Valorant Champions viewership retrospective: how do things look for Champions 2025?

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In just a few days, the global Valorant esports community again turns it attention to Valorant Champions. More than just a top event for the best teams to battle it out, Champions has become a benchmark for viewership and international engagement for the Valorant Champions Tour. While the series continues to attract well-over a million live fans yearly, its year-on-year trajectory has not always been smooth. Esports Charts takes a look back at the Valorant Champions viewership before Champions 2025.

Since its inaugural edition, Valorant Champions has consistently drawn strong audiences. From its immediate debut, Champions 2021 managed to attract 1.09M Peak Viewers (PV), receiving a slight boost in viewership from the tails of the pandemic esports wave. However, 2022 shows the volatility of Valorant esports viewership we’ve come to expect, with a massive 1.51M Peak Viewers generated for its grand final. 

Valorant Champions 2022 saw North American squad OpTic Gaming face off against Brazil’s top team, LOUD. Crucially, this event drew massive viewership among both English-speaking and Portuguese-language American streams, combining the power of the two powerhouse audiences. In total, well-over 1M PV were recorded between these two audiences alone.

For years, the combination of Portuguese and English-language audiences was a winning recipe for Valorant esports. Many season-starting or mid-season Masters tournaments set viewership records on the back of this formula. But the scene and its landscape has evolved since: Brazilian and North American teams are less often competing for top spots, and the excitement around these audiences has waned slightly.

In the following years, Valorant has continued to maintain strong viewership, with more diversified audiences than its 2022 peak. While the following year marked a rather significant dip, viewership has since grown and Valorant Champions 2024 marked a clear, international interest in the finals. Champions 2024 managed its 1.41M PV through a wide combination of language audiences, including various groups from Asia, which are just recently finding their space in Valorant esports.

While 2024 fell short of the full peak of the Champions series, Riot’s continued investment in their esports circuit and broader global broadcast reach has kindled a strong passion among its esports fans. While the trajectory of the series is not as explosive as leader like Worlds in League of Legends, the game is well-situated to continue its year-on-year growth.

For Valorant Champions 2025, a key to success will be recreating some crucial points which have bolstered Valorant’s viewership in the past. Each of Valorant’s International Leagues has sent a healthy mix of historic names and up-and-coming rosters, which are sure to create some compelling storylines to excite fans, while also maintaining representation for many of Valorant’s core regions, especially the Americas. 

Champions 2025 could well surpass the previous peaks of its series, challenging the 1.5M viewers mark once again. As one of the year’s premier and most-anticipated esports events, the stakes are high for the 16 international teams making up the action this year. Keep an eye on our tournament page for the event, the initial viewership results for its first matches on September 12 could hint at the ultimate results.