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After the recent acquisition of Major League Gaming by Playstation and Activision, Call of Duty in the eSports industry is set to grow exponentially. As more and more countries expand their broadband capabilities and computers become increasingly more accessible, records will continues to fall.
We’re seeing those trends now, with Call of Duty now being a main feature on Twitch as well as appearing on television and YouTube streams.
The recent Call of Duty World League Championship, hosted at CoD XP 2016, had a record breaking 20 million views, becoming the most viewed Call of Duty eSports event in history.
In an official statement by Activision Blizzard, the company reported a 40% increase in concurrent viewership as well.
Broadcast across five languages, the worldwide peak concurrent viewership topped the previous record for Call of Duty esports events by more than 40%, including previous COD Championship and Stage Finals. Combined the Call of Duty Championship matches surpassed more than 20 million views.
Rob Kostich, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Call of Duty Activision branch, stated the following to Business Wire about the increase in viewership.
“Sunday’s Finals were the perfect conclusion to the biggest fan celebration in our history with Call of Duty XP and to the debut season of the CWL.
“With over 1,000 teams participating from all over the globe, it came down to the final two elite squads, one from North America and one from Europe. It was an epic, raucous finale that capped an incredible weekend of action that was watched around the world by millions. We cannot thank the Call of Duty community enough for their support, it has been incredible all year long.”
The Call of Duty World League Championship is the climax of the Call of Duty World League regular season (which featured a total of $3.5 million in prize money this year). The four day event featured teams of players clashing it out for a share of the $2 million in prize money up for grabs and the title of World Champions.
The competition, held inside the Forum in Inglewood, took place in front of a sold out audience. To date this year, Call of Duty has amassed more than 1.1 billion minutes of view time across more than 100 million views worldwide.
The event was broadcast in English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian as teams gathered from over 32 countries, including Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and North America.
The finals featured the first ever U.S. vs EU grand finals, with the Americans Team EnVyUs emerging as the victors. As World Champions, the team also collect a cool $800,000 of the prize money.
Splyce didn’t come away too badly, as the team received $250,000 in runner-up prize money. eLevate placed third and received $150,000.
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