On April 1, hundreds of people gathered at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin to watch the Minnesota Røkkr of the Call of Duty League (CDL) play two home series matches. This event marked the first time a professional qualifiers match was played in front of a live audience since the pandemic. I had the opportunity to travel out to this event myself to see what it was like to attend a live professional esports match in-person.
The main reason I was excited about going into this event was the opportunity to go to a CDL close enough to Chicago without having to travel long distances to attend. A few months prior to the pandemic, I had planned to go to one of the two planned events that was scheduled to be in Chicago that year, but it was canceled along with the other events planned for that season. The following year, the team which was originally selected to represent Chicago in the league merged with the one in Dallas, and the former Chicago spot was sold and moved to Boston soon after. To add insult to injury, this was right as in-person Majors were brought back and the now former Chicago team was given the opportunity to host the first Major of the 2022 season in Texas. And with there being little chance of any new teams being added besides the existing twelve given the recent post-pandemic financial troubles hitting esports in general, the possibility of there ever being a COD event within the Chicago area is pretty much non-existent.
Originally, I had planned to drive straight up to the from my house in Chicago, but decided to head up to my family’s lake house a few hours away from Madison the day before so it would cut my travel time in half. Almost a few hours after I arrived at my lake house, a massive storm rolled in and put the entire county into a tornado warning, which left me stuck in the basement for a while without power.
Not only was this my first time attending a professional Call of Duty event, it was also my first time visiting both Madison itself and the Orpheum Theatre, where it was being held at. I thought it was really cool that the Røkkr chose to host their event in such a historic venue as opposed to somewhere else in the city like the University of Wisconsin Field House or the Kohl Center. The venue was easily within walking distance of the parking garage I parked at a couple blocks away, and the view of the state capitol building I got from down the street while waiting for the doors to open was honestly spectacular. The interior of the venue was also spectacular and reminded me a lot of the one I used to see movies at when I was younger, given as both were built around the same time and share a lot of design influences from the era.
Overall, I would say that I had a really great time attending this event. It definitely worth the time traveling up to Wisconsin for and hopefully another one similar to this happens again either closer to Chicago or in Madison again.
Jack Harmon 