Call of Duty League Championship heads to Las Vegas

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Image credit: Call of Duty League

The Call of Duty League (CDL) has announced its season-ending Championship Weekend event will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

From June 15th-18th, the event will take place at the Thomas & Mack Center UNLV, a 19,500-seat arena on the University of Nevada campus.

The top eight franchises from the regular season will compete for a chance to become Call of Duty League champion. Details on prize pools have yet to appear, however, last year’s amount totalled $2.5m (~£2.01m) with the winning team taking approximately half.

Call of Duty esports is now in its third year of geo-located franchised competition after switching to the model at the end of 2019. So far, the 2023 Call of Duty League season has generated plenty of success after the Stage 3 Major scored 335,170 viewers at its peak.

Following two seasons streaming exclusively on YouTube, the CDL made its Twitch debut in December 2022, a change met with praise from fans. With no exclusivity deal in place, the competition is now streamed across both platforms.

This isn’t the first time Call of Duty has headed to Vegas. In 2017 and 2019, the Call of Duty World League (CWL) held the first events for the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 seasons in the city.

Championship Weekend, commonly referred to as ‘Champs’, will bring an end to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 season which started in December 2022.

A total of 12 franchises compete in the Call of Duty League, with the likes of OpTic Gaming, FaZe Clan, Version1, and 100 Thieves owning a slot.

Jonno Nicholson
Jonno is a Freelance News Writer for Esports Insider and has been part of the ESI team since 2019! His interests include the rapid rise of sim racing and its impact on the wider industry.