VCT 2021: Last Chance Qualifiers viewership results

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The inaugural season of the Valorant Champions Tour 2021 is slowly approaching its finish line, with only one final stop left — the VALORANT Champions 2021. The season’s culmination is expected to be the biggest VCT event so far, featuring only the world’s best VALORANT teams. 

The global championship is set to kick off in less than a month, but before that, teams that hadn’t managed to secure their ticket had one final opportunity to do so during the regional VCT Last Chance Qualifiers, which took place across October. Despite plenty of teams competing, only one team from each of the four regions could make it through. 

In this article, Esports Charts discusses the viewership statistics of each of the regional qualifiers and reveals the most popular teams and matches of each event of the series. 

Asia-Pacific 

The event that performed the best out of the four regional tournaments in terms of viewership was the Asia-Pacific qualifier, which peaked at 190.1K concurrent viewers during the grand final match between Thai team FULL SENSE and Japanese squad Northeption. In the end, the ticket to the Champions was snatched by FULL SENSE.

During 55 hours of Air Time, the tournament accumulated over 3.35M Hours Watched. On average, 61K viewers tuned in to spectate the competition, with their attention being directed mainly towards Northeption, FULL SENSE and Indian team Global Esports. 

EMEA

The EMEA Last Chance Qualifier reached 175.4K Peak Viewers and 79.6K Average Viewers, who generated a total of 3.19M Hours Watched during 40 hours of Air Time. The highest peak was hit on Day 4 during the battle between G2 Esports and Turkish team Futbolist.

The winner of the tournament — Team Liquid — dominated the competition not only in terms of score but also in terms of popularity. With 97.9K Average Viewers, Team Liquid became the most popular team of the event. The second was G2 with 96.1K Average Viewers, followed by Futbolist (84.2K AV), Guild Esports (82.2K AV) and SuperMassive Blaze (66.1K AV). 

That said, the most-watched team by Hours Watched was Guild Esports, generating over 1.4M HW.

North America

During 50 hours of Air Time, the North American qualifier garnered 3.39M Hours Watched. Its viewership peak of 135.8K concurrent viewers occurred during Cloud9 Blue vs. Rise grand final match, which was won by C9 Blue. Besides becoming the last seed for the Champions event, C9 Blue also became the most-watched team by Hours Watched, accumulating 1.4M HW. 

On average, 67.1K viewers tuned in to spectate the teams battling in the North American Last Chance Qualifier. It's 16% less than the average audience of EU Qualifier.

As for the popularity of teams by Average Viewers, the most popular team of the event was 100 Thieves, who gathered 87.8K Average Viewers. Next was Rise with 75.4K AV, followed by C9 Blue (72.2K AV), FaZe Clan (67.7K AV) and Gen.G Esports (66.6K AV). 

South America 

The South American qualifier showed the weakest viewership performance of the four events, garnering 1.03M Hours Watched by 23K Average Viewers. 

The highest viewership peak of 45.9K concurrent viewers was hit during the opening match between FURIA Esports and Chilean team Australs. Although FURIA lost this match, it was the only loss for the Brazilian team, who ended up defeating the rest of its rivals and securing the spot at the Champions event. With 420.4K Hours Watched, FURIA also became the most popular team of the tournament by HW. 

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All in all, the viewership performance of the VCT 2021: Last Chance Qualifiers series wasn’t by any means comparable with the results of other major VCT events. However, that’s an expected development, considering that this was just a qualifier. The last major of the series - Stage 3 Masters Berlin broke the discipline’s viewership record and placed itself as the second most-watched VALORANT esports event so far, right after Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík. 

In December, 16 teams will conclude the first season of the official VALORANT esports circuit with a battle for the world’s first-ever VALORANT Champions title. Will the final VCT Champions event set the discipline’s new viewership record? Stay tuned for our viewership overview once the tournament wraps up.