Call of Duty World League

Call of Duty World League

Sport	Call of Duty (Call of Duty: Black Ops III)
Founded	2016
Owner(s)	Shaun Philipson
Commissioner	Everett Coleman
No. of teams	30 teams (12 in North America, 10 in Europe, 8 in Australia/New Zealand)
Continents	North America, Europe, New Zealand/Australia
Most recent champion(s)	Spark CWL (EU), Millenium (EU), Plantronics Mindfreak (ANZ)
Sponsor(s)	Xbox One
Official website	www.callofduty.com/esports

The Call of Duty World League is a Call of Duty eSports league that began in January 2016.^[1] It is played on Call of Duty: Black Ops III for PlayStation 4 and acts as a qualifier for the pre-existing, annual Call of Duty Championship. There are two divisions of play, a Professional division and an Amateur division, with the top teams of both qualifying for the championships. A total of $3 million USD of prize money will be given out throughout the year, with the annual Call of Duty Championships handing out $1.6 million. The 2015 Winner was Rayan Mendelsohn from Cloud9 (eSports) ^[2] The league was originally slated to begin on January 5 but was delayed a week for "issues beyond our control", some of which may have stemmed from the previous night's PlayStation Network outage.^[3] The COD World League officially kicked off on January 13.^[4]

Teams

Season 2

Season 1

Season 1 commenced on January 13, 2016 and was the first ever season of the Call of Duty World league; the league suffered a one week delay due to "issues out of [our] control" and was suspected to be because of PlayStation Network outages. The season lasted 11 weeks and took place in North America, Australia and Europe, with teams from all regions fighting for play-off spots in their region at the end of the season. On 19 March 2016, the Australian regional play-off commenced where four teams battled it out for a prize pool of $118,000 AUD. On 27 March 2016, Mindfreak beat Tainted Minds 4-0 to grab first place in their region, winning $44,000. A week later, the EU regional play-offs commenced with six teams vying for $168,000. On 28 March 2016, Millenium beat Splyce 4-1 to win their regional play-off and walked away with $52,000. The final regional match was for the North American region, which commenced on 2 April 2016. It included eight teams and a prize pool of $218,000. On 3 April 2016 Optic Gaming beat Rise Nation 4-3 to walk away with $66,000. All teams who made it to their regional play-off also secured a place in Season 2, which began on Tuesday 19 April 2016.

References