VCT 2022 Stage 1 Masters: Viewership Stats and Final Results

The first international tournament of the Valorant Champions Tour 2022 series ended on Sunday. The start of the pro season, like last year, took place in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. The top 12 teams of VCT 2022 Stage 1 competed for the main prize of $675K and 750 VCT points. Just like last year, American team prevailed: OpTic Gaming scored a devastating vendetta over the Brazilian team LOUD in the grand final with a score of 3:0. Yet despite the spectacular matches, the tournament became only the third most popular one in the discipline.

Extremely close to the record

Most watched Valorant events by PV / AV / HW

VCT 2022: Stage 1 Masters – Reykjavik accumulated 33.2M Hours Watched, outperforming last year's Reykjavik tournament and being slightly short of VCT 2021 Berlin's which amassed 33.4M Hours Watched. At the same time, the airtime of VCT 2022 Reykjavik was only 79.9 hours compared to 85.7 hours for the competition in Berlin. The Peak Viewers mark was reached on the final day and amounted to 1.06M viewers, which is only 20K viewers short of surpassing the record of the Valorant Champions 2021.

In terms of Average Viewers, VCT 2022 Reykjavik is behind both its last year's predecessor and the Valorant Champions 2021 main tournament, sporting 416K Average Viewers versus 469K at Champions 2021 and 488K at the Reykjavik event in 2021.

The decrease in Average Viewers can only be explained by the fact that for the first time in the history of the VCT, no European team made it to the top 4 of the tournament, which obviously affected the size of the English-speaking audience. The situation was also impacted by the absence of strong teams from Eastern Europe, as well events that were held in other top disciplines – for example, PGL Major Antwerp RMR 2022 and LCS Spring 2022.

Not America alone

The tournament was broadcast in more than 20 languages. Impressive broadcasts figures were shown not only by the English-speaking community with 490K Peak Viewers but also by Japanese viewers who closely followed the matches of their compatriots from ZETA (419K Peak Viewers). The third spot was occupied by broadcasts in Portuguese: fans from Brazil actively supported their favorites from LOUD, with the final day of the tournament attracting 353K Peak Viewers. It should be reminded that Japanese and Portuguese have updated Peak Viewers records in the discipline.

Sizable contribution of community casting

The competition was covered by over 70 channels on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook. Traditionally, Twitch has become the most popular platform with 887K Peak Viewers, while YouTube amassed only 226K Peak Viewers.

It should be noted that the impressive viewership indicators of the tournament are strongly tied to a large number of broadcasts. The official English-language stream of the tournament gathered only 176K Peak Viewers – which is only 16% of the total Peak Viewers. The Peak Viewers and Hours Watched indicators of such streamers as tarik and tenz are only a bit behind the official broadcasts. Moreover, community broadcasting accounted for slightly more than half of the tournament’s total Hours Watched.

Soon enough we will take a closer look at the VCT community casting phenomenon. Follow the news on our website and social networks.

Which teams were the most interesting to viewers?

The most watched teams of the event were the winners of the tournament, OpTic, and the dark horses from Japan: ZETA DIVISION. The match between these teams took the second spot in terms of Peak Viewers: 841K. The top 5 teams by Hours Watched also includes LOUD, DRX, and Team Liquid.

In terms of Average Viewers, the vice-champions of the tournament, LOUD, are leading by a wide margin. Matches between the Brazilians and OpTic Gaming were in the top 3 in terms of Peak Viewers, with the grand final becoming the most popular match of the tournament with 1.06M Peak Viewers. The top 5 teams in terms of Peak Viewers also included G2 Esports and Paper Rex.

Valorant compared to other disciplines

VCT 2022 Stage 1 Masters vs top events in other disciplines

From the very beginning, some predicted that Valorant shall become the “CS:GO killer”, while others predicted its total failure and the imminent closure of the esports division. Let's compare the performance of the recently-ended VCT 2022 Reykjavik with other top tournaments in the late 2021 / early 2022 period.

VCT 2022 Reykjavik was 10% ahead of its closest competitor, IEM Katowice 2022, in terms of Hours Watched, despite the fact that the CS:GO tournament aired 10 hours longer. And that’s not mentioning such tournaments as Six Invitational 2022, where the difference reaches almost 50%, although the R6 competition aired for 58 hours more.

In terms of Peak Viewers, VCT 2022, Reykjavik is only 5% behind the CS:GO Major, while being ahead of the Apex Legends Split finals in North America by 70%.

In terms of Average Viewers on broadcasts, Masters: Reykjavik is ahead of CS:GO by as much as 20%, as well as exceeds ALGS: 2022 Split 1 Playoffs North America by 42%.

It can be argued that Valorant is rapidly gaining popularity in Asia as well as continuously increased the size of its audience in America, which allows it to outperform and compete with CS:GO, which remains more popular in Western and Eastern Europe.

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