Evil Geniuses win the 2018 Call of Duty World League Championship

2018 Call of Duty World League Championship started on August 16 and concluded four days later, on August 19. This is the sixth CoD championship organized by Activision with a guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 million and a total of 32 participating teams. OpTic Gaming won the tournament in 2017, but this year they were eliminated in the group stage.

Tournament format and prize pool

The group stage matches of the 2018 Call of Duty World League Championship were played on August 15 and 16th. This part of the competition took place at the MLG Arena in Columbus, with 16 teams advancing to the playoffs. The Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio was the graceful host for the championship bracket stage, starting on August 17. The winners of the Call of Duty: World War II season were decided on Sunday and were awarded the first prize of $600,000.

Out of the 32 participating teams, 12 came from the CWL Global Pro League stage one. An additional four joined from the CWL Pro League and the final 16 positions were filled in the Last Chance qualifiers. During the group stage, the matches were played in a round-robin format and the winners were decided at the end of a best-of-five series. In the knockout stage, a double elimination bracket system was used and once again teams played a maximum of five games.

In the Grand Finals, the team coming from the Winners’ bracket was expected to win a Bo5 series, while the ones joining from Losers’ had to prevail on two such series. The bottom eight teams received a consolation prize of $10,000, while the next eight were awarded $12,500 each. Teams who made top 16 were presented with a $15,000 paycheck, while the next four got $10k more. Bigger payouts of $35,000 and $55,000 were awarded to those in the 7th/8th places, respectively the teams who came in five and six.

An All-American podium at CoD World League Championship

With six teams remaining in the race, one thing was certain: More than $1 million would be split among American teams. Only those on the podium would receive a four-digit amount, so the Final Bracket was particularly important. EG met TeamKaliber and sent them to the Losers’ final, where they would meet eUnited. The latter had one last chance to reach the podium when they took on FazeClan, but blew it. In the wake of the 3-0 sweep they had to find solace in the fact that they would still get $80,000.

The series for a place in the grand final was highly contested and the winner was decided in five matches. TeamKaliber prevailed in the decisive match against FazeClan to set a rematch with EG. They were able to win the first series, but because they came from the Losers’ bracket, they were expected to do it again. Evil Geniuses didn’t commit the same mistakes in the second series and swept TK. The winners got $600,000, while the runners up collected a paycheck worth $200,000. The $100,000 awarded to FazeClan for finishing in the third-place isn’t an amount to frown upon either.