France tops Valorant Challenger 2023 regions in community casting

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Valorant's esports scene has a highly developed structure that many other games might envy. In addition to the main affiliate leagues, — Americas, EMEA, and Pacific — there are also national and regional leagues that make up the tier-2 scene for this discipline. Esports Charts reports on the Challengers audience in France, Japan, and North America, the countries with the most active community casters, which make these divisions stand out in terms of viewership statistics compared to other regions. 

We should remind you that participants in regional leagues are competing to qualify for the Ascension (international promotion tournaments), where they will have the opportunity to advance to the main affiliate leagues. In some countries, participants compete for direct quotas for Ascension tournaments, while in others, they fight for ranking points, which are needed to qualify for promotion tournaments.

Valorant Challengers 2023 France Viewership Statistics

VALORANT Challengers 2023 France: Revolution Split 2 has become the most popular national tier-2 league in 2023 by Peak Viewers — the match between Joblife and Gentle Mates was watched by 171.1K people concurrently. These teams are owned by popular French streamers, JLTomy and Gotaga. Both of them actively covered the matches of their teams in the league and are among the Top 3 most popular community casters.

It is worth noting that Gentle Mates has become the most popular team in the French league, both in terms of the total Hours Watched and Average Viewers per match. They became the champions of the season and will play in the Ascension EMEA promotion tournament, which takes place from June 30 to July 16 in Berlin.

Valorant Challengers 2023: Japan Split 2 Viewership Statistics 

The Japanese VALORANT Challengers 2023: Japan Split 2 league has surpassed France and NA's Playoffs in terms of the total Hours Watched (5.3 million) and Average Viewers (44.1M). The most popular match of the league was a series between Crazy Raccoon and FENNEL, which was watched by 131.4K Peak Viewers.

The games of Japan Split 2 were also actively covered by Japanese community casters. The largest audience was for jasper7se, a streamer for the Crazy Raccoon club — he spent only 14 hours on air but attracted 47.7K Peak Viewers. About 37K fans watched the tournament on the channel of fps_shaka, another popular Japanese Valorant community caster.

The champion of the Japanese league is the SCARZ team, which became the last participant in the Ascension tournament for the Pacific league. This event takes place from June 28 to July 9 in Bangkok.

Valorant Challengers 2023: North America Split 2 Viewership Statistics 

The North American league has yielded to France and Japan in terms of Peak Viewers but showed a decent result in terms of Average Viewers per broadcast — 42.5K. It is worth noting that the North American division had a different format, and the league was actually made up of three stages — VALORANT Challengers 2023: North America Challenger Playoffs, VALORANT Challengers 2023: North America Play-In Relegation, and VALORANT Challengers 2023: North America Split 2 regular season. In total, all of these tournaments accumulated more than 6 million Hours Watched. 

Among American community casters, Tarik stands out, as he amassed 4.3 million Hours Watched and drew 79.8K Peak Viewers across all three tournaments. Popular streamers Ludwig and Moist Cr1tikal also attracted a substantial audience as they covered the matches of their team Moist Moguls. The league's viewership could also have been boosted by popular streamer Disguised Toast, but his team Disguised did not play in the North America Challenger Playoffs as they did not secure enough points in previous tournaments.

The North American league had two quotas for the promotion tournament, won by teams M80 and The Guard. The event itself takes place from June 30 to July 9 in Sao Paulo.

Comparison of League Dependence on Community Casting

The French league has become the leader by Peak Viewers thanks to top streamers. Essentially, only three teams attracted the main audience to the league: Joblife (JLTomy's team), Gentle Mates (Gotaga's team), and Mandatory (ZeratoR's team). However, the low Average Viewers number per match suggests that French fans paid much less attention to the games of other teams.

The share of community casting in the final of the French league accounted for a whopping 97.5% of the total Hours Watched — this is the highest percentage among all leagues (86% for the entire tournament). This is not surprising, as the decisive match featured Gentle Mates and Mandatory, the teams of the top French streamers. Interestingly, these same teams will play in the Ascension EMEA, so we will likely see good viewership statistics there as well.

Top community casters at Valorant Challenger Leagues 2023 in France, Japan and North America

The situation was different in North America — the finals featured perhaps the least popular teams in the league. M80 and The Guard rightfully earned their quotas for Ascension Americas, but they are unlikely to attract a large audience to the screens. It is worth noting that such teams as TSM, G2 Esports, FaZe Clan, Disguised, and Moist Moguls also competed for a spot in the promotion tournament. Each of them has a large fan base and/or support from top streamers, but these teams failed the Challengers stage.

The share of community casting in North America during the three tournaments was 87% of the total Hours Watched. However, this number was only 36.7% in the Grand Final of the North America Challenger Playoffs — all because of the composition of the participants in the decisive match. A big number of other participants would have attracted more attention from independent streamers.

The peculiarity of the Japanese league is that the majority of fans prefer to watch matches on official broadcasts. If we look at the entire league, official channels accounted for 66% of the total Hours Watched. However, during the Grand Final, the margin was in favor of community casting at 58.5% thanks to a few top streamers who started covering the league only during decisive matches. Nevertheless, it can still be said that the Japanese league does not depend as heavily on community casting and specific team results as the leagues in France and North America.

In total, 23 national and regional leagues participate in the Valorant Challenger system. In this article, we have only discussed the three largest ones, but later we will provide a more comprehensive overview of all the divisions. Three Ascension tournaments will be held in the summer, determining new participants from affiliate leagues: Americas, EMEA and Pacific — they will play on the tier-1 stage in 2024 and 2025.