Viewership insights of global esports audiences in Valorant

Valorant is one of the world’s most popular esports titles, captivating fans from across the globe. The young tactical shooter rapidly became a top esports title since its release in 2020, supported by their experienced developers Riot Games. The game has found footholds all around the globe, with significant audiences popping up in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the developers have been making efforts to expand into China recently. However, despite the game’s global relevance, Valorant viewership is rarely stagnant. Each year, audiences shift between international events, with some of the more particularly volatile audiences increasing or decreasing by hundreds of thousands of viewers. The yearly Valorant Champions event showcases the game’s top talent, as well as the diversity of Valorant’s audiences. This premiere, world-championship event is a constant factor we can compare the shifting growth and decline of languages against; Esports Charts explores our PRO language data behind these events, having a deeper look into the beating heart of viewership behind Valorant. Valorant’s competitive esports circuit is made up of four International Leagues (IL), which send their best competitors each year to Champions. Spanning EMEA, the Americas, Pacific, and China, these regions boast some of the most passionate fans in esports. From Brazilian fans rallying behind LOUD to Japanese fans following the action without a team of their own, Valorant’s esports viewership scene is anything but simple. Valorant’s English viewership: Primary, stable international audience Undoubtedly, English is the primary source of viewership for global Valorant tournaments; the global lingua franca represents viewership from all corners of the world, from Europe to North America and a broader international audience with English as a common tongue. As this audience is so diverse, viewership largely remains stably ahead of the competition in Valorant esports, with few volatile spikes or dips in viewership to mention. Although there are few spikes or dips for this audience, there are some examples. At last year’s VCT 2024: Masters Madrid North American superstars Sentinels managed to achieve their second-ever Masters title. Including passionate co-streams from their fans and hundreds of thousands of viewers tuning in to the official broadcasters, their Madrid grand final against Gen.G accumulated over 947,600 English Peak Viewers. This currently stands as the record for English viewership in Valorant, with a lead of over 250,000 concurrent viewers ahead of the next-most popular event. Aside from the odd spike in viewership for Sentinels, English-language viewership has remained vaguely stable year-on-year. For every Valorant Champions event since its inauguration in 2021, English-language viewership has recorded a peak between 600,000-700,000 concurrent viewers. Valorant Champions 2023 came closest to breaking this barrier, settling in at 689,809 Peak Viewers while Evil Geniuses claimed North Americas’ first-ever Champions title. Aside from this top language, Portuguese (including Brazilian Portuguese), Japanese, and Spanish-speaking audiences are some of the largest audiences for Valorant esports. Over the years, Portuguese-language viewership has been especially volatile, depending heavily on the performance and attendance of Brazilian teams at Valorant Champions. Valorant’s Portuguese-language viewership: Brazil’s local support fervour Brazil remains one of Valorant’s strongest markets outside of Asia, with Portuguese-language streams consistently ranking highly in the Americas league and at international events. However, this strong audience is largely fuelled by passion for cheering on a local team; meaning, if no Brazilian team is in attendance, viewership suffers significantly. At the inaugural Valorant Champions 2021, there were in fact numerous Brazilian teams in attendance, but LOUD’s superstar status as one of Brazil’s premiere esports organizations boosted things to new levels in the following years. In only their first year of Valorant esports, they achieved local success and also seemed inexorable at the Champions event in 2022: throughout the entire event they lost only one match against OpTic Gaming, who they would take their revenge against in the finals. With their Champions trophy in hand, LOUD brought over 452,000 Portuguese-speaking viewers to Valorant esports, to this day still the second-highest result for this language ever. Following shortly after this victory, LOUD appeared at the VCT 2023: LOCK//IN São Paulo on home soil. Although they were unable to topple EMEA powerhouse Fnatic in the finals, over 543,000 Portuguese-speaking viewers tuned in: the current-standing record for this audience in Valorant esports. Portuguese viewership tends to concentrate heavily around matches involving domestic representatives, resulting in sharp spikes in peak audience figures rather than consistent baselines. This illustrates a fan base that is highly event-driven, where national pride and representation act as the primary catalysts for engagement, noticeably less so than other countries such as Japan. While Brazil holds serious potential for Valorant esports, as LOUD has slipped competitively, the influence of this audience has slowly begun to wane. While LOUD won't attend, Brazil’s MIBR secured a spot at the upcoming Valorant Champions 2025 in Paris. However, according to the soon-finishing VCT 2025: Americas Stage 2, LOUD is still the most popular team by Average Viewers by a significant margin. If MIBR is able to