The offseason between the VCT 2023 and 2024 seasons shuffled many teams and the players who make up these teams. The recent VCT Kickoffs events in all four major regions not only gave us a glimpse of each region’s top teams, but also which teams and players themselves are popular. As the VCT 2024: Masters Madrid event begins, we can take a look at a preliminary list of Valorant’s most popular esports players in 2024.
The individual players behind an esports team are an integral part of the team’s overall viewership. S1mple in Counter-Strike and Faker in League of Legends are two legendary players in their rights, and their teams consistently earned game-leading viewership thanks to their presence. Valorant is developing some of their own players, TenZ of Sentinels might be who immediately comes to mind. However, our data shows that another player was more popular than TenZ at the start of the season.
For this analysis, we exclusively considered the official broadcasting partners of each of the four regional leagues on Twitch. As we noted in a recent article, community casting is one of the driving forces of Valorant’s viewership. The Chats of these community casters can often be biased, as the industry-leading community casters are often tied to specific teams in Valorant's league. Therefore, we aimed for a cleaner dataset and a source more reflective of the game’s overall community.
Most Popular Players of the VCT 2024, March 2024
Ahead of the rest of the pack and even TenZ himself, aspas is the VCT’s most popular player so far. Aspas was previously part of the Championship-winning LOUD team in 2022, but he left the team after the VCT 2023 season when the team finished 3rd at Valorant Champions 2023. During his stint at LOUD, aspas built up a significant following for himself as an explosive star player. Now, he commands a strong Brazilian following at Argentinan organisation Leviatán Esports. Levitán faced off against LOUD on Day 5 of the Americas Kickoff, and it was one of the event’s most popular matches.
Aspas was mentioned 11.3K times throughout the official broadcasting partners’ Twitch Chats, and his presence boosted the Brazilian-Portuguese viewership for his team every game. Leviatán games even received higher Portuguese-language viewership than the Brazilian derby between FURIA and MIBR. Leviatán were eliminated early from the Kickoff event, making it even more impressive how many mentions aspas garnered despite enjoying less than half the airtime of TenZ.
TenZ is the next-most popular player with 10.3K mentions throughout the VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff. TenZ is well-known as not only the poster boy for Sentinels but also for Valorant esports in North America. His presence within Sentinels’ roster has been a clear part of their expansion and popularity, giving the organisation huge brand exposure and awareness campaign opportunities.
TenZ’s time with Sentinels has not been entirely positive, with some poor performances and a vocally critical community watching his moves. However, during the offseason and recent Kickoff event, TenZ has been back on form and earned himself multiple MVP awards. Sentinels are currently the leading team in the Americas, and if they can perform well on the international stage at Masters Madrid, they will surely enjoy high viewership.
C0M, an American teammate of aspas, is ranked as the third most popular player. One of two American players for Leviatán, C0M was mentioned 7.4K times by Twitch Chat. C0M most recently won the Valorant Champions 2023 event with his team Evil Geniuses, but the organisation restructured their team and C0M was left teamless. He quickly found his feet with Leviatán, and he remains one of the VCT’s most popular players.
Yay finished just outside the podium places with 6.4K mentions, making him the sole representative of the VCT Pacific and the only player outside of the Americas region to rank in this list. Yay is a community favourite, known for his time on the OpTic Gaming roster in 2022 and his ridiculous Chamber gameplay. He was crowned El Diablo by the North American community, and his popularity prevailed even after a year's break from the top level of Valorant.
Yay’s team Bleed was immediately eliminated from the VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff after going 0-2 in the Group Stage. The early exit of his team hints that yay’s popularity is yet unrealised in the Pacific scene, and he will likely come back drawing even more attention for the next official event.
Following yay, we turn back to the VCT Americas where qck of LOUD earned 4.6K mentions. Qck is LOUD’s replacement for aspas and built up a strong personal following for himself after spending 3 seasons with FURIA. LOUD is undoubtedly one of Valorant’s most popular esports organisations, and the departure of aspas will unlikely be detrimental to their viewership. Nevertheless, qck’s step onto the LOUD roster will help recoup some of this loss.
Keznit of KRÜ Esports is Valorant’s sixth-most-popular esports professional, having received 4.4K mentions throughout the Kickoff event. KRÜ is quickly expanding their brand and presence in the esports scene; founded by Sergio Agüero, the organisation signed Lionel Messi as a co-owner in late 2023. Keznit originally joined KRÜ as a Valorant Twitch streamer for the organisation but quickly moved into a player position. The duelist is KRÜ’s most popular player and the most popular Chilean within Valorant esports.
