The Call of Duty League 2021 season is winding down, with Stage 5 kicking off on July 8. Only one tournament is left before CDL Champs. 2021’s final event is set to be the biggest in Call of Duty’s history, boasting a giant prize pool and a huge audience in Los Angeles.
Champs follows the CDL Stage 5 Major and will only admit the top eight teams in the standings. The bracket and schedule for the event work much differently than in years past, so viewers have some catching up to do before they watch the tournament.
CDL Champs 2021 bracket and seeding
Champs begins on August 19 and runs until the 22. The first three days of the event are considered the playoffs, with the final day being the championship itself. The playoffs pit the eight best teams in the CDL against one another for the chance to advance to championship Sunday. Only one match, the grand finals, will take place that day.
The eight teams competing at CDL Champs are as follows:
- Atlanta FaZe
- Toronto Ultra
- Dallas Empire
- OpTic Chicago
- Minnesota ROKKR
- New York Subliners
- Florida Mutineers
- LA Thieves
The Minnesota ROKKR shook up the bracket quite a bit when they shocked the world with their Stage 5 Major win. While it wasn’t enough to vault them into a top-five spot in the standings, it does make their first-round match much more intriguing.
There were only two changes to the standings as a result of the Stage 5 Major. OpTic Chicago leaped the New York Subliners for the fourth seed thanks to their top-three showing at the major. This gives OpTic the map-veto advantage when the two squads face off in the first round. The Subliners have looked out of sorts since Stage 5 began while the opposite can be said for OpTic, so this match could be over quickly.
The other change was the Florida Mutineers and LA Thieves traded spots in the standings. LA now holds the seventh seed and Florida is in the eighth. Both will start in the loser’s bracket, however.
The full bracket for the event can be found below.
The tournament will be double-elimination for the top six teams and single-elimination for the 7th and 8th ranked teams. Something interesting to note with the bracket is that the top two seeds, Atlanta and Toronto, only need to win two series to make it to the grand finals. This means two series wins could net the first two seeds a minimum of $650,000. There’s a total of $2.15 million up for grabs. First place will take home $1.2 million, second $650,000 and third $300,000.
Here’s how to watch CDL Champs
As with every event in the season, CDL Champs is solely being broadcasted to the CDL YouTube channel. For fans who want to go to the event, tickets go on sale on July 16 and are purchased through the CDL. Champs is being held at the Galen Center at USC in Los Angeles this year.
Stage 5 of the CDL continues throughout this month, with the Major starting on July 29.
