Credit: Major League Gaming/Joe Brady
Call of Duty 
World League London brought the war-themed, first-person shooting game’s esports scene back into the spotlight on Twitch this past weekend with 1M hours watched on the official CoD channel, and an average of 23K concurrent viewers.
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When Activision Blizzard released its most recent version of one of gaming’s highest-profile franchises last fall, a new battle mode showed potential to be one of the next big trends on Twitch, but as competitors like Fortnite continued to release new content, the mode lost the mass appeal it had upon release.
However, with battle royale prominence on Twitch in the rearview mirror, esports provided another opportunity for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 to generate reach on gaming’s biggest streaming platform later in the year.
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After a steep decline in viewership in November, CoD saw a surge in viewership for one week in December surrounding CWL Las Vegas, which served as a preseason event for the CWL Pro League. With an average of 61K concurrent viewers during the first two weeks of the month, the official CoD Twitch channel peaked for the final day of competition with 1.5M hours watched.
That was followed by CWL Pro League qualifications in January that averaged 23K CCV from the 15th-21st that totaled 1M hours watched, the same as this past weekend’s event. Similarly, March’s CWL Fort Worth tournament generated 1M hours watched with an average of 36K CCV from March 15-17.
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This past weekend’s $325K USD tournament at Copper Box Arena served as the first major CoD event to be hosted by esports solutions provider Gfinity since 2016. The tournament included both an open amateur event sponsored by MTN DEW AMP GAME FUEL and a 16-team professional tournament. PlayStation 4 serves as CWL’s presenting sponsor, and ASUS is the league’s official monitor.
While viewership for CWL events isn’t leading Twitch, the CoD channel has seen year-over-year growth overall in average CCV and hours watched. The broadcasts’ 6.2M hours watched and 19K CCV is up from 5.2M hours watched and 12K CCV in 2018 to this point.
Though CoD might not be the groundbreaking game that its battle royale mode showed potential to be early on, the title’s more traditional esports tournaments have managed to generate a consistent audience on the CoD channel that has seen growth so far nearly halfway into the year.
