Activision Blizzard’s Johanna Faries is shifting her focus to the Call of Duty franchise exclusively, and away from her role’s additional responsibilities as Head of Leagues for the CDL and OWL.
Faries has steadily added to her duties at Activision Blizzard since joining in 2018. As SVP, Head of Leagues and Commissioner for Call of Duty Esports – and later Commissioner of the Overwatch League – Faries oversaw the development of the CDL as it transitioned to a franchise format with buy-in slots that were reportedly worth around $25 million.
She was also named General Manager for Call of Duty back in April 2021 to oversee the publisher’s largest brand. As a result, her presence in esports league operations has reportedly subsided with her working more on CoD.
Since the change, Faries has focused her attention exclusively on CoD as The Esports Observer’s Kevin Hitt reported that esports leagues noticed “that when a meeting takes place and it has not been cancelled, Faries hasn’t been on a call in quite some time.”
Activision Blizzard have been making wholesale changes to leadership in recent months.A few months ahead of its next title launch, Call of Duty: Vanguard, Fairies replaced Byron Beede as GM for CoD, who left the company after 19 years. The job’s reach also extends to Warzone, CoD Mobile, and the CDL.
Former Chief Revenue Officer for Brand Media, and Esports Partnerships, Brandon Snow was promoted to Head of Activision Blizzard Esports back in July and will take charge of CDL and OWL.
Activision Blizzard have been restructuring their leadership lately in light of the lawsuits they face dealing with harassment and discrimination. Faries will now have more oversight on the company’s flagship franchise.
Faries will still have some oversight of CDL as COD GM but will focus more on the popular franchise.As the company looks ahead to the third season of the CDL, CoD esports expects to have another format change with Vanguard out soon that will impact players and teams.
Meanwhile, the OWL has been struggling to capture audiences as of late, according to data from ESCharts, and is expected to make the switch to Overwatch 2 as soon as it can.
For now it seems like Snow will head up the leagues’ day-to-day, while Faries will create the vision for where Call of Duty will go from here.
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