The Call of Duty League’s ‘regular season’ has now wrapped up and players are preparing to make it big on the stage at COD Champs in Texas later this month. It has been a tough year for many involved, with some teams putting up an abysmal performance that saw loss-streak records broken dramatically, and for others, it has been a jubilant season filled with success.
However, despite the ups and downs, the drama and the clutch moments, viewership for the Call of Duty League has dropped around 29% since 2023.
On The Way Down
In a string of statistics revealed by escharts.com, it was highlighted that viewership during this year’s CDL regular season tanked by almost a third. The average viewer count dropped by 28.5% while the peak viewer count saw a decline of 26.8% – the airtime remained almost the same, though.
It might seem bizarre to some, but the COD League’s official channel barely managed to retain the strongest market share in terms of viewership. On YouTube, the CDL channel pulled in just 38.6% of viewers, with Scump’s iconic ‘watch parties’ grabbing a whopping 36.8% of the market. At the start of the season, an exclusivity deal threatened the watch parties hosted by Seth ‘Scump’ Abner and other personalities, such as ZooMaa – without them, this year’s viewer count would have collapsed in on itself.
This season’s peak came during the Stage 3 Major between Atlanta FaZe and OpTic Texas, which is considered the El Classico of Call of Duty. In a dramatic showdown, OpTic Texas secured its first trophy in more than 800 days, beating FaZe while a peak count of 335,170 users watched on. The team would later decimate Toronto Ultra to snag the trophy.
With that drop in mind, we now look to COD Champs, which is set to run from July 18 – 21. There’s a $2.2 million prize pool on the line but with viewership going the way it is, how much of an audience will be there to see this season’s champion crowned?
For more Insider Gaming, you can read about Ubisoft’s statement defending XDefiant’s bugs, and sign up to receive the Insider Gaming newsletter
