Valorant Regional Leagues 2022: Viewership Stats and Results of Regions

Regional Leagues are a new feature for Valorant esports in 2022, and they are a part of the international ecosystem of the discipline, unlike the regional European LoL leagues. Regional leagues are placed at a level below VCT Challengers, but they include many of Europe's top esports organizations, such as OG, MOUZ, Team Vitality, Alliance, Tundra Esports and others.

The first stage of Valorant Regional Leagues 2022 is about to end. In a new Esports Charts article, we'll tell you how the regional EMEA leagues went, which regions attracted the most viewers, and how a famous streamer affected the popularity of the Spanish league.

What are Valorant Regional Leagues?

In 2022, Riot Games changed the Valorant competition system in EMEA by adding eight regional leagues: Turkey, DACH, the CIS, Northern Europe, MENA, France, Spain and Eastern Europe. The top team at the end of each regional tournament gets a slot in VCT 2022: EMEA Challengers Promotion, and the eight strongest teams at the end of the second stage will become participants in VRL 2022: Finals, which will be held in the summer.

Due to the tragic events in Ukraine, the CIS Regional League competition has been suspended and the future of its participants is still uncertain. At the time of publication, the winners of the six leagues are known, and the strongest MENA team will be determined on March 25.

Valorant Regional League Results

Spain was the most popular region by viewership statistics among all the leagues. Rebels Gaming, founded by the famous Spanish footballer and Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea, became the champion of VLR 2022 Spain: Rising Stage 1. In the Grand final, the team defeated Case Esports 3-2.

The Spanish League amassed about 1.7 million Hours Watched and attracted 22.6K Average Viewers. The most popular match of the tournament was the semi-final of Rebels Gaming against KOI, which attracted 170.9K Peak Viewers. It is noteworthy that KOI owners are well-known in Spain streamer Ibai ‘Ibai’ Llanos and FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique.

It is interesting that the Grand final of VLR 2022 Spain: Rising Stage 1 drew 10 times fewer Peak Viewers than the semi-final with KOI. Spain would have been the leader by this metric among other regions even without the Ibai's streams: the main event broadcast alone drew more than 50K Peak Viewers.

It should be noted that almost half of the total tournament's Hours Watched (46.5%) were generated by viewers of Ibai, who followed his team's games closely on streams. His broadcasts made KOI the most popular team in the tournament, and their matches made up the top 5 of the league's most popular contests. Ibai and Pike's team games were watched by 62.2K Average Viewers, almost twice as many as Rebels Gaming.

Turkey ranks second by viewership in the Regional Leagues. In the Grand final of VRL 2022 Turkey: Birlik Stage 1, Turkish media personalities' teams encountered each other. The founder of Surreal Esports, which became the league champion, is a Turkish Youtuber Tugay Gök. Among the co-owners of Fire Flux Esports, which took second place, are content creators Cantuğ unlost Özsoy, Burak Şentürk, Berk Keklik and the team's coach Salih ‘marqnue’ Onaran.

The match between Surreal Esports and Fire Flux Esports was the league's most popular game, drawing 21.1K Peak Viewers. It happened as part of the third game day of the group stage, not in the Grand final. The decisive match of the event between these teams was not even in the top 5 by Peak Viewers. VRL 2022 Turkey: Birlik Stage 1 accumulated a total of 656.3K Hours Watched and drew 7.1K Average Viewers.

Fire Flux Esports became the most popular team in the league, attracting 9.25K Average Viewers and amassing 240.6K Hours Watched (36% of the tournament's total). This is partially due to Cantuğ unlost Özsoy was streaming FFE games throughout the league.

Among the participants in VRL 2022 France: Revolution Stage 1 were the squads of such famous European organizations as OG (3rd-4th place) and Team Vitality (5th place). Sector One won the league with a 3-2 win over Team BDS in the Grand final. The French league's viewership numbers were the third highest of any region — 161.5K Hours Watched, 1.88K Average Viewers and 4.75K Peak Viewers.

German team FOKUS became the VRL 2022 DACH: Evolution Stage 1 champion, defeating MOUZ in the semi-finals and Wave Esports in the Grand final of the tournament. The league amassed 114K Hours Watched and attracted 1.43K Average Viewers. The Grand final drew 6.74K Peak Viewers and became the most watched match of the event.

VRL 2022 Northern Europe: Polaris Stage 1 and VRL 2022 East: Surge Stage 1 are behind all regional leagues by viewership statistics, accumulating slightly more than 50K Hours Watched, attracting fewer than 2.5K Peak Viewers and less than a thousand Average Viewers.

Excel Esports, one of the strongest esports organizations in Great Britain, became the champion of Northern Europe. The team defeated TENSTAR 3-2 in the Grand final, and the match was the most popular in the league. Tundra Esports and Alliance squads took third and fourth place, respectively.

The strongest team in Eastern Europe was Anonymo Esports, the owner and CEO of which is a professional Polish tennis player Mateusz Kowalczyk. It is noteworthy that the team lost three times in the league to AWARIA, but still won in the Grand final 3-2.

The VRL 2022 MENA: Resilience Stage 1 Grand final on March 25 features Team RA'AD and Team Falcons, the champions in their sub-regions. It is interesting that Team RA'AD is an experienced team with many titles, and Team Falcons is a young team that was introduced in February 2022.

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Qualifiers for VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers are scheduled for April 1-10. The VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 1 Challengers matches are already coming to an end with the finals set for March 27. The top three teams in this tournament will take part in VCT 2022: Masters Stage 1 to be held April 10-24 in Reykjavik, Iceland. It should be noted that in this Valorant esports season Russian teams will play under neutral tags and without sponsors due to the events in Ukraine.