E:5: Dallas Empire Wins First Call of Duty League Championship

In the first ever Call of Duty League Championship since the CDL created franchise teams, the Dallas Empire, formerly known as EnVy, beat the Atlanta FaZe 5-1 in a best of nine series.

The Dallas team, comprised of Grand Final MVP Ian “C6” Porter (formerly known as “Crimsix”), James “Clayster” Eubanks, Cuyler “Huke” Garland, Anthony “Shotzzy” Cuevas-Castro, and Indervir “iLLeY” Dhaliwal, won in convincing fashion when they took the first four games to go up 4-0 over the FaZe. FaZe, comprised of Chris “Simp” Lehr, Michael “MajorManiak” Szymaniak, Preston “Priestahh” Greiner, Tyler “aBeZy” Pharris, and McArthur “Cellium” Jovel, had previously won five of their six regular season matches versus Empire en route to the #1 seed, but couldn’t seal the deal in the Finals. Porter and Eubanks join Damon “Karma” Barlow as the only three players in the world with three COD championship rings. 

The winning factor of the day was teamwork. Atlanta was all over the kill-feed, but Empire looked much more cohesive. During the final match to win the championship, a Search and Destroy on Rammaza, Atlanta tried a last-minute rush on the bomb and found every single door and window covered by members of Empire. FaZe only won one game of the series, a game of Hardpoint on Gun Runner. There was simply no way for them to win in the face of Empire’s solidarity.

The 2020 CDL Championship peaked at 331,000 viewers over both the main and co-partners streams, the most ever for a Call of Duty esports event.