Major tournaments for the 2022 Call of Duty League season will now feature all 12 teams, instead of only eight, after the league had a change of heart, sources tell Dot Esports.
Less than a month ago, the Call of Duty League announced its format for the 2022 season. Within the announcement, the league revealed that four different franchises would host four Major tournaments throughout the year but only eight teams could qualify for them, leaving the bottom four teams excluded from each Major.
One minor detail the league didn’t announce to the public was that if the hosting franchise of a Major tournament didn’t qualify for the event, they would play the eighth-seeded team in a play-in-style match for a chance to qualify for the event that they’d be hosting, according to sources.
This was one of the concerns for multiple franchise ownership groups and something they thought was unfair and lacked competitive integrity, especially considering the league wants regular-season matches to “matter.”
It’s believed one reason for initially deciding on having eight teams at each Major was due to viewership being low for ninth to 12th seed matches. Regardless of those numbers, the majority of franchise groups still wanted all 12 teams at each Major from day one, but the league initially decided against it.
The first Major tournament will be hosted by OpTic Texas, with the date yet to be announced. The other three hosts are rumored to be Minnesota RØKKR, Toronto Ultra, and New York Subliners—all three cities were mentioned in a deleted tweet by the Call of Duty League Twitter page. These locations could still potentially change, though.
On top of the four Major tournaments this season, the league will also host a preseason Kickoff Classic tournament in January, a midseason Pro-Am tournament featuring top Challengers teams, and end the season with the 2022 “Playoffs and Champs,” which, according to sources, will still only have eight teams.
