and earned $1.2 million.

The Call of Duty League Championship 2022 playoffs featured eight best teams of CDL rankings, all of which were placed in the double-elimination bracket. Los Angeles Thieves defeated Boston Breach, OpTic Texas and Atlanta FaZe on the road to the finals. The latter team made it to the Grand final through the lower bracket, but failed to take revenge on LA Thieves in the grand final. It should be noted that this is the first major title for Los Angeles Thieves since they have played in the league, while FaZe missed the chance to become a two-time league champion after its triumph at Call of Duty League Championship 2021.

As for the audience outreach, the Call of Duty League Championship 2022 playoffs accumulated 3.2 million Hours Watched and drew 104K Average Viewers. The most popular game was the Grand final of the league — it reached 275K Peak Viewers. The most watched team of the tournament is Atlanta FaZe with the result of 1.3 million Hours Watched.

Call of Duty League Championship 2022 broadcasts were only on YouTube and almost only in English. There were also small broadcasts for a few hundred viewers in Portuguese and Japanese. 

The Peak Viewers number of CoD League YouTube channel increased by 42% compared to last year's final, while the Average Viewers number increased by 17%. It should be noted that the Grand final between Los Angeles Thieves and Atlanta FaZe was also broadcast on the channel of TimTheTatman — the American streamer was casting the final match of the event and attracted more than 31K Peak Viewers.

Call of Duty League Championship playoffs had a better audience reach than any of the four majors in 2022

Compared with past season finals, Call of Duty League Championship 2022 ranked in the Top 3 by Peak Viewers, behind Call of Duty League 2020 Finals (331.5K PV) and Call of Duty World League Championship 2018 (324K PV). Interestingly, the 2022 Championship is second only to the 2018 tournament by Average Viewers (120K AV).

Call of Duty's Main Tournaments Viewership in 2018-2022

For now we can see that Call of Duty League is far from the 2018 numbers, when the franchise was at its peak and was streamed on Twitch, which is traditionally the more popular platform for esports in North America. Since moving to YouTube, CDL's audience coverage has dropped, but it's slowly coming back. 

Activision Blizzard executives are also working to increase the league's status and popularity. The company has officially announced the Call of Duty Next event during the last Grand final. The developers promised to show Modern Warface 2 and Warzone 2 multiplayer in September, as well as present the mobile version of Warzone and live gameplay. 

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Currently, Call of Duty League is the only esports franchise of Blizzard, which shows growth in terms of audience. Overwatch League is not doing so well, as the number of viewers is slowly dropping there. Overwatch League 2022 Midseason Madness showed nearly four times less the Peak Viewers number than CDL Championship 2022, and three times lower Average Viewers number. World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Hearthstone have even lower numbers.

The problem here is complex and worthy of a separate article, but even by simply changing the broadcast platform Blizzard can significantly improve its leagues' coverage. They can also use the example of Valorant and allow community casting of their tournaments — this can contribute greatly to the development of esports franchises as well. 

It will be interesting for esports fans to compare Call of Duty League Championship 2022 coverage to the two upcoming Halo tournaments — Halo Championship Series 2022: Orlando Major in September and Halo World Championship 2022 in October. Some clubs that play in the CDL also have Halo lineups and now two disciplines are direct competitors in the region. So far, Call of Duty tournaments have attracted more viewers, but that could change in the fall.