Call of Duty Betting Tips & Live Streams
About Call of Duty
Call of Duty, the popular first-person shooter game, had its first installment published by parent company Activision in 2003.
COD esports first began in 2006 alongside the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In 2011, Activision hosted a convention, Call of Duty: Experience 2011, to celebrate the game.
It showcased the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and a $1 million esports tournament was organized - the first official COD esports event sponsored by the game's publishers.
A few years later, The Call of Duty World League came into being, sponsored primarily by Sony PS4. It began in 2016 and featured a series of COD esports tournaments played on Call of Duty: Black Ops III for PlayStation 4.
The league ran for three years before it was discontinued in favor of the Call of Duty League.
Where you can bet on Call of Duty
Betting on eSports is big business now and the world's biggest bookmakers all offer tournament, pre-match and in-play betting on StarCraft.
You can see the best Call of Duty betting sites in your region or choose to bet with this month's top five ranked sites.
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Join£10Free betUse codeNEWBONUSGet £10 free bet. Use the promo code NEWBONUS. -
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JoinGet£30Bonus CodeNEWBONUSAvailable to new customers only. Make a qualifying deposit of £5 or more and claim the offer within 30 days of registering your account to qualify for 300% of that amount in Bet Credits, up to a maximum of £30 in Bet Credits. Once released, your Bet Credits will be held in your account balance and are non-withdrawable. Min deposit requirement. Free Bets are paid as Bet Credits and are available for use upon settlement of qualifying bets. Min odds, bet and payment method exclusions apply. Returns exclude Bet Credits stake. Time limits and T&Cs apply. -
JoinBet£10Get£20New UK customers (Excluding NI) only. Mobile exclusive. Min stake £10. Min odds Evs. Free bet applied on 1st settlement of any qualifying bet. 30 days to qualify. Free bets expire in 7 days. Cashed out/Free Bets won’t apply. Payment method restrictions. 1 Free Bet offer per customer, household & IP Address only. 18+. T&Cs apply -
JoinBet£10Get£40New 18+ UK customers. Register with CHELT40 between 09:00 on 10/03/2023 and 17:30 on 17/03/2023. Deposit, using a Debit Card, and place first bet on sports within 7 days of registering. Bet must be £10+ at Evens (2.0)+ in one bet transaction. £40 in Free Bets credited within 10 hours of bet settlement, expires 7-days after issue. First bet must be settled within 7 days of registration. Proof of I.D and address may be required. Full T&Cs apply
Call of Duty Live Streaming & How To Watch
You can catch live streams of Call of Duty games on popular streaming sites. You’ll be able to catch the majors tournaments at betting sites such as bet365, Stake and Pinnacle.
At the start, YouTube had exclusive broadcast rights over the Call of Duty League. That partnership ran its course in 2022. Until the next broadcast deal happens, all competitions from 2023 onwards can be caught on:
- The official Call of Duty channel on Twitch
- The live stream on the official Call of Duty website
The CDL playoffs in 2022 recorded over 3 million hours watched and peaked with 275,244 viewers during the Grand Final between Atlanta Faze and Los Angeles Thieves.
Call of Duty eSports Structure
The most prominent COD esports event right now is the Activision-sponsored Call of Duty League. It was first announced in 2019 and began the following year.
The league's structure has seen big changes over the years and is now contested between 12 partner teams over the course of nine months every year.
Activision also began to organize the Call of Duty Challengers League that year, contested between academy or junior teams of various esports organizations. Here's the basic structure of the Challengers League:
- Three Opens, the Minnesota Open, Toronto Open, and Boston Open, each offering a $75,000 USD prize pool
- Elite Majors, split into four stages, conducted across North America and Europe and offer a $50,000 prize pool
- Regional Cups conducted across the North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America regions
Currently, the Call of Duty League is split into the pre-season, regular season, and post-season. This is how they're laid out over the year:
- The pre-season, Resurgence, features 32 teams, including the 12 partner teams of the regular season, 16 teams from qualifiers, and four invited teams. It offers a prize pool of $100,000, with the winner taking $30,000.
- The regular season takes place across five separate segments, or Stages, and lasts for a period of about seven months. Each Stage kicks off with a round of Qualifiers and culminates in a Major, which offers a prize pool of $500,000.
- The post-season, or CDL Championship, is held at the end of the regular season and determines the league's final winner.
Qualification For Call of Duty Tournaments
The regular season of CDL is played out across five Stages, each involving one round of Qualifiers followed by a Major.
The league has a points system in place to determine the regular season's winners. Here's how teams can accumulate CDL points:
- Winning a match during the qualifiers will fetch a team 10 points
- The winner of each Major gets 65 points and wins $200,000 in prize money
- The runner-up gets 50 points and wins $120,000
- The third seed gets 40 points and wins $80,000
- The fourth seed gets 30 points and wins $40,000
- The teams that finish in 5th-6th place get 20 points each and win $20,000 apiece
- The teams in 7th-8th place get 10 points each and win $10,000 each
Each of the twelve teams play five matches during the Qualifiers. These are all played as best-of-fives, and all twelve teams qualify for the Major.
The Majors are conducted at the end of each Stage. They are structured as a double-elimination bracket. The top eight teams from the Qualifiers will slot into the Winners Round 1 gauntlet, while the bottom four will slot into the Losers Round 1.
The Call of Duty League Championship, or Playoffs, is the marquee event of the year. It takes place at the end of the CDL regular season and sees the league's top eight teams battle it out among a prize pool in excess of $2 million.
This event, too, is played out as a double-elimination bracket, and each team's starting seed is determined by their standings at the end of the regular season.
The top eight teams with the most CDL points at the end of all five Stages qualify for the Championship. Here's how the prize pool is distributed:
- The winner gets $1,200,000
- Runners-up get $650,000
- Third place wins $320,000
- Fourth place wins $160,000
- 5th-6th place gets $80,000 each
- 7th-8th place gets $30,000 each
Best Call of Duty Teams
Atlanta Faze are indisputably the best Call of Duty team in the world. In the three seasons of the CDL since 2020, they have won the 2021 edition and came in as runners-up in 2020 and 2022.
Dallas Empire won the first edition of the tournament in 2020, and Los Angeles Thieves won in 2022. Atlanta Faze have also emerged as the first seed in all three of the regular seasons of CDL.
Here's the list of all the Major winners since the format was introduced in 2021:
- Stage 5 Major 2021, Minnesota RØKKR
- Stage 4 Major 2021, Atlanta FaZe
- Stage 3 Major 2021, Atlanta FaZe
- Stage 2 Major 2021, Toronto Ultra
- Stage 1 Major 2021, Atlanta FaZe
- Stage 4 Major 2022, Los Angeles Thieves
- Stage 3 Major 2022, Seattle Surge
- Stage 2 Major 2022, Los Angeles Guerrillas
- Stage 1 Major 2022, OpTic Texas
Before 2021, the Call Of Duty World Championship was organized by Major League Gaming (MLG). These are the teams that won it:
- Call of Duty World League Championship 2019, EUnited
- CWL Championship 2018, Evil Geniuses
- CWL Championship 2017, Optic Gaming
- CWL Championship 2016, Team Envy
- Call of Duty Championship 2015, Denial Esports
- Call of Duty Championship 2014, Complexity Gaming
- Call of Duty Championship 2013, Fariko Impact
