From $1.5M contracts to players paying themselves $2K in transfer fees, it’s the worst economic case for the Call of Duty League

From multi-million dollar deals and record high transfers of the League’s most famous players in just six years, to minimum wage contracts and players “buying” their own transfer money, Call of Duty LeagueThe economy crashed and burned.

Call of Duty esports has always had a complicated relationship with Benjamin Franklin. The $100 bills flow like no future when it comes to the release of the year, making the main game the fourth best-selling franchise of all time, but in an esports sense, it’s a different game.

Although many competitive titles are built with a competitive mindset, such as VALORANT and Counter-Strike, the majority of the Call of Duty community is far from sports enthusiasts. It’s one battle the franchise has never won, and its $69 billion owners are content to leave the technical area to speculation.

However, the Call of Duty esports scene has been a staple of console gaming for over 15 years, growing from two-desk arcades to 30,000-seat commercial arenas. With that, salaries, purchases, and prize pools have fluctuated more than the Modern Warfare-Black Ops tug of war.

The recent ebb and flow of the Call of Duty League stock exchange has been much less, however, with the gaping quality chasm, divisive tactics, and making it impossible for players to jump to the professional league.

In the last three seasons, especially, almost all of them Clubs in the league are suffering from a severe financial crisis, which is holding back the quality of players they can attract due to budget wages and limited support. It’s the reason many teams have sold their properties and why some have teamed up to join the biggest sharks in the industry, such as Miami Heretics, G2 Minnesota, and Toronto KOI.

Undoubtedly, the biggest change in philosophies Cloud9 New York. In general, the old ownership of Subliners operated with a reasonable degree of freedom in their operations. Like everyone else, they went ahead with star talent and a team blessed by Dylan “Paste” Value and Thomas “ZooMaa” Paparatto from the get-go, and invested wisely over the years with legends like James “Clayster” Eubanks and rising trends like Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez; The latter was given a three-year, $1.5 million contract to stay with the organization, back in 2022.

This seems like a distant memory, however, as just two years after winning their world championship, Subliners sold their property to Cloud9.

Cloud9 decided to work in a completely different way. At the beginning of the 2025/26 season, Cloud9 announced that it is changing its structure and gathering a full Tier 2 team, hoping to grow throughout the year and become a long-term investment.

In a tight budget, aided by the removal of the CDL’s minimum $55,000 annual salary requirement in line with state-mandated salary requirements ($33,300 in New York), Cloud9 reportedly told players that they would be compensated more by winnings and bulk sales, rather than a base salary — Call of Duty esports giants.

CEO Jack Etienne told Breaking Point: “Our focus is on putting players in the best position while they are with us in terms of MTX sales and rewards. Players and coaches will earn 100%.

“I don’t want to lose money from my investors, but I want my players to earn as well. The key to this will be to motivate the players to promote the sale of leather more.”

It’s a system they’re undoubtedly using in VALORANT to some extent, as they’ve signed a skin dealer himself in Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro.

Unfortunately for the list, they failed to find a penny in the win, with an insurmountable gap in class between them and the next team.

This practice was closed last week, when the team decided to pick up a new Tier 2 player, Jason “Wevy” Medina, who was under contract with Telluride Bush. Barstool’s Tangent reported that Cloud9 refused to pay $10,000 for Wevy’s purchase but would accept $2,000. However, this soon turned out to be an inevitable drain on Wevy Esports World Cup wages, as he would be the only one in his group who did not keep the full amount.

From offering $1.50 to CDL’s best player to refusing to pay $2,000 to Challengers up-and-comer, Cloud9 is the biggest culprit of CDL’s irreparable economic decline.

But it’s not just Cloud9.

Toronto KOI is one of the most respected orgs in the CDL, having won many events throughout its time, along with Subliners/Cloud9, and it also fell into the check of shekels.

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

The acquisition continued the premise that OverActive Media and the joint KOI ownership group could not afford to retain their top talent when the big fish came calling.

It wouldn’t be the first time, as Toronto allowed Thomas “Scrap” Ernst to leave for the LA Thieves, who now serves as one of the top three shooters in the League. His talent was evident from his time in Toronto, but the money talked and the organization listened.

It is a clear result, even an incentive to do poorly, as the organization returns money from transfers rather than taking a gamble on better results.

After the departure of JoeDeceives, the CEO of OverActive Media Adam Adamou said: “The request was not an org or Joe would refuse. It was a good deal for the club and a good move for him, and those two are not always in line.

“It was up to me to let him go, and I was going to make the same call again, he got the gun in the bag the way he played and the way he carried himself.

“This was a tough call, but it’s one that prepares us to keep delivering. We’re going to 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 to protect the team in the future outweighed the financial risk to push for the World Championship.

Of course, income is hard to come by, and even though Cloud9 and Toronto KOI are there helping their lives so that everyone else can benefit from it, it shouldn’t be their fault for choosing how to live, but rather the Organization as its organization.

It wasn’t always like that.

The birth of the CDL franchised system during the height of the epidemic saw investors pour endless financial support into the teams that entered the top league of the most popular sport at the time. From mainstream sports celebrities like Kroenke Entertainment Group (Los Angeles Rams) and Sterling VC (New York Mets) to established sports giants partnering with major sponsors, money was never short of the League’s early days.

Now, that same system is banning esport. The CDL’s locked licenses for 12 groups choke the life out of organizations, for very little profit, and prevent organizations that invest more money 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 too heavy to justify.

“What we found after going deeper into the economy is that the license, which was to be ‘transferred’ with costs, was more of a liability than an asset,” he said. “The real number of brands that are included in the license, which makes it difficult to justify the huge costs to get it.

“Operating costs compared to revenue potential also make it impossible to compete in the current ecosystem.

“Another issue that came in as a new organization was the lack of existing construction talent.

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

However, it is time for the League and its teams to realize that the gold mines of 2019 are no more. Sponsors are hard to find, content is hard to come by now that Warzone has dropped, and direct investment is high risk.

Yes, you can win, as Gentle Mates has proven, but there can only be a handful of these success stories, and there needs to be low operating costs and a strong emphasis on visibility.

Call of Duty League is never lacking in action, but there are real disconnects that hurt everyone’s pockets.