Most popular regions of VCT 2022 Stage 2 Challengers

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All major VCT 2022 Stage 2 Challengers regional tournaments ended on June 26, and the South American playoffs between Ninjas in Pyjamas and KRÜ Esports will end in the coming days. In a new article, Esports Charts tells about the most popular Valorant Champions Tour regions and how their viewership numbers have changed compared with the previous stage.

Almost all of the participants in the July VCT 2022 Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen event are known at the time of publication, and the list of players in this tournament matches the previous one by more than half. OpTic Gaming, Fnatic, FunPlus Phoenix, DRX, Paper Rex, XERXIA, LOUD, and the strongest team of the KRÜ Esports-NiP duo qualify for their second Masters in a row.

The most popular VCT 2022: Stage 2 Challengers region is Japan. The audience of local Valorant tournaments grew gradually and finally the region made it to the top. ZETA DIVISION game in VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík saw one of the most impressive boosts in popularity. The team became the first Japanese team ever to qualify for the playoffs, and finished third at the end of the tournament.

  VCT 2022 Grand Final: Japan Stage 2 Challengers at Saitama Super Arena  

The VCT 2022: Japan Stage 2 Challengers Grand final between Northeption and ZETA DIVISION was watched by more than 291.7K Peak Viewers. It should be noted that the event was held offline and also drew a huge audience at Saitama Super Arena.

VCT 2022: Japan Stage 2 Challengers was on air for a little over 89 hours, amassed more than 10 million Hours Watched and drew 112.4K Average Viewers. Northeption won the tournament and ZETA DIVISION became the most popular team.

The second most watched VCT 2022: Stage 2 Challengers region is North America. The tournament was held online and aired for 123 hours, accumulating 11.5 million Hours Watched. It is worth mentioning that the region became the leader in these metrics. The VCT 2022: North America Stage 2 Challengers matches had just 93.6K Average Viewers.

It is interesting that the North American Grand final between XSET and OpTic Gaming didn't even make it into the Top 5 of the event by Peak Viewers. The most popular match of the tournament is Sentinels vs Luminosity Gaming, that took place on the first day of the group stage and attracted more than 216.8K Peak Viewers. Sentinels took last place in VCT 2022: North America Stage 2 Challengers, but became the most popular team of the tournament by a wide margin.

VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers, held online, rounds out the Top 3. The PV of the European tournament was reached not during the decisive match — the most popular game of the event is the encounter between BBL Esports and Team Liquid, which was watched by almost 160K Peak Viewers, while the Grand final of the tournament between FunPlus Phoenix and Fnatic took fourth place, gathering just over 135K Peak Viewers.

VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers games were broadcast for more than 112 hours and amassed 7.8 million Hours Watched and 69.6K Average Viewers. The most popular team of the tournament is the Turkish BBL Esports. The team caused so much excitement that the Turkish-language broadcast gathered almost 95K PV and became the leader of the tournament by this metric.

Brazil became the fourth most popular region of the VCT 2022 Stage 2 Challengers. The grand final of the local event attracted the attention of 142.4K Peak Viewers. In total, the tournament collected more than 3.9 million Hours Watched with an average audience of 41.4K concurrent viewers. LOUD became the champion and the most popular team of the event.

The Asia-Pacific region rounded out the top five, bringing together 106.5K viewers during the semi-final between XERXIA and Secret. At the same time, in total, viewers spent more than 4.2 million hours watching the broadcasts of VCT 2022: APAC Stage 2 Challengers, and the average online of the event amounted to 33.2K viewers. XERXIA became the champion and the most popular team of the tournament.

Latin America finished sixth in the top, with just under 90K viewers at the peak of the final match. VCT 2022: LATAM Stage 2 Challengers Playoffs was on the air for only 23 hours and collected 850K Hours Watched over this time, and the average audience of the event was just over 36K people. Leviatan became the champion of the tournament, and KRÜ became the most popular team.

Let us remind you that Latin America event’s format was different from the others. First, teams from South and North of the region played in local qualifiers, and second. two best rosters from each divisions advanced to the playoffs, which is considered as the main event of the region. That’s why this tournament was less time on air compared to other regions.

VCT 2022 Challengers Viewership Dynamics

Most popular VCT 2022 Stage 2 Challengers tournaments

The PV number of VCT 2022: Stage 1 Challengers saw a 28% increase in Japan, and the region moved up from third to first place, displacing North America and Europe. At the same time, the PV number of VCT 2022: North America Stage 2 Challengers dropped by 22%, and VCT 2022: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers dropped by 34% of PV.

We also note that the peak audience of Latin America fell by 27%, which is why the region was behind the Asia-Pacific, whose similar indicator grew by 6.5%. In turn, the peak audience of Brazil increased by almost 15%.

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The popularity of esports Valorant in Japan has been skyrocketing for over a year now. VCT 2022 Stage 2 Challengers in North America and Europe have seen significant declines, but this is largely due to the fact that the most interesting teams to viewers did not make it to the final stage of the events. Sentinels and BBL Esports are clear examples of this.

As usual, Valorant esports viewership was heavily affected by the broadcasts of independent casters from the community. In the near future, we will tell you how such streams influenced the statistics of the regions.