Valorant Champions 2023 Group Stage Viewership Statistics

August 13 marked the last match of the Valorant Champions 2023 group stage. In its aftermath, the number of participants was reduced from sixteen to eight teams, which will continue to fight in the playoff bracket. The group stage of the tournament will be remembered for several unexpected results, as well as a rather low viewership. So far, the current World Cup is significantly inferior to last year in terms of viewership.

Viewership statistics of Valorant Champions 2023 can be found here

In the group stage, sixteen participants were divided into four groups. Some of the unexpected results include the departure of three European teams at once — Natus Vincere, Team Liquid, and Giants. Of the five teams that represented the EMEA region, only the European mix of Fnatic and the Turkish roster of FUT Esports remained. On the contrary, Chinese teams had a good showing and result. Two of the three teams representing the country, EDward Gaming and Bilibili Gaming, qualified for the playoff bracket.

Group stage viewership results

Talking of the viewership statistics for the tournament, so far the group stage of Valorant Champions 2023 is significantly inferior to its 2022 counterpart. During the group stage, World Cup broadcasts generated nearly 24M Hours Watched, down 24% from 2022. This is partly due to a slight reduction in airtime (by 5.5 hours), but a decrease in the number of viewers also played a big role – the Average and Peak Viewers for the tournament broadcasts both decreased by 17%.

The most popular match of the group stage was the encounter between LOUD and Natus Vincere — these teams met in the decisive series of Group D, and their match determined the final entry for the playoffs bracket team quota. The Brazilians from LOUD won with a score of 2:1 and this intense match was followed by 713.9K Peak Viewers.

The top teams in the group stage by Total Hours Watched included LOUD, Natus Vincere, and DRX. Interestingly, all these three teams performed in the same group D. Tarik became the most popular streamer of the stage, his channel generating 4.6M Hours Watched. The American community caster even surpassed the official English-language Valorant channel in terms of this indicator.

Comparison with the previous Valorant Champions tournament

Based on the results of the group stage, Valorant Champions 2023 lags behind last year's World Cup in terms of viewership. Moreover, nothing indicates that the situation will change for the better in the playoffs.

The last stage showed a heavy drop of viewership on English and Japanese broadcasts — the viewership for these languages decreased by 35% and 39%, respectively. Moreover, the Japanese broadcasts will continue to lose viewers, since ZETA DIVISION, the only representative of Japan, has already exited the tournament.

The only language (from the main ones) that showed growth in the group stage was Portuguese. Its Peak Viewers grew by 55%, largely due to the success and popularity of LOUD. Spanish also showed slight growth, but after the departure of KRÜ Esports and Giants, its numbers are unlikely to grow further.

The potential viewership in the playoffs was also negatively affected by the seeding and bracket. Already in the first round, the two favorites (Fnatic and LOUD) will be facing each other. One of these teams will definitely fall into the lower bracket of the playoffs and there is a big risk that it will quickly leave the tournament. If Fnatic exits the tournament, then European viewers will no longer have anyone to root for in the tournament (although FUT Esports represents EMEA, its fan base is located in Turkey rather than internationally). If LOUD is on the losing side, then the tournament will lose its most popular team with the strongest media presence. The numbers on the Portuguese broadcast will also drop sharply.

The situation is no better in the second half of the bracket. Out of four teams, there is only one representative of North America. The other three participants are teams from South Korea and China, which are unlikely to gather a lot of viewers on the broadcasts. Don't forget that this year's Valorant Champions 2023 is taking place in Los Angeles, and the local time zone is very inconvenient for fans from Asia.

Playoff matches for Valorant Champions 2023 will be held August 16-20 and August 24-26 at Shrine Expo Hall and Kia Forum in Los Angeles. The prize fund of the tournament is $2.25M.