The CPL's World Tour in 2005 marked a global expansion of esports, but concerns arose about fan engagement and attracting new audiences.

Later that year, the CPL was acquired by an investment group in Abu Dhabi, later becoming solely owned by WoLong Ventures PTE of Singapore.

The first event, called The FRAG, attracted 300 players competing for a prize pool of $4,000 in merchandise, as sponsors in computing found it easier to contribute spare graphics cards rather than cash.

The Grand Ballroom of the Westin Park Central Hotel hosted the next CPL event, "Extreme Annihilation," departing from the familiar Hyatt Regency.

Despite offering the largest prize purse in professional gaming to date, $50,000, the event faced challenges, including slow registrations and venue concerns.

Monte Fontenot, CPL Director of Events, emphasized that Las Vegas was not an ideal venue for gamers, and the game choice, Descent III, lacked broad appeal.

Ground Zero marked CPL's emergence into mainstream media, attracting both positive and negative attention from outlets such as Rolling Stone, Wired Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.

The event, which began on November 4, 2000, and featured the video game Midtown Madness 2, had 10,000 competitors, $300,000 in prizes, and became the largest PC tournament in history.

[5] Additionally, Karna, the parent company of Razer and sponsor of the Babbage's CPL Counter-Strike tournament, failed to fulfill its end, resulting in winners receiving only 2/3 of their prize winnings.

On March 14, the CPL announced a that it would be dropping Quake III Arena as the official tournament game in the World Championship Event in December, and named Counter-Strike as its replacement.

Additionally, a beta version of Half-Life TV (HLTV) was introduced at the event, creating a multicast spectator mode to allow an unlimited number of viewers to watch games.

Centered around the new FPS game Painkiller, the tour featured ten stops across four continents, culminating in a grand final in Times Square, New York, with a million-dollar prize pot and MTV broadcasting.

The post-World Tour era saw the CPL's challenges intensify, especially with the emergence of a new league, the World Series of Video Games (WSVG), operating on a similar business model—charging players for a spot at a Bring Your Own Computer LAN.

Led by management consultant Matt Ringel, WSVG recruited a dozen former CPL staff to organize events, starting with a competition near Louisville, Kentucky, in February 2006.

With the need for sponsors to support the summer event, Munoz managed to secure less lucrative deals with microchip maker AMD and graphics-card company ATI.

This move proved to be a safe bet for the WSVG, given that the CPL already had three thousand gamers registered at $100 each, instantly recouping $300,000 of the million-dollar investment.

"[11] On August 25, 2008, the CPL announced that it had signed an acquisition agreement with an investment group based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

She argued that the claim of the CPL being bought by a middle-eastern investment group from Abu Dhabi was untrue and fabricated to deceive previous owners, potential investors, the gaming community, and the public.

[2] On November 14, 2008, the newly formed CPL Holding Group, LLC from United Arab Emirates announced that it had acquired CAL.