Activision has admitted that the company has concerns over the longevity of both the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League.
The news came via Actvision’s latest SEC filing, which said, “Our collaborative arrangements for our professional esports leagues (i.e., the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League) continue to face headwinds which are negatively impacting the operations and, potentially, the longevity of the leagues under the current business model. We continue to work to address these challenges, which could result in significant costs, and such efforts may prove unsuccessful.”
From the get-go, one of the major issues both leagues faced was the league slots – With Overwatch teams had to pay $20 million, whereas Call of Duty teams had to pay $25 million. In addition to the high price to take part, both Call of Duty and Overwatch have been struggling to grow their viewership in recent years.
Both Call of Duty and Overwatch managed to have a decent 2022, with Call of Duty managing to hit its highest concurrent viewers in 2022 at 439,000, whilst Overwatch peaked at 397,000. Meanwhile, games like League of Legends, CS:GO, Valorant, and Dota 2 continued to bring in millions of viewers during major championships.
It’s unclear where Activision will take its Call of Duty and Overwatch leagues in the future, but its concerns over longevity speak volumes.
What do you think of the Call of Duty League and the Overwatch League? Let us know down below.
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I’m not sure about overwatch but the problem with CoD is they are pumping out games every year, this turns into a quantity over quality issue. Thw next problem is people loose intrest in these games because cheating has become so prevalent that people put these game down themselves, which give them no incentive to want to watch pros play them. This leaves a market for steamers, which let’s be honest, who also use cheats to get their content videos (you know it’s true for most, some are legit of course).