I sat down in the living room with my kids, fired up Twitch, and watched the Fortnite World Cup back in July. I was blown away with how well it was produced. I can't really come up with a better analogy of how it felt other than it was like watching a Game Show and the Super Bowl at the same time.
100 people in 5 elimination style matches - first place took home $3 million. 100th place took home $100,000. And these are like ALL teens (20 year olds apparently are too slow to qualify in Fortnite)! The payout structure gives it that game-show feeling - yet, these 100 players had to qualify and they are the best of the best at the game. Competing. It was intense to watch. The kid who won it was 16. His parents we're joking about it in disbelief because of the real world stigma around gaming and raising their kid around it - they did the grades game; if his grades in school were up he could play and if not it was taken away. They laughed it's a good thing his grades stayed up.
I know that something like 6 million people watched the Fortnite Black Hole Event - 38 hours of a black screen. I guess I find it surprising that Call of Duty is the game the Wilfs are investing in, but this esports team is basically filling a spot in something that already exists. I hope CoD is popular enough with viewers to generate interest - it's not overly popular on Twitch...