Madrid enjoyed the strongest groups viewership of any VCT Masters ever
The ongoing VCT 2024 Masters Madrid event is the first international VCT LAN of the year and will set the bar for the remainder of the year’s international events to measure themselves against. The event reached over 880K concurrent viewers on only the third day of the Swiss stage, and in general viewership is up compared to previous years.
The Valorant Champions Tour 2023 season received good viewership, especially at the beginning of the year at the Brazilian LOCK//IN event, but ultimately failed to set a new viewership record for the discipline. The current Peak Viewers record for Valorant is held by the ultimate 2022 Champions tournament, which reached 1.5M PV. The 2024 Masters Madrid has enjoyed the strongest early-stage viewership of any VCT tournament ever, setting a strong foundation for the remainder of the season.
VCT 2024 Masters Madrid Swiss Stage Viewership Statistics
Following the success of the Kickoff events, Masters Madrid earned 15.6M Hours Watched throughout its Swiss Stage alone. This is the highest group stage viewership the VCT has ever experienced, excluding the Champions events. The tournament’s preliminary 521.2K Average Viewers is the second-highest average viewership ever received by a Valorant tournament, falling only behind the Champions tournament of 2022 and even outperforming the 2023 iteration.
English-language broadcasts were the most popular for the Swiss Stage, reaching 422.5K concurrent viewers at peak. Portuguese-language coverage, which includes Brazilian Portuguese, remains a top contender for the esports discipline, although viewership is slightly lower than we might expect considering LOUD usually brings high viewership with them.
French viewership has hugely increased compared to the previous international VCT event, recording 128K Peak Viewers for French-language broadcasts. Karmine Corp and the community behind them are the clear causes of this high viewership, and the French esports organisation recorded the most popular match in the Swiss Stage. Their match against Sentinels received 882K PV, driving the event to become a top 10 most popular Valorant tournament.
Sentinels and Karmine Corp were the most popular teams of the Swiss Stage, and they cemented this position by also appearing in the other two matches which make up the stage’s top 3 most popular matches.
Karmine Corp’s match against Paper Rex was the only other match in the Swiss Stage to earn more than 800K concurrent viewers. The match determined which team would advance to the final playoff spot, and fans were on the edge of their seats the whole match. In the game’s final third map, the second half ended with a 12-12 score, advancing to overtime. After a long-fought match, Paper Rex managed to remain in the event after defeating Karmine Corp 14-12.
Paper Rex is a consistent participant in the playoffs of VCT events, and although they deserve their spot, the departure of Karmine Corp from the event is a significant wound to the event’s potential viewership. The Masters Madrid set viewership record after record throughout the Swiss Stage, but will it be able to continue enjoying such high viewership without Karmine Corp?
The Masters Madrid Swiss Stage has already reached a higher peak viewership than the entire VCT 2023 Masters Tokyo event, but there’s more to viewership than just a singular peak. So, how does the Swiss Stage of the ongoing Madrid tournament compare to the Group Stage of the Masters Tokyo?
Comparing the ongoing Masters event to the most recent one, the viewership increase for Masters Madrid is clear to see. The event recorded a 78.2% increase to watch time, and a 91% increase to its average viewership. In all major metrics, the ongoing Masters Madrid event is a monumental success.
One area that has not seen a clean increase in viewership is the language dynamics for the event. Japanese-language viewership is the backbone of the Pacific region for Valorant, and the language recorded a 31.6% drop in peak viewership compared to Masters Tokyo. The higher viewership at Masters Tokyo is not only due to the event being held in Japan, the recent VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff recorded over 300K+ concurrent Japanese-speaking viewers at peak.
While Japanese viewership is down, Portuguese-language streams recorded a 411% increase to peak viewership for the current Masters. This large dynamic is due to a change in the format of Masters events which has been critical to Masters Madrid’s high viewership throughout the Swiss Stage.
At Masters Tokyo and other Masters events, the 4 top-seeded teams advanced directly to playoffs instead of competing throughout the group stage. Although a beneficial advantage for competitive esports teams, this was disastrous for Group Stage viewership. At Masters Tokyo, LOUD advanced directly to the Playoffs and resultingly Portuguese-language viewership was shockingly low for the Group Stage. The new change of having top-seeded teams compete in the Group Stage allows Masters events to garner more viewership during groups.
Community casters are often crucial for Valorant esports viewership, and Masters Madrid’s Swiss Stage is no different. Tarik regained his spot as the most popular Valorant community caster, after losing the throne to Squeezie during the Kickoffs tournaments. Tarik garnered 160.5K Peak Viewers for the match between Sentinels and Team Heretics, supporting his organisation.
Kamet0 was the second-most popular community caster, having received 115.9K Peak Viewers for Karmine Corp’s final match against Paper Rex. Karmine Corp was founded by Kamet0 in early 2022 and originally was named Kamet Corp. Kamet has been supporting his Valorant team since they entered franchising in 2023, but this was his first opportunity to support them at an international LAN event.
The English-language Valorant Champions Tour YouTube channel was the most popular official broadcaster of the event, having received 119.5K Peak Viewers. Although Twitch is generally the more popular platform for Valorant esports thanks to community casters, YouTube is the preferred platform for viewers of the official broadcasts. The official English-language Valorant Twitch channel received roughly 39K fewer viewers at peak, coming in at 80.6K Peak Viewers for the same match.
Both the official Brazilian YouTube and Twitch broadcasting channels recorded their peaks during LOUD’s games. The former reached 60.9K PV, whereas the Twitch channel could only muster 29.2K PV. Viewership on these channels was much higher during the Americas Kickoff, so expect viewership to rise during LOUD’s playoffs run.
The remaining three community casters of our graphic all received their peak viewerships during respectively important games. Mixwell’s Spanish-language stream reached 52.9K Peak Viewers while watching the Spanish organisation Team Heretic’s match against Paper Rex, Kyedae reached 33.7K Peak Viewers whilst watching her fiancé TenZ give a post-match interview after defeating Team Heretics, and TcK10 received 30.9K Peak Viewers while supporting his national team LOUD against EDward Gaming.
Finally, the official Japanese Twitch stream managed to rank within the top 5 most popular official broadcasts, despite no Japanese team competing at the event. The stream reached 31K Peak Viewers during Paper Rex’s match against EDG, with fans excitingly tuning in for the Asian derby.
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