Every year, the Call of Duty League stands firm as the biggest tournament in the COD esports scene. It’s the ultimate series for the best Call of Duty players in the world, boasting a multi-million-dollar prize pool and hundreds of thousands of viewers. It’s one of the longest esports tournaments in the business, spanning several months, a string of ‘Major’ tournaments, and to cap it all off, a World Championship weekend. In this guide, we’re breaking down the Call of Duty League 2024 season in full.
Toward the end of 2023, the Call of Duty League became a North American-exclusive tournament, with the last EU-based teams being relocated to the United States. It’s still the most popular Call of Duty esports tournament on a global scale, and millions of fans follow every match in the COD League with eagerness and excitement. At Esports.net, we pride ourselves on providing constant coverage of the Call of Duty League – make sure you don’t ever miss a story:
Now, let’s break down everything you could want to know about the Call of Duty League 2024 season in this handy, snapshot guide.
At the start of the Call of Duty League 2024 season, it was revealed that the tournament would be streamed exclusively on YouTube. This decision was met with disappointment from the esports community, as in 2023, the League adopted a ‘dual capacity’ model, streaming on both Twitch and YouTube and giving players ‘options’. For the COD League 2024 season, the only place you can catch live gameplay is on YouTube.
Here’s the link you’ll need to watch the Call of Duty League live: COD League on YouTube
There’s a lot of content to soak up outside of the main broadcasts. For instance, retired Call of Duty pro players like Scump and ZooMaa host watch parties and podcasts dedicated to discussing the Call of Duty League and the best players in the tournament. There’s a lot to follow and there are always stories unfolding.
During the Call of Duty League 2024 season, the best Call of Duty pro players will be competing on the Modern Warfare 3 platform. It’s the most recent title, having been released in November 2023. It has split the community, though. Many see this nostalgia-fuelled blast from the past as being a solid, entertaining game, while others have issues with the game’s SBMM mechanics and – at times – strange balancing.
Regardless, it’s one of the fastest-selling Call of Duty games in history, and it’s a joy to watch gameplay unfold on some of the series’ most memorable maps. When Modern Warfare 3 was released, it reintroduced every core map from Modern Warfare 2 (2009). It’s a solid game for the classic Call of Duty fans with legs in the game.
The full CDL schedule (2024) can be seen below in a handy, one-shot graphic:
It’s a packed schedule with plenty of top-tier events taking place. It’s not mentioned in the graphic, but the season will end with the Call of Duty League Championship Weekend, which is one of the most prestigious events in gaming. At this event, one team will walk away with more than $1 million in prize money, clutching the coveted COD League trophy and earning a place in the history books.
Below, you can learn about the history of the COD League in full.
Hardpoint is, without a doubt, the bread and butter of the Call of Duty League, making for some of the most exciting match-ups. There’s a tradition of trying to ‘one hundred club’ opponents, which is a practice that sees one team dominate the match so effectively that the other team cannot secure more than one hundred points. This will traditionally be the first game mode played by competitors during a series.
In this age-old, iconic mode, teams have to fight for control of a rotating objective area on the map. Each team gains a point for each second spent on the active objective while it is uncontested. There are no extra points awarded for kills in this game mode, but that doesn’t stop some players from slaying out.
Every 60 seconds (points), the objective rotates to a new area on the map, which is what makes this game mode so interesting to watch, as it can create some very nice turns. The winner of the mode is the team that first reaches 250 points or the team that has the most points when the timer runs out, but that’s extremely rare.
Search and Destroy is a legendary mode, famous in Call of Duty and other titles, like CSGO. It essentially sees one team defend two objectives while the other team attempts to destroy one of them. There’s another way to win a round of Search and Destroy, and that’s to effectively kill every player on the opposing side. It’s a tactical, intense game mode that gives players just one life per round, and it can make for some exciting situations in the Call of Duty esports scene.
It can be the longest mode in the series, especially if it’s pushed to the absolute limit. At the most, a round of Search and Destroy can feature eleven individual rounds before a winner is decided, and that’s something that happens way more often than you’d think, given that some teams are very well balanced against one another.
