Activision wants Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to become your new obsession. The first big steps in that plan include a sports fan convention and “Obsession” star Inde Navarrette.
Fanatics Fest 2026, which takes place this weekend at the Javits Center in New York City, is expected to welcome 150,000 attendees between kickoff Thursday and closing day Sunday. During the event, sports from F1 to FIFA and the NBA will be showcased through panels, events and athlete meet-and-greets. And featured alongside these top brands is Xbox’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, the first video game ever to take the top spot at Fanatics Fest.
Call of Duty players may not be the first group sports fans think of attending a convention (with all due respect to the large esports industry), but Activision Chief Marketing Officer Tyler Barr says there’s a clear logic behind their choice.
“It started with an insight. A lot of people who buy our games typically buy one or two games a year. They buy us and maybe sports games as well,” Barr told Variety. “And our overlap with sports is really strong. It’s always been there. I saw players shouting at us in interviews and podcasts. I saw them talking about communication. When they play together, it really helps with communication on the field. We saw it with the Chiefs. We heard it from the Knicks players as well.”
After two consecutive years of releasing Black Ops, Bahl and the Activision team wanted to take a different approach to marketing this year’s new Call of Duty game, a Modern Warfare game from Xbox’s Infinity Ward studio, by letting as many fans as possible demo the game before its Oct. 23 release.
“We were thinking about one thing we really wanted to do differently this year: not put the game in people’s hands before it’s released,” Bahl says. “There are betas and things like that. But I think it goes back to those days of going to events, going to experiences, and letting people play. That’s what we wanted to do.”
There’s a “very strong Venn diagram” between “Call of Duty” gamers and sports fans, so Barr and his colleagues thought Fanatics Fest was one option that could easily reach thousands of players. But Activision’s CMO says even event organizers didn’t anticipate what the Modern Warfare 4 team had in mind.
“I don’t think they expected us to get this big,” Bahr said. “I remember the first conversation. I think they thought we were just going to set up a tiny little booth somewhere and maybe someone would play video games. But in many ways we made it very clear that we wanted to be there and really have a presence. What you’re going to walk into is F1, FIFA and us.”
For “CoD,” the “big” event at Fanatics Fest will include an activation with Aston Martin and Polaris, a celebrity grudge match between the Knicks, Yankees and WWE stars, tons of merchandise, crowbars and a live panel featuring NBA star and “Call of Duty” actor Kevin Durant, Infinity Ward director Mark Grigsby and “Obsession” star Inde Navarrette.
Yes, Navarrette is a hardcore Call of Duty player who has been streaming his gameplay for years, which is why he was asked to participate in Saturday’s panel discussion about Call of Duty’s influence on pop culture.
“We just want to celebrate her and the amazing success of ‘Obsession’ and watch her explode,” says Barr. “We’ve been following her and watching her streams and she was very competitive. So when we announced, if you look at the comments, some people may not know that she was a ‘CoD’ streamer, but all of her fans are coming out and defending her and saying, ‘She’s legit. Go back and watch her streams. She was very competitive.'”
Barr said that while a formal partnership or project between Navarrette and the Call of Duty franchise is “not off the table,” the event is intended to bring Navarrette back and connect with the Call of Duty community, given that’s where she got her start.
“I think my brother started playing CoD when I was 7 or 8,” Navarrette told Variety in an email interview. “He got me into Modern Warfare 2. We would play local parties and duo with each other. My favorite map was Rust, with SCAR as my primary and THUMPER as my secondary. He would usually win.”
Navarrette added: “For me, ‘Call of Duty’ has completely taken over my mind. There are so many moving parts that I have to keep my head spinning all the time. In a way, it almost turns my mind off and I don’t think about anything else. It’s also a very nostalgic part of my childhood that I want to go back to.”
In addition to drawing connections between sports, pop culture, and “CoD,” Activision’s mission this weekend is to make great use of its Fanatics Fest location in New York City, the setting for “Modern Warfare 4.” Bahl is keen to emphasize how much New York culture, including the music of the Wu-Tang Clan, will be incorporated into the game, which is primarily about the war that breaks out between North and South Korea.
“There are two stories in this game. One is the story of South Korea and North Korea, but the other is the iconic character of Task Force 141. And[Modern Warfare character Colonel John]Price starts the whole story in New York City. He’s in a nightclub and on the run, but he’s also chasing[Warfare villain Vladimir]Makarov,” Barr said. (Don’t worry, he hasn’t released anything ahead of Saturday’s Modern Warfare 4 panel discussion, which was featured in previously released footage.)
“So it was really a coincidence that that scene in the trailer was used in New York City because there was so much going on,” Barr says. “There’s the World Cup finals. The Knicks win. It’s Yankees vs. Dodgers. Jay-Z is doing it at Yankee Stadium.[Modern Warfare 4]also has Price from New York. I think there were connections between Wu-Tang and Wu-Tang, all those connections. It made sense to us.”
It’s a bold new strategy for the Call of Duty franchise, which has struggled in recent years, but appears to be regaining new energy ahead of the release of Modern Warfare 4 amid talk of Taylor Sheridan’s Call of Duty movie. Barr remains tight-lipped about any news that could be released this weekend about the Paramount Pictures project directed by Peter Berg.
“There might be a little announcement or connection to the movie,” Barr said. “Well, this is a big announcement for us. I think the fans are very excited. But I think we’ll save that for Saturday.”
When asked if he would be interested in being involved in the CoD movie, Navarrette replied: “I’m excited to see what direction they decide to go in, especially since there’s already so much story in the game in terms of the campaign. I’d love to be a part of it as the voice of the computer!”
