Call of Duty League quietly sets all-time viewership records thanks to Gotaga

The Call of Duty League has quietly soared to new all-time viewership records, in large part, thanks to the help of French content creator Gotaga.
Although Black Ops 6 has its share of issues that are causing a rapid decline in overall player count, the game’s highest level of competition is thriving. In fact, the CDL just recorded its most-watched tournament to date, and it wasn’t even a Major nor a Champs-level event.
The Stage 1 Major Qualifiers drew a whopping 6.5 million hours of total watch time across December and January. This trumps all previous competitions in the CDL-era and by no small margin.
What’s the cause of this spike? None other than mega-popular French personality Gotaga. The former CoD pro-turned-content-creator bought into the league during the last offseason, merging the Los Angeles Guerrillas with his own Gentle Mates organization. As a result, more fans are now tuning in, in large part thanks to his co-streams, than ever before.
Gotaga leads to most-watched Call of Duty League tournament ever
Data pulled from EsportsCharts reveals the rebranded Los Angeles Guerrilas M8 (LAGM) lineup contributed to four of the top five most-watched matches during the Stage 1 qualifiers. The only outlet was OpTic Texas vs LA Thieves in fifth place.
The competition peaked when LAGM squared off with OpTic on December 14, 2024, bringing 208,042 eyes to the match. And while this is the highest peak-concurrent viewership for any qualifier event in CDL’s history, it’s not the only record that’s been shattered.
The Stage 1 Major qualifiers ended as the single most-watched event in the CDL era in terms of total hours watched. 6, 518, 946 hours were watched overall across official streams and co-streams. This cleared the previous best, the 2023 Stage 3 Major, by almost a million hours of watch time.

Whenever Gotago goes live to millions of followers and subscribers across Twitch and YouTube, he brings in a legion of rabid fans. It’s his presence in the space that has helped boost the CDL to its highest point yet in terms of collective viewership.
This enormous growth has even come while LAGM has struggled in the early outings. The team currently sits in ninth place on the standings with a 2-5 win-loss record.
They’re still on track to compete at the first Major LAN event of the year, however, with the squad currently traveling to Madrid. They’ll be starting in the lower bracket, meaning they can’t afford even a single loss if they hope to make it through.
Their first match of the Major is scheduled for 8:30AM PT on Friday, January 31, which will be primetime viewing at 5:30PM in Paris.