The Call of Duty League is the premier franchise esports league for Call of Duty as organized by Activision. The series has a huge following in the United States, with fans cheering on teams representing their city or state.?

?The Stage 4 Major came down to a clash between the east and west coasts, with the New York Subliners taking on the LA Thieves, after four days of intense competition amongst the best CDL teams. The Thieves have consistently outperformed throughout the tournament, from defeating the reigning champions, Atlanta Faze, to beating the in-form Toronto Ultra.?

The New York Subliners also started the tournament on a winning streak. In the winner’s bracket, the team defeated Minnesota ROKKR and Florida Mutineers in back-to-back games to propel themselves forward.?

?Prior to the grand finale, the LA Thieves and New York Subliners faced off in the winners’ final, with the Subliners taking the advantage with a 3-1 victory. The Thieves, on the other hand, defeated Atlanta Faze 3-1 in the lower-bracket losers’ final to steal a spot in the decider.

?The LA Thieves and New York Subliners had a rematch as they met for the second time in the grand finals. After an electric battle, the Thieves won with a 5-3 record in the best-of-nine outing.

The LA Thieves roster fielded for the grand finals included Kenny “Kenny” Williams, Zack “Drazah” Jordan, Sam “Octane” Larew, Dylan “Envoy” Hannon, and substitute Nathaniel “Pentagrxm” Thomas. The New York Subliners fielded Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez, Ian “Crimsix” Porter, Paul “PaulEhx” Avila, Matthew “KiSMET” Tinsley, and James “Clayster” Eubanks.??

The first and second maps �� Hardpoint (Bocage) and Search & Destroy (Desert Siege) �� went the way of the Subliners, with 250-205 and 6-4 scorelines. The LA Thieves won their first map in the third round of the series, Control (Berlin), 0-3, and took control of the fourth map, Hardpoint (Berlin), with a 140-250 score.

??The two parties split the fifth and sixth maps, with LA winning Search & Destroy (Bocage) and NY taking out Control (Bocage). Map seven, Search & Destroy (Berlin), and map eight, Hardpoint (Tuscan), were conquered by the Thieves, thereby bringing the finals to an end with a 5-3 scoreline in LA’s favor.

??With the Call of Duty League Stage 4 Major ended, the various franchises will take a breather before the upcoming 2022 Call of Duty League Championship tournament, scheduled to be held from August 4-7 at the Galen Center, Los Angeles, with a US$2,550,000 prize pool.

?More esports news

?Seattle Surge haven’t impressed anyone with their 1-4 run through the group stage, but they deserve some praise for stunning OpTic Chicago on Thursday. Results like that suggest that the Surge have the talent to be competitive, even though that rarely shows.

London Royal Ravens ended the CDL Stage 4 group stage in fifth with a 1-4 record. Across their five outings, the Royal Ravens managed to win only five maps, three of which came from their 3-1 victory against the struggling Los Angeles Guerrillas, while the other two came from their 2-3 loss to another shaky team, Dallas Empire.

This is a match between two iffy teams with not much to separate them. Seattle (5-19) have been less successful across the season, but they aren’t that much worse than London (7-18). A five-map series is entirely likely, but we like the Surge at $1.98 better.

?Los Angeles Guerrillas enter the CDL Stage 4 Major off a disappointing 0-5 run through the regular season that includes a very poor 3-15 map differential. In their defence, the Guerrillas had to fight in a very competitive group that featured three of the top four teams in the league.

Los Angeles Thieves have been one of the most up-and-down teams in the league, making it extremely tough to make much sense of how strong they really are. They have been making way too many roster changes, which isn’t helping them one bit.

Thieves should be viewed as the better team here, but we don’t believe they’re really as good as the CDL betting odds suggest. The Guerrillas have enough talent to keep this one close with a slight chance they might even upset their townsmen.

?OpTic Chicago and Dallas Empire last met a month ago in the lower bracket of the CDL Stage 3 Major. OpTic won that match 3-0, and we don’t believe that the Empire will manage to turn things around here.

The reigning CDL champions haven’t been performing too well for the past few months, and while they put together a 3-2 record during the group stage, that number doesn’t mean much since their only decent result in that stretch was a 3-2 victory against Florida Mutineers.

OpTic are 6-3 in their last nine outings and 4-3 since their win against the Empire in Stage 3, which is pretty impressive considering those losses came against Toronto Ultra, Atlanta FaZe, and Seattle Surge. OpTic have been playing well and are clearly in much better shape than Ian “C6” Porter and his crew.

?New York Subliners haven’t lost to a non-elite CDL team since the end of April when they slipped against London Royal Ravens (2-3). They have since played 11 games and won all but two against Toronto Ultra (0-3) and Atlanta FaZe (2-5).

Minnesota R?KKR have had some flashes of greatness across the last month, but overall they have been mediocre at best. The R?KKR haven’t beaten a top-five CDL team since their 3-2 win against OpTic Chicago during the second CDL Major, but even that result doesn’t mean much since OpTic weren’t playing well at the time.

The Subliners are the second-best team in the league, whereas the R?KKR are still 60 CDL points short of reaching the top five. NY shouldn’t be losing games like this.