VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers — EMEA and NA viewership results

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The first stage of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2022 is heading towards completion, with only one stop remaining — the offline Masters event in Reykjavík. The majority of advancing teams have been decided this weekend, as VCT's Stage 1 Challengers regional series concluded after more than a month of group stage matches. In this article, we are going to take a look at the viewership results of the two regions with the highest Valorant popularity — Europe and North America. 

Stage 1 Challengers North America

The NA Stage 1 Challengers ended up with a victory of The Guard, a relatively young roster that entered Valorant esports in late 2021. After defeating Cloud9 in the lower bracket final, the team returned to the grand final and swept OpTic Gaming 3-2, ensuring a spot in stage playoffs in Iceland together with OpTic.

The series ran throughout six weeks, with the Air Time totalling 136 hours. During this time, the competition generated over 14M Hours Watched, with an average viewership of 103.87K Average Viewers. Let us note that the final statistics was heavily affected by the community casters: a lot of viewers tuned in to watch VCT games on streams of tarik, sinatraa, kyedae, mixwell, and other Valorant enthusiasts.

The North American competition saw the highest volumes of spectators in its first stages rather than during the finals. The highest viewership peak occurred on the second day of group stages when 278.15K concurrent viewers tuned in to the match between Sentinels — the 2021 Reykjavík champions — and NRG. This makes it the eighth most popular Valorant esports event (by PV).

Statistics on the most popular teams is available with our PRO subscription

The most popular team of the NA Stage 1 Challengers was Sentinels, who accumulated 3.7M Hours Watched. The next was OpTic Gaming, followed by The Guard, Cloud9 and Version1. 

Although the American Challengers event has also ranked among the most watched Valorant esports events to date (by HW), this is caused mostly by the particularly lengthy Air Time. The event’s average viewership was considerably lower than the viewership of tournaments with the highest HW count, such as VCT 2021 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík or VALORANT Champions 2021. 

Stage 1 Challengers EMEA

The European edition of the VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers concluded with a 3-1 victory of FunPlus Phoenix against G2 Esports. However, due to the travel restrictions in Ukraine and Russia, as well as COVID-19 regulations, FPX won’t be able to attend the tournament in Reykjavík. Riot Games invited Team Liquid instead. The other two teams that qualified for the first VCT Masters event of the season are G2 Esports and Fnatic. 

Similarly to its inaugural season, the current VCT season draws more attention in North America than in Europe. In 104 hours of Air Time, the Stage 1 Challengers EMEA generated 9.68M Hours Watched, with an average viewership of 93K Average Viewers. That’s 31.37% less than the NA event.

The European competition peaked at 239.39K concurrent viewers during the playoff match between Fnatic and M3 Champions, in which Fnatic managed to secure its spot in Reykjavík. Compared to the results of the NA event, the concurrent viewership of the EMEA Challengers was 13.94% lower. 

The most popular team was G2 Esports with 3.24M Hours Watched accumulated during the event, followed by Fnatic, Team Liquid, M3 and FPX. 

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The VCT 2022 Stage 1 Masters Reykjavík is set to take place as a LAN tournament from April 10th to 14th, with the venue of the event yet to be announced. The event, which will see 12 Valorant teams travel to Iceland to fight for the first Masters title of the season, will reveal how the official Valorant esports circuit performs in terms of viewership and popularity one year after its launch. Stay tuned for our viewership report once the event concludes. 

Related: Valorant Regional Leagues 2022 overview