properly excite and engage this audience at the upcoming Champions event, we could see a new king of Brazilian viewership in Valorant reign. Valorant’s Japanese viewership: passionate, general esports fans Over the years, Japan has remained a bastion for viewership in Valorant’s dynamic esports scene. While other audiences have grown and shrank according to the competitive successes of local teams, Japanese viewers have stayed loyal to Valorant esports despite sometimes having no single Japanese player to cheer for. Despite Japanese viewers having no player to stand behind at Valorant Champions 2024, viewership remained strong, and the language emerged as the third-most popular of the entire tournament, falling only slightly behind Spanish. However, this audience’s commitment to following esports even without local teams does not mean they do not enjoy a boost in excitement when a local team does compete. At Valorant Champions 2022, Japanese team ZETA DIVISION made their first Champions appearance and recorded one of the highest Japanese peak viewerships ever. Japan’s Valorant scene stands out as a region that demonstrates huge potential and reach, but without a top team competing in the late-stages of international events, it’s difficult to assess just how far this audience could grow. Interestingly, this has led many Japanese viewers to turn to their local tier-two Challengers circuit instead. The second-tier of competition for the tactical shooter, Valorant Challengers, has been dominated by Japanese viewership. Even since 2022, Japanese Challengers events have topped the charts, and this remains true to this day. In 2025, the Valorant Challengers 2025 Japan: Split 1 received over 92,000 more Peak Viewers than the next-most popular Challengers tournament: Valorant Challengers 2025 France: Revolution Stage 1. If Japanese teams are able to climb the rankings and become an international competitor on the Champions stage, viewership from this region could easily compete for the top language spot in Valorant esports. Japanese fans have already shown consistent support and loyalty to Valorant esports, just waiting for an explosive wave of viewership for a local team on the international stage. Valorant’s Spanish-language viewership: consistent growth year-on-year Spanish-language broadcasts in Valorant are spread across the globe, similarly to Portuguese-language streams. This viewership spans across Spain and Latin America, and what makes this audience interesting is its split of viewers representing two sides of the globe: while Portuguese-language streams do include Portugal, this audience is not sizeable in Valorant esports. Spanish viewership represents an international audience of loyalty-driven fans and general esports enthusiasts. In 2021, this audience enjoyed an abnormal boost from the presence of Ibai “ibai” Llanos, a world-famous and industry-leading content creator and streamer from Spain. He tuned in to support KRÜ Esports, who advanced deep into the tournament before being eliminated in the semifinal. Ibai’s presence helped raise the bar for Spanish-language viewership and set a seemingly unbeatable Spanish peak for the game. However, even without Ibai’s presence, this would have still been the only Valorant event to reach over 200,000 peak Spanish-speaking viewers. Since 2021, Latin American have struggled to be competitive at these global Champions tournaments. While KRÜ Esports attended Champions in 2022, 2023, and 2024, they failed to advance through the Group Stage each time, and viewership never picked up. However, their constant presence at these events has slowly built a following around the team, and Spanish-language viewership has slowly been increasing year-on-year. In 2024, it is worth noting that Argentinian esports organization Leviatán advanced to Upper Bracket Final of Champions, finishing the event in the final podium place. They also faced off against Team Heretics in the Lower Bracket Final, where the Spanish team eliminated their Argentinian opponent 3:1. The Spanish organization Team Heretics were the largest recipients of Spanish-language viewership during the group stage of the event, far outperforming KRÜ and Leviatán. This audience’s split between Latin America and Spain has helped it to remain stable, slowly growing year-on-year. The 2025 Champions tournament will be a key moment in the history of Spanish Valorant viewership: will this audience continue to grow, or did Team Heretics and Leviatán’s playoff performance in 2024 set the bar too high? Taken together, the advanced language viewership dynamics of Valorant Champions highlight three distinct models of audience engagement: Japan’s general esports enthusiasm and sustained support, Brazil’s national pride and team-driven spikes, and Spanish-speaking regions’ balanced distribution. No two esports audiences are exactly the same, and understanding the differences in how these fans consume and follow esports action is key for anyone in the esports industry. For the upcoming Champions event in Paris this year, keep an eye on Valorant’s shifting language audiences. As one of the world’s most global and far-reaching esports, the competitive results of teams, timezones and national pride all play significant roles in the ultimate results of any international Valorant event. Will French or Spanish audiences grow significantly? And will Brazilian fans rally behind MIBR? Esports Charts will keep you updated on the latest shifts in esports viewership.

World’s most global esports: how Valorant's international audiences shift and change each year

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