Call of Duty League has resumed with exclusive YouTube broadcasts — how has this affected the league's audience?

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The new tournament season of the Call of Duty League has commenced: franchise league participants have completed the initial qualification matches for the January Major in Boston. A significant surprise for viewers has been the league games returning exclusively to YouTube — and this comes after a fairly successful experiment with a switch to Twitch.

Call of Duty League 2024: Stage 1 Major Qualifiers Viewership Statistics

During the 2022 tournament season, when CDL matches were exclusively broadcasted on YouTube, qualifiers and majors drew in between 60,000 to 100,000 concurrent viewers at their peak. However, in the 2023 season, when the league began streaming on Twitch, the viewership for these stages essentially doubled or tripled, often exceeding 200,000 to 300,000 people. The highlight of that period was the Call of Duty League 2023: Stage 3 Major, which set a viewership record for the discipline.

Following the return to YouTube, the initial days of the Call of Duty League 2024: Stage 1 Major Qualifiers drew around 80,000 to 100,000 viewers — significantly less than during the Twitch broadcasts, but consistent with the results from two seasons ago.

The gradual shift from YouTube to Twitch helped the league expand its audience reach. Community casters, especially scump, played a significant role in this. He attracted as many viewers to his streams as the official channels did (and occasionally even more). Despite CDL reverting to exclusive YouTube broadcasts in the current season, Scump remained involved in the Call of Duty League 2024: Stage 1 Major Qualifiers on Twitch. He organized a Watch Party on his Twitch channel where he didn’t show the actual games but commented on the proceedings, and engaged with analysts and guests. Even without streaming the matches, scump managed to gather over 15,000 viewers on the first day of the league.

Many league viewers criticized CDL's return to exclusive broadcasts on YouTube. Not only were they unable to watch matches on Twitch channels of their favorite community casters, but the official broadcasts themselves were riddled with errors. For instance, organizers mixed up player cameras and nicknames, and in one match, a referee appeared instead of a player in the lobby. Additionally, some viewers complained about the image quality.

Another cause for concern among Call of Duty fans was the drama surrounding the popular gaming shows, The Breakdown and The Flank, hosted by scump and ZooMaa. Typically, these shows discussed Call of Duty League news, showcased the best moments from matches, and shared opinions on the state of the game, among other things. However, from the start of the current season, these shows faced potential closure. As reported by Dexerto, an unknown party associated with the league filed a lawsuit against scump and ZooMaa, seeking to prevent them from featuring CDL match excerpts in their reviews. According to ZooMaa, they are prohibited from showing any gameplay, not just during live broadcasts but even after the official streams end. Fans of the streamers believe the lawsuit was filed because these gaming shows were highly popular among viewers and were drawing the audience away from the league's official channels.

The new season of the Call of Duty League has just begun, yet the league has encountered some issues with attracting viewers, and the ban on community casting on Twitch could potentially worsen the situation. Let's see what numbers CDL will achieve during the majors. The nearest one will take place in Boston from January 25th to 28th at the MGM Music Hall.