Most popular Valorant teams in 2022 prior to world championship

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All Last Chance Qualifiers on Valorant have recently come to an end. The North American qualifiers entered the discipline's top tournaments thanks to Sentinels, which was recently joined by Shroud, one of the most famous streamers on Twitch. The team's popularity has grown manifold, but what place does it hold in the overall top? Esports Charts presents the ranking of the most popular Valorant teams in 2022 prior to Valorant Champions, the final event of the season.

The Japanese ZETA DIVISION is the most popular team in the discipline. This year, the team took first place at the VCT 2022: Japan Stage 1 Challengers Playoffs and finished third at the VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík. On average, ZETA DIVISION matches had 271.7K viewers and 18.3 million Hours Watched in total (2nd place).

The second place by Average Viewers and the first by Hours Watched went to OpTic Gaming. It was the team that didn't let ZETA DIVISION reach VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík final and subsequently became the champion itself. The team also qualified for the second Masters of the season, where they took third place. On average, OpTic matches accumulated 265.2K Average Viewers and generated over 26.3 million Hours Watched (44% more than ZETA DIVISION). It should be noted that the OpTic Gaming lineup ranked eighth by Average Viewers and was sixth by Hours Watched in 2021, playing under the Team EnVy tag.

LOUD ranked third by Average Viewers numbers and fourth by Hours Watched. The team finished second at VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík, but failed at VCT 2022: Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen, taking last place. On average, more than 231K concurrent viewers watched the team's games, with 13.2 million Hours Watched in total.

Most popular & most watched Valorant teams of 2022

Sentinels took fourth place in the Valorant top for 2022. The team had 159.3K Average Viewers before Shroud joined the lineup, and 221.9K viewers after VCT 2022: NA Last Chance Qualifier. Meanwhile, the team was ranked 9th by Hours Watched. It should be noted that Sentinels became the most popular VCT 2022: NA Last Chance Qualifier team despite taking 5th-6th place. On average 423K people followed its games in the tournament. It is worth mentioning that Sentinels was last year's leader in both categories, Average Viewers and Hours Watched.

FunPlus Phoenix rounded out the top 5 teams for 2022. The team failed to qualify for VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík due to the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, but qualified for VCT 2022: Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen where it became the champion. Average Viewers numbers of FunPlus Phoenix exceeded 173K and the team's Hours Watched were nearly 14.5 million (3rd place).

Fnatic took the sixth position in the ranking with 166K Average Viewers. The team ranked eighth by Hours Watched as it attended both Masters in 2022, coming in last place in VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík and fourth in VCT 2022: Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen. Interestingly, Fnatic was in the top 2 by Average Viewers and in the top 3 by Hours Watched last year.

Paper Rex had quite successful season, finishing fourth in VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík and second in VCT 2022: Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen. These results helped the team climb to seventh place in the rankings by Average Viewers and fifth by Hours Watched.

The Guard qualified only for VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík and took 7th-8th place there. Meanwhile, the team came second at VCT 2022: NA Last Chance Qualifier, where they beat Sentinels in the upper bracket. It should be noted that the match between these teams was the most popular at the tournament. All this led The Guard taking eighth place by Average Viewers and tenth by Hours Watched.

Team Liquid and G2 Esports rounded out the top 10 most popular Valorant teams of 2022, accumulating 159.2K and 145.8K Average Viewers at their matches. At the same time G2 didn't enter the top 10 teams by Hours Watched, but DRX and Liquid were there. It should be noted that G2 Esports was third by Average Viewers and fourth by Hours Watched last year, while Liquid was in the top 6 by AV metric and in the top 5 by HW.

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Valorant's competitive season is coming to an end and the final World Championship will take place very soon. VALORANT Champions 2022 will take place on September 2-18 in Istanbul, Turkey, with the 16 strongest teams of the year competing.