The first entirely-online Call of Duty League championship ended last weekend, and the Dallas Empire walked away as champions. While this year’s championship drew in headlines by offering the winner a full-sized Call of Duty throne, the 2020 Call of Duty League Championship also had a large prize pool for victorious teams. Now that the tournament has come to a close, avid eSports fans now know how much each team earned based on their rank.
Before the Call of Duty League’s first matches kicked off, Activision announced the format of the competition in a blog post. After laying out the game modes for each match, the CoD publisher revealed that this year’s champions would receive $1.5 million in prize money, with more cash prizes going to teams eliminated in both the finals and the playoffs. The post claimed that the league organizers put together this year’s $4.6 million pool after consulting the players and teams.
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According to a report put together by Dexerto, although the Dallas Empire won $1.5 million as the last team standing, it earned $1.72 million over the entire season. After matching each team to their place in the Call of Duty League brackets, the runner-up Atlanta FaZe won $900,000 in the finals and made $1.14 million.
Other finalists like the Chicago Huntsmen and the London Royal Ravens made an impressive total $760,000 and $500,000 respectively, while taking away the third and fourth place final prizes of $600,000 and $450,000. While stronger playoff teams like the Florida Mutineers and Los Angeles’ OpTic Gaming team from the playoffs earlier this month won more than $300,000, the lowest ranking teams ultimately earned $10,000 in the championships.
The report noted that these cumulative earnings did not take how the teams split this money up into account. For example, while the Dallas Empire consistently used the same the five players for all of the Call of Duty League matches this year, other teams who substituted players or rotated the roster’s order will need to pay out their winnings differently. However, the top contenders still took in much more prize money than its competitors. Dexerto reported that individual Dallas players earned more money than some of the losing teams’ overall pool.
Overall, the Call of Duty League Playoffs and Championship served as a massive payday for participating teams this year. However, with a larger pool being distributed this year, it will be interesting to see whether next season’s prize pool will match last weekend’s rewards, and how the teams will prepare for next time.
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Source: Call of Duty League, Dexerto