VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers: Viewership Stats and Results of Japan, Brazil, APAC, LATAM, Korea

It is no secret that the main esports audience of Valorant is Europeans and North Americans. But the shooter by Riot Games also has great success with viewers in many other regions. Esports Charts sums up the regional Challengers tournaments & the achievements of LOUD in Brazil, and takes a look at who popularizes the game in Japan.

Also read: VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers — EMEA and NA viewership results

Japan

The biggest fight in the Japanese qualifiers was once again between the two most successful teams in the region — ZETA DIVISION and Crazy Raccoon. They played three times in two stages of qualifiers, and each time Koji ‘Laz’ Ushida's squad was stronger. VCT 2022 Stage 1 Masters will be the second international tournament in the team's history for ZETA; last season they only made it to Masters: Berlin and placed 13-15th there.

The Japanese teams are not yet ready to compete with Europe and North America in terms of achievements, but in terms of the audience they can: competitive Valorant is extremely popular in the country.

VCT 2022 Japan Stage 1 Viewership Statistics

VCT 2022 Japan Stage 1 Challengers took place in February and March, and its matches were on air for over 100 hours in total. In that time, the tournament accumulated 7.3 million Hours Watched and reached 73.4K Average Viewers.

The finals attracted 227K Peak Viewers watching the decisive moments of the game. Only ZETA and CR games were included in the top 5 of the event.

Statistics on the most watched teams of the tournament are available with a PRO subscription

The most popular channel was the official broadcast of valorant_jpn, but a significant contribution to the viewership statistics of the tournament was made by community-casters as well. Streamers fps_shaka, jasper7se and stylishnoob4 attracted tens of thousands of viewers.

Brazil

Before the start of the Brazilian final qualifiers, LOUD signed up a contract with Pancada e Amigos team which kept the MIBR team out of the Challengers stage. The entry of such a popular streamer association into the discipline helped the tournament attract a new audience.

VCT 2022 Brazil Stage 1 Viewership Statistics

LOUD soundly won qualifiers without losing a single map in the final stage. It also became the most popular team of the tournament by Average Viewers, and was second only to NiP by Hours Watched, as the latter played more maps in the tournament.

There are four LOUD matches in the top 5 at once, and the Grand final against Ninjas in Pyjamas drew 123.9K Peak Viewers — the fourth highest total of any region. It should be noted that NiP also made it to the Stage 1 Masters: the team defeated Chile's Leviatán in South America Finals, and that match peaked at 108K Portuguese & Spanish-speaking viewers.

One of the most watched casters of the event was LOUD's streamer Eduardo coreano Martins, who contributed about 12% to the total Hours Watched. He also attracted 23.6K Peak Viewers, which is the second-highest result among the channels that covered VCT 2022 Brazil Stage 1 Challengers.

Region Comparison

Qualifiers for Masters: Reykjavík took place in three more regions. KRÜ Esports became the best in LATAM Playoffs, Paper Rex and XERXIA were the strongest teams in the Asia-Pacific region, and DRX (former Vision Strikers) won qualifiers in South Korea.

VCT Stage 1 Challengers Viewership Comparison by PV & HW

Japan holds third place among all Valorant Champions Tour 2022 regions in terms of viewership metrics. At the same time, there is an extremely high interest in the game in South America, where the game is popularized by well-known content-creators: for example, the event for Latin America was covered by Team Heretics and Giants' content creators.

The least interest in the discipline is in Korea, where the average audience of VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers was only 11K viewers. This is three times fewer than in the Asia-Pacific region, which ranks next-to-last by the metric.

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The first matches of VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters will take place on April 10 and it is extremely interesting how many viewers will follow the tournament. We should remind you that the current record in the discipline by audience belongs to Valorant Champions held in November; it was watched by 1.089 million Peak Viewers.