From $1.5M contracts to players paying their own $2K transfer fees, a damning indictment of the Call of Duty League economics

From multi-million-dollar deals and record-high transfers for League superstars just six years ago, to minimum-wage contracts and players “buying” their own transfer fees out, the Call of Duty League’s economic landscape has crashed and burned.

Call of Duty esports has always had a complicated relationship with Benjamin Franklin. The $100 bills flow like there’s no tomorrow when it comes to the annual releases, making the core game the fourth-highest-selling franchise of all time, but in an esports sense, it’s a different game.

While many competitor titles are built with a competitive mindset, such as VALORANT and Counter-Strike, the large majority of Call of Duty’s community are far from esports enthusiasts. It’s the one war that the franchise has never won, and its $69 billion owners have become satisfied with leaving the professional scene to an afterthought.

Yet, the Call of Duty esports scene has been the leading hub of console gaming for over 15 years, growing from the double-desked pool play pits to sold-out 30,000-seat arenas. With that, wages, buyouts, and prize pools have fluctuated more than the Modern Warfare-Black Ops tug of war.

Recent ebbs and flows on the Call of Duty League stock exchange have hit an all-time low, though, with a chasm of quality opening up, polarising tactics, and putting the player pipeline off making the jump to the professional league.

For the last three seasons, especially, almost every team in the league has suffered from a lack of funding, scaling back the caliber of players they can attract due to budget wages and limited support. It’s the reason so many teams have sold their spots and why others have merged to join forces with bigger sharks in the industry, like Miami Heretics, G2 Minnesota, and Toronto KOI.

Arguably, the biggest change in philosophies is Cloud9 New York. Typically, the old Subliners’ ownership operated with a sensible freedom in their operations. Like everyone, they went big on star talent with a team blessed by Dylan “Attach” Price and Thomas “ZooMaa” Paparatto from the get go, and invested smartly over the years in spearheading legends like James “Clayster” Eubanks and rising phenoms like Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez; the latter of whom was offered a reported $1.5 million three-year deal to stay with the org, back in 2022. 

This seems like a distant memory, though, as just two years after winning their World Championship, Subliners sold their spot to Cloud9. 

Cloud9 decided to operate in a completely different manner. At the start of the 2025/26 season, Cloud9 announced that it’s changing its structure and picking up a full Tier 2 team, hoping to grow throughout the year and become a long-term investment. 

On shoestring budgets, helped by the removal of the CDL’s minimum requirement of a $55,000 annual salary in favor of state-mandated wage requirements ($33,300 in New York), Cloud9 reportedly told players that they will be heavily compensated on winnings and bundle sales, rather than a base wage – the waitresses of Call of Duty esports.

CEO Jack Etienne told Breaking Point: “Our thinking is focused on putting players in a better position while they are with us regarding MTX sales and prize earnings. Players and coaches will earn 100%.

“I don’t want to lose money for my investors, but I also want my players to earn. The key behind this will be to incentivize players to drive the most skin sales.”

It’s a system that they no doubt deploy in VALORANT to some extent, having signed the skin salesman himself in Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro.

Unfortunately for the roster, they’ve failed to earn a penny in winnings, with an insurmountable gulf in class between them and the next caliber of teams.

This approach was capped off last week, when the team decided to pick up a new Tier 2 rookie, Jason “Wevy” Medina, who was contracted to Telluride Bush. The Barstool tangent revealed that Cloud9 refused to pay $10,000 for Wevy’s buyout but would agree to a $2,000 fee. However, this was soon found to have been money pulled from Wevy’s inevitable Esports World Cup earnings, as he would be the only one on his team not to keep the full amount.

From offering $1.5 to the CDL’s best player to refusing to pay $2,000 on a Challengers up-and-comer, Cloud9 is the biggest indictment of how the CDL economics have fallen beyond repair.

But it’s not just Cloud9.

Toronto KOI is one of the most prestigious orgs in the CDL, having won multiple events throughout its tenure, similarly to Subliners/Cloud9, and it too has fallen into the checkbook shenanigans.

Earlier this week, Toronto Ultra – despite pushing for an outside chance at a World Championship upset – sold their best player, Joseph “JoeDeceives” Romero, to Paris Gentle Mates for a reported $125,000.

The buyout continued the precedent that the OverActive Media and KOI joint ownership group simply cannot afford to keep their top talent when the biggest fish come calling.

It wouldn’t be the first time, as Toronto let Thomas “Scrap” Ernst leave for LA Thieves, who now serves as one of the top three assault rifle players in the League. His skill was evident since being on Toronto, but money talked and the organization listened.

It’s a clear consequence, even a motivation not to do well, as the org recoups money in transfers rather than take the gamble on better results.

Following the departure of JoeDeceives, OverActive Media CEO Adam Adamou said: “The offer was one neither the org nor Joe was going to turn down. It was a good deal for the club and the right move for him, and those two don’t always line up. 

“Letting him go was on me, and I’d make the same call again. He earned a shot at the bag with how he played and how he carried himself. When a guy gives a team everything Joe gave us, you don’t stand in the way. You do right by him. So that’s exactly what we did.

“This was a hard call, but it’s the one that sets us up to keep delivering for you. We’ll do what we’ve always tried to do best: find talent and grow it. But that’s a conversation for another day.”

From Adamou himself, the need for futureproofing the team outweighed the financial risk to push for a World Championship.

Of course, revenue is hard to come by, and although Cloud9 and Toronto KOI are out there baiting their lives for the rest to benefit from, it shouldn’t be an indictment on them for choosing how to survive, but rather the League as its own entity.

It wasn’t always like this.

The birth of the franchised CDL system during the pandemic boom saw investors pour endless financial support into teams entering the elite league of arguably the most popular game of its time. From mainstream sports titans like the Kroenke Entertainment Group (Los Angeles Rams) and Sterling VC (New York Mets) to established esports giants partnering with huge sponsors, money wasn’t short in the early League days.

Now, that same system is hindering the esport. The locked licenses in the 12-team CDL are strangling the life out of the organizations, for very little gain back, and even dissuading more investing orgs from joining.

Earlier this year, SpaceStation Gaming CEO Shawn “Unit” Pellerin revealed that he tried to enter the scene, but the financial burden of the license was so heavy that it was almost impossible to justify.

“What we found after deep diving into the economics is that the license, which would be ‘transferred’ at a cost, was more of a liability than an asset,” he said. “The real value is the brands attached to the license, making it hard to justify a heavy cost to obtain it. 

“The cost to operate vs revenue potential would also make it impossible to be competitive in the current ecosystem.

“The other issue entering as a new organization was the lack of available talent to build around. Challengers does its job cycling new talent to the CDL teams but lacks purpose for a Challengers teams to improve with limited opportunities to compete against the best.”

What’s clear is that the Call of Duty League needs to revise its structure. A less-gatekept partnership system, similar to Rocket League’s, could work, allowing the most devoted orgs to reap the rewards of skins while opening the bracket to more competition and an entry point for new teams.

However, it’s about time that the League and its teams realize that the 2019 goldmine is no longer there. Sponsors are harder to come by, content is harder to profit from now that Warzone has plummeted, and direct capital investment carries a huge risk.

Of course, you can win, as Gentle Mates has proven, but there can only be a handful of these success stories, and there needs to be a lower running cost and greater emphasis on visibility.

The Call of Duty League never lacks for action, but there’s a real disconnect that is hurting everyone’s pockets.