The Call of Duty League is coming off of it's fourth weekend of matches, this time taking place in Los Angeles hosted by the Guerrillas and OpTic Gaming. While this weekend held some of the most exciting matches of season up to this point, including a Minnesota upset victory over the Atlanta FaZe in the semifinals, the viewership saw a steep drop from previous weeks.
The Los Angeles weekend peaked at just under 67K viewers. This isn't terrible, but compared to each of the previous events all reaching over 100k viewers, and there is a massive difference between them. It all boils down to one factor, the Chicago Huntsmen. The Los Angeles weekend was the first event without Chicago in attendance and it showed with the drop in viewer interest. The Huntsmen have dominated the viewership numbers throughout their first three events of the season and most of their matches make their way into the top five most viewed matches of the given weekend. They also hold the top spot for each of their three weekends in terms of viewership.
It's understandable the Chicago Huntsmen are the most popular team so early in the inaugural season of the Call of Duty League. They have some of the most iconic players of all time in Matthew "FormaL" Piper and Seth "Scump" Abner who not only made their name with OpTic Gaming but helped turn the organization into the most recognized name in professional Call of Duty.
There could be other factors involved in the sharp decline of numbers including the first west-coast timezone event, but there is no denying the impact the Huntsmen have on the league in terms of bringing in interested viewers to the weekends. As the season goes on, more teams might start to find their footing in terms of growing their fanbase and it will be interesting to see how the viewership progresses the further the league gets to the end of it's first season run.