Control is a unique game mode, and it’s essentially a mix of Hardpoint and Search and Destroy. It’s by no means a fan favourite, and over the years, followers of the Call of Duty League have called for the mode to be replaced with something more traditional, like Domination or Capture the Flag.
In Control, there’s an attacking team and a defending team. It’s the goal of the attacking team to secure two regions on the map by sitting on them and remaining uncontested, while the other team simply tries to keep them off the objective until a) the timer runs out, or b) the one team has been killed enough times to deplete the finite number of respawn tickets.
Which teams are competing in the Call of Duty League 2024 season? Before we move on to detailing the history of the League, let’s take a look at the competitors on the board this year.
It’s hard to pick a winner ahead of the CDL 2024 season, as there are so many teams hungry for that epic win at the end of the year. It’ll likely come down to a split between Atlanta FaZe, OpTic Texas, Toronto Ultra, and the New York Subliners. In recent years, Atlanta FaZe has been dominant in the regular season but failed to secure much traction during the Major events. It has been Toronto Ultra that all eyes have been upon in the last year or so, though.
As always, it’s impossible to ignore the ‘underdog energy’ in the COD League, and that’s why any team should be considered as having the potential to win a huge event.
Below you can find seasonal info about each current and previous Call of Duty League Season to date.
It was a historic season for the New York Subliners, a team that put out the best performance we’ve seen in the Call of Duty ecosystem for years. During the CDL 2023 season, the Subliners secured victory at two Majors and then clutched up big time to win the World Championship without dropping a single map. It was a monumental performance that hasn’t been replicated historically, and it was enough to leave Toronto Ultra floundering in the dirt in second place.
It also saw some of the highest viewership figures in COD esports history. That’s reportedly the result of the League being broadcasted on both Twitch and YouTube simultaneously, covering all the main bases.
During the 2022 season, the competition played out on Call of Duty: Vanguard, which was widely considered to be one of the worst Call of Duty games ever. Regardless, it was a banner year for the CDL, and the format and schedule remained mostly the same as they were in previous years. It was Atlanta FaZe that won the regular season, standing on top of the table by a mile with 330 points, with OpTic Texas sitting in second place with 265 points.
However, during the Championship Weekend, the LA Thieves rose to snatch the trophy out from under Atlanta’s nose, which was the second time in three years that that had happened.
The 2021 season followed more or less the same format as the 2020 season, but the game would move on to Black Ops Cold War, and it would be played on PC with any league-approved controllers. Another big change was that it was going back to the 4v4 format, and the modes used were SnD, Hardpoint, and Control. The prize pool for this event was $2,500,000, which is quite a reduced amount compared to 2020.
The Championship Weekend took place from August 19 to August 22, 2021, and the top 8 teams that earned points throughout the season would compete at the event. The top 4 teams this year were:
While the grand finals were not a rematch from 2020, Atlanta FaZe did defeat their rivals from the previous year, Dallas Empire in the semi-finals and sent them to the losers bracket where they were defeated by Toronto Ultra. This does not mean that the grand finals were not fun to watch the games were very close, but Atlanta Faze won the whole thing with a 5:3 score. The MVP for this year was Atlanta FaZe aBeZy with a K/D of 1.09.
The 2020 season was divided into two splits, spring and summer. It also had a mid-season all-star event which took immediately after the spring split, but the highlight of the season was its conclusion, the Championship Weekend. The modes that were used throughout the season were Domination, Hardpoint, and SnD, and the prize pool was an incredible $4.600.000, and the COD odds this year were also quite nice as well.
There were a total of 12 teams in the playoffs, where only 4 teams advanced to the Championship Weekend. Those 4 teams were:
Eventually, the grand finals would bring us an incredible match where Dallas Empire would face off against Atlanta FaZe in a best-of-9 series, where Dallas Empire started with 1:0 as they were in the winners’ bracket. Dallas Empire turned out to be quite dominant this season, and they won the championship with a 5:1 score, only losing in the Hardpoint mode played on the Gun Runner map. The MVP of the event was C6 from Dallas Empire with a K/D of 0.98.
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