VCT 2022: Game Changers Championship becomes the most watched tournament in female esports

VCT 2022: Game Changers Championship ended on November 20 in Berlin, where participants competed for $500K, the largest prize pool in the history of female esports. The tournament has also become No.1 in female esports by Hours Watched, ranked second by Peak Viewers, and outperformed many of the male CS:GO tier-2 competitions. Esports Charts team sums up the results of the event.

Tournament Results

Game Changers series is the main initiative of Riot Games to develop the Valorant female esports scene. The first Game Changers tournaments kicked off in 2021 and have actually been running simultaneously with the male Valorant Champions Tour series since then.

Game Changers scene is divided into several regions — North America, Latin America, Europe, Brazil, East Asia and Asia Pacific. Each region has its own tournament cycle, which takes the best teams to the Game Changers Championship. All of the cycles are very different by format: some regions play for quota, while other regions have participants compete for points in dozens of smaller tournaments. Some teams make it to the finals directly, while others have to participate in intermediate qualifiers: it all depends on the level of competition and popularity of the discipline in the region.

G2 Gozen players with the VCG 2022 trophy in Berlin / Photo: twitter.com/G2esports

Game Changers tournaments are sometimes organized not only by Riot Games, but also with the help of third-party tournament organizers or even an esports club (for example, some tournaments are organized by Team Liquid or Gen.G Esports). The Galorants community, which promotes inclusivity and diversity in esports, is one of the organizers of tournaments in North America. It holds competitions for non-binary personalities, where people of different genders can participate.

The European team G2 Gozen won VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship. It defeated X10 Sapphire, Cloud9 White, and Team Liquid Brazil on its way to the finals, before defeating Shopify Rebellion GC in the decisive match. G2 Gozen got $180K for its victory, a record amount for female tournaments not only in Valorant, but in other esports disciplines as well.

Viewership Statistics

The recent Game Changers Championship has become the most-watched female tournament in the history of esports, totaling 5.4 million Hours Watched and drawing 114.9K Average Viewers. Moreover, the event reached 239.3K Peak Viewers at the Grand Final between G2 Gozen and Shopify Rebellion GC.

G2 Gozen became the most popular team by AV (149.5K), while Shopify Rebellion GC retained the lead by HW (2.8 million) as the American team played six more maps because of dropping to the lower bracket.

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English is the main language of the tournament broadcast — it accounted for 42.1% of the total Hours Watched. Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese together reached almost the same percentage. More than 88.7% of the audience watched the matches on Twitch, and the rest followed the tournament on YouTube.

The most popular channel at the tournament is the official VALORANT channel on Twitch — it got 1.4 million HW and attracted 64.8K PV. In addition, there was a lot of community casting from the top streamers (over 110 channels in total). Tarik, TenZ and coreano, who also regularly cover other Valorant tournaments.

Comparison with Other Tournaments

Most popular female Valorant tournaments

VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship tops the list of the most popular female Valorant tournaments. It beat VCT 2022: Game Changers East Asia by 3.6 times (that is a regional tournament with 66.2K PV). Comparing the female Game Changers Championship with the male Valorant Champions 2022, the latter had a far higher audience reach, as expected. The Hours Watched total differs by a factor of 12, the Peak Viewers total by a factor of 6, and the Average Viewers total by a factor of 4.6.

Most popular female tournaments in esports

VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship has become No.1 in female esports by HW and ranked second by PV. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Women's Invitational holds the first position with 392.4K PV. Notably, the Top 5 most popular female tournaments comprises four Mobile Legends tournaments.

VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship outpaced the most popular female tournament and some major CS:GO male tournaments by key metrics

When it comes to the competition between Valorant and CS:GO, VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship can also be compared to the ESL Impact female esports series with a total prize pool of $500K. The shooter by Riot Games attracted much more Average and Peak Viewers. In comparison, ESL Impact League Season 1 had 29K AV and 110K PV. It is noteworthy that many professional players in Valorant have played in the Valve shooter in the past — just like G2 Gozen members in 2021, who used to be considered one of the strongest teams in female CS:GO.

VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship could also compete with some of the male CS:GO tournaments by audience reach. For example, the Valorant female championship drew more viewers than REPUBLEAGUE Season 3, FiReLEAGUE 2022: Global Finals, and the BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown regional stages in Europe and North America.

The VCT 2022 Game Changers Championship audience reach shows that Valorant may become the mainstream female esports discipline in Europe and North America, but is unlikely to surpass Mobile Legends: Bang Bang in Southeast Asia. It is important to note that these games belong to different genres, so there is no direct competition between them. It may happen that in the coming years, it will be Riot Games and Moonton that will determine what female esports will look like and what place it will take in the industry as a whole.