CDL Commissioner confirms Warzone is part of the league’s competitive plans
ActivisionThe Call of Duty League’s commissioner, Johanna Faries, has confirmed that Warzone is part of the league’s competitive plans and will be featured in a more “structured” integration moving forward.
Activision’s unprecedented success in 2020 could not have been achieved without Warzone. While Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare, the Activision-Blizzard franchised CDL, and Treyarch’s Black Ops Cold War have all been their own successes — Warzone is more than a cherry on top.
Regularly near the heights of Twitch’s viewership, the CoD battle royale has amassed both a huge casual community and more dedicated fans committed to watching tournament play. As such, it’s unsurprising that the CDL wants to do more than the casual Warzone content it created in the inaugural season.
That content typically spanned getting pro players, coaches, and analysts involved in custom matches on Verdansk. While entertaining, Faries has revealed that the league has much more competitive plans in store for the battle royale.
In an interview with ScreenRant, Faries, who heads both the CDL and Overwatch League, expressed that Warzone will be getting more properly integrated into the CDL’s plans: “There are [plans to bring Warzone to Call of Duty League], and we’re excited to announce those plans in the coming weeks and months.”
The Head of Leagues continued, contrasting these new plans with the casual content of the inaugural season and confirming that future integration will be much more esports-focused: “We did bring in Warzone related content with our pros last season, but we’ve taken the off-season to think bigger about what a more structured investment could look like. There are really exciting things to come as early as this season.”
Call of Duty LeagueAs mentioned earlier, the CDL’s Warzone content in 2020 was primarily casual. Weekend custom lobbies created some fun clips and moments, but overall didn’t have quite the drawing power of Warzone’s more legitimate esport events.
We’ve seen former CDL bench players grow into massive Warzone careers, such as the London Royal Ravens’ Rhys ‘Rated’ Price as well as Charlie ‘MuTeX’ Saouma and Thomas ‘Tommey’ Trewren formerly of the Dallas Empire.
The league obviously has the talent for appealing Warzone competition, so fans will be antsy to find out exactly what kind of “structured” integration may be coming in the future.