Havoc and Sacy, two Brazilian players, earned similar mentions from chat. Havoc was slightly more popular with 4.4K mentions, but Sacy also garnered a respectable 3.8K mentions. Havoc competed in the Brazilian Challengers league, and his signing with FURIA at the end of 2023 marked his debut to a top-level esports competition. Havoc was FURIA’s most popular player, an impressive feat for a newcomer to a team.
Sacy, who won Valorants Champions in 2022 alongside aspas, made a shocking move to Sentinels shortly after the championship event. Sacy brings considerable Brazilian-Portuguese viewership to Sentinels, which was previously even stronger when pANcada was also a member of the team. Behind TenZ, Sacy was Sentinel’s next most popular player, beating out both zekken and Zellsis, two of North America’s more popular players.
Finishing out our ranking, Demon1 and tuyz were the final two players, with 2.3K and 2K mentions, respectively. Demon1’s participation in the VCT 2023 season with Evil Geniuses was his debut in tier-1 esports, and he did not disappoint. On top of winning the Valorant Champions 2023 event with his team, he was also personally awarded MVP of the event and won Esports Breakthrough Player of the Year 2023 at the Esports Awards. Now competing for NRG, Demon1’s popularity still rings true after a turbulent offseason.
Tuyz is a player for LOUD and his contributions to the teams’ success typically as a Controller are not unnoticed by the community. With 2K mentions, tuyz is one of Valorant’s most popular players, and the second player from LOUD to rank within this top 10.
Most Popular Teams of VCT 2024 by players’ mentions, March 2024
Something a little different than determining a team’s popularity by their total viewership, for this we ranked teams by the total mentions of all 5 players on their starting roster. Of course, many of these teams are supported by the high-end outliers, such as Leviatán and its 20.4K mentions: more than half of which is thanks to aspas.
The remaining players of Leviatán still contributed roughly 9K mentions, meaning the team is far more popular than most teams within the Valorant esports scene as it currently stands.
TenZ also contributed the majority of Sentinels’ mentions, even more so than aspas. Sentinels garnered 16.5K mentions in total, with roughly 14K of these coming from mentions of TenZ and Sacy. The remaining three Sentinels players have over 750K Followers on Twitch combined, but they still need to build up a personal following within the general Valorant community.
LOUD was surprisingly not the most popular team in the early stage of the VCT 2024 season. The Brazilian team is hugely popular, and the most popular Valorant match ever, the grand finals of the Valorant Champions 2022 event, received 1.5M Peak Viewers with a considerable portion of viewers coming from Brazilian-Portuguese broadcasts. However, it seems that LOUD as an organisation is more popular than its players combined.
BLEED Esports, KRÜ Esports, and FURIA Esports all followed LOUD in this sequence, and all three teams ranked so highly thanks to mentions of their star player. In order, these teams received 6.9K, 6K, and 4.9K mentions. Similar to NRG who received 3.2K mentions, these teams recorded so many mentions largely thanks to their star players.
Paper Rex received 3.7K mentions; the Pacific team is currently the most popular Valorant team that does not receive a majority of its mentions due to one specific player. Jinggg, arguably the team’s most popular player, had to step down from the starting roster due to his obligation for mandatory military service in his home Singapore. The team is popular despite this loss, and will likely receive high viewership at the upcoming Masters Madrid event.
Talon Esports and ZETA DIVISION finish off this article with 2.4K and 2.3K mentions, respectively. Talon Esports is perhaps one of the more surprising teams on this ranking. The Hong Kong-based esports organisation struggled throughout the 2023 VCT season and did not advance through the Group Stage of the VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff.
With an almost brand-new roster heading into the 2024 season, Talon Esports does employ an international set of players, covering Thailand, South Korea, and Indonesia. Perhaps this international roster helps them appeal to multiple demographics within the Pacific league.
ZETA DIVISION are Japan’s most popular team and the the organisation’s 10th place in this ranking proves the power of the Japanese region within Valorant. Japan is one of Asia’s leading Valorant markets, and the country’s viewership is consistently at the top of the VCT Pacific demographics. ZETA’s high ranking is a reflection of this strong Japanese audience.
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