According to Activision, the recent Call of Duty XP event, held this past Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles, was a smashing success on all fronts. In particular, the publisher claims that enough people watched the proceedings online to make it the second most watched event via Livestream in history. At the event, Activision unveiled a premium version of the Call of Duty Elite social service (running $49.99 per year), and attendees got to get their hands on some Modern Warfare 3.

"We had some pretty amazing metrics," Activision publishing boss Eric Hirshberg noted, in an interview with IndustryGamers. "Livestream, the company that broadcast the event for us, indicated that it's the second most viewed event in history – the first being the Royal Wedding and I think the third was a President Obama speech. So that's a pretty remarkable statistic."

Activision claims that the numbers, which the company did not provide to Shacknews for verification, also show that those viewing the event online were interested enough to watch for quite a while. "The average viewing time of the keynote speech was 30 minutes, and that's the kind of deep engagement that's very hard to get with a TV commercial or paid media," Hirshberg said.

While Activision is still investigating more facets of the event's effectiveness and reach, Hirshberg also mentioned that Call of Duty XP was a "global trended topic on Twitter" during the event's first day. Though he didn't know the exact headcount for the event, he also estimated that somewhere in the ballpark of 8,500 people attended Call of Duty XP in person.

Though Call of Duty XP was the first event of its type held by Activision, it's reasonable to assume that their enthusiasm about its reception could very well lead to other other such promotional events in the future.