Brazilian and Japanese audiences lead the way — VCT 2024 Americas and Pacific Kickoff viewership
The 2024 Valorant Champions Tour season has finally returned, kicking off with the aptly named Kickoff events for the four major regions worldwide. So far, the Americas and Pacific events have started and the events are receiving significantly high viewership for the respective regions' favourite teams.
The Kickoff events are the new regional replacement for the VCT 2023: LOCK//IN São Paulo LAN event. Instead of one LAN event hosted earlier in the year, the VCT is beginning its 2024 season by hosting regional tournaments, including EMEA’s Kickoff will also begin on February 20 and the brand-new franchised China region, which will see its Kickoff event begin on February 22.
Looking towards the Americas, Sentinels and Loud enjoyed the most popular match of the VCT 2024: Americas Kickoff, combining the wild popularity of Sentinels in North America with the power of loyal Brazilian fans. The match received 589K Peak Viewers, becoming by far the most popular match of the VCT 2024 season.
VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff Viewership Statistics
Sentinels enjoyed a successful offseason after the conclusion of the VCT 2023 season. After signing Zellsis to their roster in late 2023 as a substitute, they played offseason events such as the Sentinels Invitational and the AfreecaTV VALORANT LEAGUE with him, enjoying success against established teams like PRX, DRX, and G2 Esports.
Sentinels were the champions of both these events, taking home $35,000 before the 2024 season began and getting fans excited and hopeful for the upcoming season. Although benching Brazilian player pancada may have affected the Brazilian viewership for the team, this was cancelled out by playing against LOUD, the most popular Brazilian team in Valorant.
LOUD, on the other hand, is enterally popular. The Brazilian esports organisation is popular in nearly every esports discipline it competes in, and Valorant is no different. At the ultimate Valorant Champions 2023 event, LOUD’s elimination from the event severely affected viewership. The Brazilian fanbase is incredibly patriotic, and the combination of their viewership and Sentinels’ current hype wave was enough to launch this match far ahead of any of the others in terms of peak concurrent viewership.
So far, across the first three days of matches, the Americas Kickoff event has received 5.4M Hours Watched and sustained 305.3K Average Viewers. The year is still young and the season has just started, but this average viewership is extremely promising for this year’s Valorant Champions Tour events.
Looking towards the other top matches of the event so far, the gap between Sentinels and Loud’s peak viewership compared to other matches is clear to see. The second-most popular match of the event was between NRG and FURIA which reached 406.1K PV, also benefitting from the viewership of Brazilian fans. NRG are also one of the most exciting teams in the Americas VCT at the moment.
The American organisation added three new players to their roster at the end of 2022, Marved, Ethan, and Demon1. Marved came from Sentinels, but Ethan and Demon1 both played for Evil Geniuses last year, the current reigning champions of the world. With two currency world champions added to their roster, many pundits are predicting NRG to be one of the top teams in the world in 2024.
VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff Viewership Statistics
On the other side of the globe, the VCT 2024: Pacific Kickoff received slightly lower peak viewership than its American counterpart, but viewership is still high for the region. In total, the event has accumulated 5.2M Hours Watched across the first two days of viewership and averaged 265.5K Average Viewers throughout.
Although the Pacific event began a day later than the Americas event, it has been broadcasting for 2 hours longer due to organisation and production-related issues during the opening T1 vs Bleed match. The game was fraught with issues and was live for over 5 hours, making it the longest Valorant game ever.
The most popular match of the event was the opening Day 2 match, ZETA DIVISION vs Global Esports. ZETA are a Japanese team that finished 9-12th at the most recent Champions event, but the support of their fans is undeniable. Their match against GE garnered 422K Peak Viewers, and over 70% of these viewers came from Japanese-speaking broadcasts.
Japan is quickly becoming the viewership powerhouse of the Pacific region, and its influence on the viewership for these events is not to be understated. Just as Brazilian-Portuguese viewership greatly affected the viewership for major international Valorant events in 2023, Japanese broadcasts may become hugely influential on Valorant Champions Tour 2024 events.
DetonatioN FocusMe is the only other Japanese-majority team competing in the VCT 2024 Pacific region, and alongside DRX they were one of the most popular teams in the Pacific region last year. Their match received 400.4K Peak Viewers and resulted in a quick 2-0 victory for DRX. Japan is a strong region for viewership in Valorant, but if their teams are not able to be competitive and win matches, their influence on viewership will be short-lived at major events.
Finally, the 5-hour-long Bleed vs T1 match received 377K Peak Viewers, becoming the third-most popular match so far. Bleed signed yay in late 2023, an American ex-Counter-Strike professional who finished 2nd at Valorant Champions 2022 with OpTic Gaming. After OpTic dissolved, yay spent a year on the sidelines not competing in tier-1 Valorant, and his journey to the Pacific region has brought many English-speaking fans with him; Bleed’s match against T1 received roughly double the English-speaking viewership of any other match at the Pacific Kickoff event.
The EMEA and China Kickoff events will begin shortly, and not soon after the Americas and Pacific events will come to an end. These inaugural events for the competitive season may be indicative of the season’s overall viewership performance, so keep an eye on Esports Charts to highlight some of the potential viewership trends for the upcoming 2024 Valorant Champions Tour season.
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