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A crowd of fans cheers at a CoD Challengers event.
Image via CDL
Category:
CoD

Activision allegedly gave YouTube CDL exclusivity for cheaper cloud gaming deal

It's going to be an awkward watch party today.
Image of Ryan Lemay
Ryan Lemay
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Published: Feb 16, 2024 04:26 am

OpTic Gaming’s lawsuit against Activision put the Call of Duty League’s streaming rights deal under the microscope, as it allegedly involved a discount on using Google Cloud for services.

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In what’s still a developing story, OpTic Gaming President Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez and CoD legend Seth “Scump” Abner filed a lawsuit against Activision, seeking $680 million in damages for holding an “unlawful monopoly” over the Call of Duty League.

CDL and YouTube
The Call of Duty League’s future is in doubt. Image via CDL

Key takeaways from the lawsuit include H3CZ alleging Activision forced him to give up 92.5% of OpTic’s ownership to Envy, made CDL teams sign new terms protecting from any claims made against them, and forced H3CZ to prove he had $3 million in capital to a $10 million line of credit. The complaints also took aim at the controversial CDL streaming rights that have already been scrutinized heavily by community members.

Activision streaming rights deal with YouTube under fire in lawsuit

As first reported by Bloomberg Law, the lawsuit claimed, “Activision granted the exclusive broadcasting rights to YouTube in exchange for price concessions from Google with respect to the Google cloud services that Activision uses for its video game platforms.”

During the 2023 CDL season, matches were broadcast on both Twitch and YouTube and league viewership flourished. At Major 3 in March 2023, The Call of Duty League reached an all-time high in viewership, peaking at 335,170. Much of the record came thanks to the CDL creating watch parties on Twitch, hosted by community members like Scump and The Flank.

According to Esports Charts, CDL Major 1 in January 2024 only reached a peak viewership count of 245,437, streaming exclusively on YouTube. The complainants argue it would have been better for the league financially to broadcast from multiple different platforms.

“It would have been more financially beneficial to players and teams for the CoD League to be broadcast either by multiple networks or by YouTube’s competitor Twitch,” the lawsuit states.

All eyes will be on the Call of Duty League matches this weekend, as Major 2 qualifiers kick off.

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Author
Image of Ryan Lemay
Ryan Lemay
Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer with the Morning Times newspaper and then Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan. You can contact him at ryanlemay@dotesports.com.