CDL 2023: second major of the season becomes league's most popular tournament in three years
Call of Duty League 2023: Stage 2 Major ended on February 5 in Boston. The tournament drew hundreds of thousands of viewers and has become one of the most popular in the history of the series. Esports Charts tells you how community casting and the switch from YouTube to Twitch has helped the league increase its audience significantly.
Call of Duty League 2023: Stage 2 Major is the second of five regular season majors in 2023. The first was held in Raleigh, USA, back in December 2022, with New York Subliners being the champion. The second tournament was similar in format with Atlanta FaZe defeating Los Angeles Thieves in the Grand Final.
Viewership Statistics
CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major final statistics
CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major matches accumulated nearly 4.6 million Hours Watched. The event saw 153.2K Average Viewers and 301.9K Peak Viewers. The clash between Los Angeles Thieves and OpTic Texas on the last day of the tournament drew the most viewers, while the Grand Final between Atlanta FaZe and Los Angeles Thieves became only the fifth most popular match.
Los Angeles Thieves surpassed other teams easily by total Hours Watched, as they played the most matches (owing to an early drop to the lower bracket). On the other hand, OpTic Texas, the most popular team in the league and the discipline as a whole, became the leader by Average Viewers.
As for languages and platforms, the English-language broadcasts on Twitch accounted for more than 97% of the total Hours Watched. The league's official channel was the most popular, with 2.38 million Hours Watched and 162.1K Peak Viewers. Scump comes in second place by both metrics, while third place is shared by two more community casters — karma and ZooMaa.
Scump is the Tournament's Most Popular Community Caster
In December 2022, it became known that Call of Duty League would be back on Twitch after a two-year exclusive contract with YouTube. Community casters, who could now take an active role in covering the league, were the most excited about this news.
The CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major example showed that contributions from top streamers can be extremely important in terms of the league's audience reach. For example, the Boston Majors' community casting accounted for more than 48% of the total Hours Watched, almost as many as the official broadcast.
Scump, one of the most respected and titled players in the discipline, who has played on the professional stage for over a decade, became the biggest star of the CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major community casting. It is interesting that he ended his e-athlete career just before the tournament. He even helped OpTic Texas qualify for the Boston Major, but left the lineup even before the qualifying event. Now scump has completely switched to a streaming career, just like shroud and others ex-pros did.
A few facts about Scump:
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Scump did not stream the first major CDL 2023 because he was playing for OpTic Texas at the time. During the Major 2, he "dragged" about 38% of all viewers of the league to his channel.
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The scump’s and callofduty’s channels have a large common audience. More than 36% of the callofduty channel’s viewers also watch scump's streams.
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The scump and callofduty channels accounted for approximately 90% of all CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major viewers.
In addition to scump, the tournament was also covered by ZooMaa, Symfuhny, Aydan and other streamers. It is interesting that about 14.5% of the viewers of the tournament watched the NICKMERCS’s channel a week before the Major. However, he didn't cover the first or second Major, and all of his Airtime is mostly devoted to Apex Legends and CoD: Warzone.
OpTic Texas is the Most Popular Team of the Tournament
OpTic Texas became the most popular team in the tournament. Its matches at the Major were watched by more than 200K Average Viewers — approximately 15% more than the finalists Los Angeles Thieves and Atlanta FaZe had. It should be noted that OpTic Texas was always a leader by the AV, but the gap from other teams increased even more at the second Major.
CDL Keeps Growing in Popularity
CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major became the third most-watched tournament in the history of the league. In fact, it could be ranked second because CWL Pro League 2019 had seven times more Airtime because of the format. Call of Duty World League Championship 2018 holds first place with 5.2 million HW.
Notably, the current season's Majors and their qualifiers rank four in the Top 6 the total Hours Watched. After switching platforms and returning to Twitch, the league started to get more views: and community casting, of course, played an important role in it.
Most Popular Call of Duty Tournaments by Peak Viewers
CDL 2023: Stage 2 Major also takes third place in the history of all Call of Duty esports tournaments (not taking into account live events like Twitch Rivals) — just a little short of the new record.
The third regular season's Major takes place on March 9-12 in Arlington at the Esports Stadium Arlington. There, CDL participants will compete for $500K. Qualifying games for seeding will be held prior to that, from February 17 to March 5.
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