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Activision Announces Call of Duty World League With $3 Million In Prizes

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It looks like the Call of Duty Championships just went global with the announcement of the Call of Duty World League by Activision. This means that the commitment by the company to support e-sports just got even more serious with the World League. With e-sports growing, including the prizes at stake, game publishers are putting up their own e-sports leagues to further market their game titles to more professional gamers.

Before the Call of Duty Championship had a total of US$1 million in prizes, for the Call of Duty World League, a total of US$3 million has been committed by Activision. The Call of Duty World League will have teams from North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand (looks like Asia, where e-sports is big, has been left out) vie for the top prizes.

The Call of Duty World League is expected to kick off on the 16th of January 2016, two months after the release of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and it will have two divisions. The Pro Division, as its name says, will be the regular competition for the pro-gamers. The other division, the Challenge Division, is aimed at amateur gamers wanting to have a shot in the pro-leagues. The top gamers will then move on to the finals which will the Call of Duty Championships which will take place in Spring 2016.

Call of Duty World League is expected to have tough competition in getting the attention of pro-gamers as the bigger leagues such as CounterStrike, Dota, StarCraft, and League of Legends have big followings in the e-sports community. The Dota 2 International Competition 2015 which took place last August 2015 had a prize pool of over US$18 million, which is far much bigger than what Call of Duty World League offers.

With the even bigger cash prizes and even bigger following, mainstream sports media have started supporting e-sports with ESPN and Turner now on board. Live streaming of e-sports have always been the realm of Twitch.com and with the big names coming on board, has made it a very ripe target for acquisition. Professional gamers are also now under the intense spotlight and with such further scrutiny such as testing for use of performance enhancing drugs with the governing body, Electronic Sports League, leading the charge after the Adderall scandal.

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