The power of numbers — how viewership statistics convinced NAVI to develop the Valorant division
Many world brands want to reach the multimillion esports audience. However, some do not realize that this audience varies, and only certain esports disciplines can help to reach truly impressive numbers.
Data and analytics about discipline's viewership helps to draw the right conclusions — all global esports clubs are guided by this statistic. In this article, we will consider the case of NAVI, which, based on the data, decided to seriously invest in a new game for the club, Valorant, and thus significantly increased the audience reach.
Regional differences in games popularity
While computer games are released (almost) all over the world, their popularity varies greatly from country to country and region to region. For example, there are some local phenomena: large communities of fighting games have appeared in the United States and Japan, and the racing game Trackmania tournaments have become very popular in France. On the other hand, there are games that are popular in whole regions: for example, many Western and Eastern European countries like Dota 2, and in South-East Asia, the mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is very popular.
There are considerably fewer world-class esports games than regional ones. One of those games is Valorant, a first-person shooter by Riot Games, which the company is developing in parallel with its other extremely popular game League of Legends. Unlike many other games, Valorant fans are literally everywhere, from South Korea to Argentina. As in the case of LoL, the game is very popular in North and South America, Europe, Southeast Asia (APAC), and even local tournaments in Japan gather thousands of spectators at venues.
Since 2023, Valorant has seen three international esports leagues (Americas, EMEA & Pacific), which can be conventionally called regional competitions of the highest level. This is where teams compete for the world championships. The leagues participants were partner teams, which had to meet the strict requirements of the publisher. And among them was the Ukrainian organization Natus Vincere.
How viewership statistics led Natus Vincere to Valorant
Valorant was released in the summer of 2020, and in December of that year, Riot Games held its first Majors in different regions. By that time, some clubs had already signed Valorant teams, but not all were ready to seriously invest in the new game: many were not sure that Valorant could seriously compete with Counter-Strike.
All doubts about the future of Valorant were dispelled by the first international tournament in the discipline, which took place in the spring of 2021. VCT Masters Reykjavík was watched by more than a million Peak Viewers, and the championship matches accumulated more than 25.1 million Hours Watched in six days (the same level as some TV series' weekly results). Natus Vincere was among those who were finally convinced of the game's prospects.
The first Natus Vincere Valorant lineups failed to achieve much success in Europe and in the international scene. The NAVI rosters were solid average teams on the European stage, which clearly didn't match the club's ambitions: the new Valorant World Championships were held in parallel, with a huge audience, which the club was deprived of.
Right after the end of Valorant Champions 2022, the publisher shared the details of the new season, the main element of which were affiliate leagues — the tournaments, the participants of which were chosen by Riot Games itself. The process of selecting partners took several months, and many major clubs were unlucky (for example, G2 Esports did not get a slot in the league). NAVI got the desired slot — and signed one of the strongest teams in the world for the new season.
"The process of selecting partner clubs began back in the second quarter of 2022. When we heard about the opportunity, we were very interested in it and started preparing all the necessary materials. At that point we already had a clear understanding that Valorant was growing very quickly, audiences loved it, and it was a great chance for NAVI to expand the demographics of its fan base. That's why we put a lot of effort into the quality of our strategy at Valorant and continue to work on it, constantly adapting it to the current market conditions.
The affiliate slot allows the club to plan its future in the discipline years in advance, invest more in lineup and content, and build audiences faster. This is very valuable in an ecosystem where a lot depends on a team's performance, which is quite difficult to predict."
Oleksii Kucherov, COO of Natus Vincere
Before the start of the new season, NAVI was joined by the former FunPlus Phoenix core lineup, which reached the semifinals of the World Championship and won the Masters Series tournament. And already at the first VCT 2023 tournament, the new Natus Vincere roster was one of the best: the team reached the semifinals and also strongly impressed with its audience numbers. The NAVI vs Fnatic semifinal at LOCK/IN had 37% more viewers than the Heroic vs NAVI match at IEM Katowice (CS:GO).
The base of NAVI's esports audience right now is Russian-speaking viewers, the vast majority of whom are primarily interested in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The fact that NAVI has joined the new game has already helped the club to significantly diversify its audience demographics. At LOCK//IN alone, the club attracted viewers from Japan, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Turkey and many other countries.
"We managed to sign the best European roster of 2022 and we expect the guys to perform well in the future as well. We have everything needed to do that.
We really wanted to win our first trophy at Valorant, but Top 4 is not a bad result at such a big tournament with such competition. We'll do our best to achieve victories in the future.
We see the engaged audience at Valorant, and we have big plans to get its attention and support. And the growth of the NAVI audience is already visible from the tournament in Brazil."
Oleksii Kucherov, COO of Natus Vincere
As we can see from IEM Katowice and VCT LOCK//IN, the audiences of CS:GO and Valorant are already on the same level in terms of particular events. The presence of the club in both games significantly increases its audience reach among shooter fans, because the fan bases of the two games overlap insignificantly. Moreover, VCT 2023 LOCK//IN was watched by more Peak Viewers than the last CS:GO Majors. To sum up, the fact that NAVI joined Valorant is a great example of reaching a significantly larger audience within esports.
***
Tournament statistics help you quickly understand trends and make thoughtful decisions, as shown by the cases of various organizations, many of which receive this information from us. Esports Charts has been working in the field of business analytics for more than five years to make data-driven decisions. Learn more about our products and pricing here.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
