Masters Shanghai highlighted Valorant’s growing Asian audiences as Gen.G claimed their first title

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The VCT 2024: Masters Shanghai event has ended and crowned Gen.G Esports as the current champions of the esports discipline. The next international LAN event of the Valorant Champions Tour this year will be the ultimate Champions event, where Gen.G may face some stronger foes.

This Masters event followed the Stage 1 regional leagues, where some previously competitive and extremely hyped teams struggled. Sentinels and LOUD of the Americas both failed to qualify for the Masters Shanghai tournament, similar to Karmine Corp and Gentle Mates of the EMEA region. All four of these teams are some of Valorant’s most popular esports teams of 2024 so far, and their absence from the Masters Shanghai event had a noticeably negative affect on viewership.

Masters Shanghai as a whole experienced lower viewership than the previous LAN event, Masters Madrid. Although viewership is not as high as the Spanish record-setting event, the dynamics for the recent event and its grand finals show some growth of Asian viewership for the 5-on-5 shooter. 

In total, Masters Shanghai generated 27.77M Hours Watched across over 72 hours of broadcasting time. The event held a relatively low 340.4K Average Viewers through the event, due to a multitude of factors. The absence of fan-favorite teams affected viewership for the tournament as well as its schedule. The event was hosted in Shanghai, China, with matches taking place in the morning and early afternoon. 

Due to this schedule, matches began extremely early for both European and North American audiences. The event also recorded noticeably fewer community casters than previous Major Valorant events, with many streamers bowing out of streaming the event instead of staying up all night. 

The most popular match of the event was the grand final match between Gen.G and Team Heretics. It received 914.1K Peak Viewers for its culmination of the tournament, with most of this viewership coming from English-language broadcasts. Despite the low average viewership of the event, many Asian languages reached new peaks for the tournament. 

The Japanese peak of 164.4K concurrent viewers was the highest Japanese-language viewership has reached for an interregional Valorant LAN in 2024, and the Korean peak of 93.1K viewers was the highest Korean-language viewership has ever reached for Valorant esports. The event was covered on Korean live-streaming platforms like CHZZK and AfreecaTV, and this viewership on top of Korean-language YouTube broadcasts elevated the language demographic to a new height, while their compatriots Gen.G claimed the trophy at the event.

  Comparison of Masters Shanghai and Masters Madrid  

Compared to this year’s earlier Masters Madrid event, Masters Shanghai received lower viewership across the board despite double the prize pool of the Madrid event and much longer broadcasting time. As aforementioned, the absence of fan-favorite teams was a key part of the low viewership.

In fact, no Brazilian team attended the event. Valorant has usually relied heavily on Brazilian and Portuguese-language viewership in the past for its major events, and Masters Shanghai struggled heavily without the support of the Brazilian audience. Nevertheless, the Shanghai event has shone some light on some healthy growth for the Asian audience of Valorant. 

Japanese demographics continue to support and turn in in high numbers for Valorant events despite no japanese teams attending, Korean-language viewership has set a new record, and minor Asian audiences such as Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian have remained stable compared to past viewership.

Many of these languages had their viewership boosted by the support of community casters. Although fewer broadcasters covered the Shanghai event compared to Masters Madrid, community casters remain integral to Valorant’s viewership.

Community casting distribution and top channels of Masters Shanghai   

Although Sentinels themselves could not qualify for the event, their streamer Tarik entirely covered the event on his Twitch channel. The Turkish-American streamer received 3.72M Hours Watched for his watch parties of Masters Shanghai, making him the most-watched broadcaster of the entire event.

The official English-language Valorant YouTube Live and Twitch channels followed closely behind, having generated 2.63M HW and 2.07M HW, respectively. The Japanese-language official Valorant Twitch channel received 1.09M Hours Watched for its coverage of the event, and was followed by Team Heretics-affiliated streamer Mixwell.

The event was covered by many more influential community casters, such as fps_shaka from Japan, Kyedae, and many more. Current and former Valorant professionals also hosted watch parties for the event, with the most popular of these being TenZ, GOFNS, and im_mittiii.

Of the total 24.77M Hours Watched generated by the tournament, 54.9% of this watch time was thanks to community casters and non-official broadcasters. Despite Masters Shanghai hosting fewer community casters than past events, this part of the esports’ coverage still remains the most popular option for fans.

Our Esports Charts PRO subscribers can browse through the most popular teams of the event by their average concurrent viewership. The top teams of the event represented three of the esports discipline’s four major regions, with one region missing out on this top 5.

Surprisingly, the second-most popular team of the event managed to achieve their position despite very few hours spent on broadcast. Similar to the team in 5th, both of these rosters achieved their rank through a handful of highly-watched games, rather than many many playoffs matches. The most popular team of the Americas may also be surprising, as this team was not its regions’ most successful team throughout the event.

  Top 5 most popular events of the VCT 2024 calendar so far  

Compared to other events of the Valorant Champions Tour 2024 esports schedule, Masters Shanghai is the second-most popular event of the year so far. By peak concurrent viewership, the event falls only behind Masters Madrid, which became the most popular Valorant tournament ever. 

As it stands, Masters Shanghai is the 8th most popular Valorant tournament ever, falling behind all three previous Champions events, and other major LAN events from other years. The tournament was only slightly ahead of this year’s Americas Kickoff, where the grand final between Sentinels and LOUD attracted 823K Peak Viewers. If the remaining Champions event of this year can bring these American audiences to the event, it has a chance to outperform even the record-setting Masters Madrid tournament. 

Esports Charts will continue to dive deeper into the viewership statistics surrounding Masters Shanghai in the upcoming weeks, as well as cover and track viewership data for esports tournaments across all kinds of genres and disciplines.