Valorant Champions 2024 Group Stage attracts more Peak Viewers than last year and brings the game to the top of Twitch
The Group Stage of the Valorant Champions 2024, which began on August 1 at the COEX Artium in Seoul, concluded on August 11. Thanks to the return of a few popular sides, its peak concurrent viewership numbers were higher than last year's edition, although the other two basic metrics witnessed insignificant declines.
The first phase of this Valorant competition, which serves as the game's world championship, reached 768K Peak Viewers during the Group Stage, Day 9 clash between Gen.G and Sentinels. As it was the deciding match to see which side stays in the hunt for the trophy and which one goes home, it attracted a rather large crowd, thus doing 7.4% better than what we saw at the 2023 iteration, where a few big names were absent, including the above two.
Gen.G and Sentinels are two titans of their respective regions who enjoy massive fan followings, so when they meet, expectations are high. In fact, their other meeting from Day 1 finished as the second most popular game at almost 654K PV, and these two clashing multiple times was crucial to the event hitting a higher peak than 2023.
Moreover, the Pacific side, consisting of an all-Korean roster, completed a trifecta of appearances in the top three of this table thanks to its match against Spain's Team Heretics to reaffirm its status as one of the eminent esports organizations in Valorant esports today.
However, the presence of such prominent teams could not lead the other Group Stage viewership numbers to beat what we saw at the Valorant Champions 2023. The Hours Watched and Average Viewers figures fell by 9.2% and 8.4%, respectively, and though they are minor falls, they reflect a few salient points.
The absence of Valorant teams representing the Portuguese-speaking community was one big reason for this decrease. In 2023, we saw another highly popular side in the game, LOUD, participate and make it to the Lower Bracket Final. However, this year's iteration had no sides, meaning the language saw a huge decrease of 293.4%.
Japanese fans, too, showed a lesser interest in proceedings this time around as they did not have a representative like last year, affecting the overall watch time dynamics. However, more Korean representation helped prop up this decrease in a major language, with Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese also punching above their weights to ensure the drop in Group Stage HW figures was minor compared to 2023.
Moreover, the poor displays and subsequent elimination of teams like Gen.G and Team Vitality came as a downer to fans at this Valorant event. The performances of the former, especially, were disappointing, as it is one of the form sides this year, having not finished below second at any major competition in 2024.
Worth mentioning is the performance of Trace Esports, one of China's two representatives that made the Playoffs after topping its group in a relatively comfortable fashion. It will face countrymen EDward Gaming in the Upper Bracket Quarterfinals, with a place in its first-ever international Semifinal very much within reach.
Another point of note is that the Champions 2024's Group Stage, which hit 21.9M Hours Watched and 372.5K Average Viewers over almost 59 hours of airtime has helped Valorant become the most-watched games on Twitch since August 1. Whether it can sustain this momentum and end as one of the more successful events in the discipline depends a lot on the performances of the big sides, but so far, they have not disappointed.
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