CDL Champs 2025 shattered a long-standing viewership record, and there’s a good reason why.
Call of Duty League Champs 2025 is officially over, and OpTic Texas has done the seemingly impossible, winning back-to-back Champs after being counted out all season long. From OpTic's historic run, to the LA Thieves and Atlanta FaZe bowing out on day two, to some truly incredible matches, CDL Champs 2025 was one for the record books, and the total viewership numbers for the event back that up.
This year's Champs broke a viewership record for the Call of Duty League, bringing in more peak viewers than any event before it. It's also the fourth most-watched Call of Duty esports event of all time, according to EsportsCharts. While OpTic Texas's dominant run certainly had a lot to do with the peak viewership record being broken, it also helped that the Champs venue in Kitchener, Ontario was half-full for a majority of the event.
Champs 2025 sets new peak viewership record for the CDL
Before we get into any talk about Kitchener, let's go over the raw viewership numbers for Champs this year. According to EsportsCharts, the peak viewership for Champs was 353,525, which was set during the grand finals matchup between OpTic Texas and Vancouver Surge. The four matches involving OpTic Texas at Champs were the four most-watched matches, with OpTic vs. FaZe somehow being the lowest-watched match at only 188,328 viewers.
The second most-watched match was OpTic vs. Boston Breach, which had 237,748 peak views. This means that the grand final saw over 100,000 more peak viewers than any other matchup.
It's important to remember that EsportsCharts gathers viewership totals from every available source. So the official CODLeague broadcast isn't pulling in all of these numbers, as Scump's Watch Party views and others like it are also being accounted for.
You can see the views broken down by visiting EsportsChart's post about Champs 2025.
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Kitchener was the wrong place to host CDL Champs 2025
If you watched Champs 2025 before the grand finals on Sunday, then you likely saw the camera pan to the in-person crowd in between matches or after a map concluded. The number one thing that likely jumped out at you is the severe lack of fans in attendance. At any given time, it seemed like the auditorium in Kitchener wasn't even half-full, as fans sparsely populated the seats in the lower bowl and on the floor.
While the grand finals on Sunday definitely put more fans in chairs, a lot of that was because of OpTic Texas. The Greenwall travels well, and if OpTic was knocked out early at Champs, the event auditorium would have likely been even less crowded, even on Sunday.
All weekend, fans and content creators, such as Scump, Octane, ZooMaa, etc., all discussed why Kitchener was chosen as the hosting city for Champs. It's two hours outside of downtown Toronto, and there's virtually no tourism in the area, so it was difficult for fans and players to even get to the venue itself. While the event was run fairly well by all accounts, seeing so few fans in the crowd was a tragedy given the level of Call of Duty that was being played at Champs.
Of course, fans not being at Kitchener wasn't the reason for Champs setting a viewership record, but the numbers were boosted ever so slightly because of that fact. Hopefully, this is a lesson for the CDL going forward; all future Champs events need to be held in a major city.
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