CDL Champs smashes viewership records amid YouTube drama
The Call of Duty League World Championships 2023 are over, and the event as a whole has topped the all-time charts for viewership statistics despite a pending YouTube takeover.
19th Jun 2023 17:10
Call of Duty League
CDL Champs smashes viewership records amid YouTube drama
The Call of Duty League World Championships 2023 are over, and the event as a whole has topped the all-time charts for viewership statistics despite a pending YouTube takeover.
19th Jun 2023 17:10
Call of Duty League
The Call of Duty League season ended with a massive bark, as Matthew "KiSMET" Tinsley (aka, The Bulldog) and the New York Subliners bit back at the comments made by Toronto Ultra's Thomas "Scrappy" Ernst to pummel them into the ground in a straight five-game sweep.
With New York Subliners being crowned as the World Champions, bringing us the first-ever European ring-holder in Paco "HyDra" Rusiewiez, every corner of the Call of Duty fandom was at its peak, celebrating everything that is great with elite CoD.
But a grey cloud looms over the league as a pending YouTube exclusivity deal is on the cards, much to the dismay of fans. In the best efforts to block this, though, the CDL has now topped its viewership from last year with a whopping 4.4 million hours watched.
Call of Duty League total-hours viewership soars at World Championships 2023
With the YouTube exclusivity deal looming over the league's head, fans flocked into the various supported streams to watch the CDL over the entire weekend, and while the peak numbers didn't quite reach the stats of previous finals, the total hours watched have soared.
Over the weekend, a massive total of 4,419,614 hours of Call of Duty esports was digested, which comes at over 1 million more than the same event last season.
The total hours watched was cut short, as New York Subliners battered Toronto Ultra 5-0 in the grand finals (the highest-peaking match), making it the shortest best-of-nine that the CDL has ever seen.
CDL peak viewership drops as FaZe, OpTic, and LA Thieves all faced early exits
In terms of peak viewership, Call of Duty did suffer. Maybe the ongoing battle with Nick "NICKMERCS" Kolcheff contributed towards this as he was axed from a paid co-stream position just two days before the event kicked off, following his anti-LGBTQ+ comments on Twitter.
Maybe it was because OpTic Texas, LA Thieves, and Atlanta FaZe, the teams with the three largest fan bases in the scene, were eliminated early from the event.
But peak viewership did dip to 294,178 concurrent onlookers in the Grand Final. In comparison, Major III peaked at 335,170 viewers.
Still, the Grand Finals still beat anything in the Vanguard season too, which peaked at 275,244 on YouTube, showing that even with so much controversy going on in the background, Twitch appears to be the best place to watch competitive Call of Duty.
About The Author
Jack Marsh
Jack is an Esports Journalist at GGRecon. Graduating from the University of Chester, with a BA Honours degree in Journalism, Jack is an avid esports enthusiast and specialises in Rocket League, Call of Duty, VALORANT, and trending gaming news.
