VCT 2024 Masters Shanghai opened to 46% fewer Average Viewers than Masters Madrid
The second major Valorant LAN event of 2024 is here: the VCT 2024: Masters Shanghai. The tournament is the culmination of Stage 1 of the Valorant Champions Tour 2024, inviting the best teams of the first stage regional events. Masters Madrid was hugely successful, becoming the most popular Valorant event ever, but Masters Shanghai is not necessarily following suit.
Viewership for the first day of Masters Shanghai is far lower than the viewership garnered by Masters Madrid, but it is only the first day of the event. One key reason for lower viewership at this major event is the invited participants; some of the world’s most popular teams in Valorant, LOUD, Sentinels, and Karmine Corp, will not attend. The fact that these teams are not in attendance will likely heavily affect the viewership of the tournament, and some effects of this are already visible.
VCT 2024 Masters Shanghai Day 1 Viewership Statistics
In total, the first two matches of Masters Shanghai garnered 1.83M Hours Watched and held an average viewership of 265.3K concurrent viewers. Although close to 2M hours of watch time after two matches seems strong in isolation, this is a significant downturn compared for viewership to the previous Valorant Masters, which we will explore later.
Looking towards the most popular languages of the first day, Portuguese is noticeably missing. The Portuguese umbrella covers both Brazilian-Portuguese and Portuguese, and these fans are often out in full force to support their compatriot teams, usually LOUD.
Aspas of Leviatán is the only Brazilian attending the event, and while his matches may receive high Portuguese viewership, the fact that no Brazilian team is in attendance is a serious worry for the event. Other Valorant international LANs have heavily relied on Portuguese-language viewership, making Masters Shanghai a unique challenge for Valorant to prove its viewership is stable without certain core regions in attendance.
While Portuguese has stepped aside, this has opened the door for another language to move into the top 3. Thai has perhaps surprisingly claimed a podium place, considering that not a single Thai player is in attendance. Thai-language viewership reached 28K Peak Viewers on the first day of the event; the Chinese event appears to have bolstered the viewership from other Asian audiences.
T1’s match against G2 Esports was the most popular match of the first day, having reached 411.2K Peak Viewers. The game culminated in a close 14-12 overtime victory for G2 Esports, ending the series 2-1 up against T1. The clash of the Americas and Pacific was interesting enough for this match to garner significantly more viewership than the other.
FunPlus Phoenix’s match against FUT Esports was less watched, but still received hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers. The game received 328.5K Peak Viewers, also ending in a tight 13-10 scoreline on Map 3 in favour of FPX.
Despite both of the first-day matches being close games and clashes of the regions, viewership for the event has not been as strong as previous Valorant events: this may have to do with the timing of the China-based event. The first match of the day began at 10:10am in central Europe, or 4:10am on the east coast of the Americas, leaving many Europeans at work and many Americans asleep.
This may have also affected international community casters, of which there was a serious decrease compared to Masters Madrid. The Spanish Masters event was covered by almost 200 individual broadcasters on its opening day, whereas Masters Shanghai was covered by only 144 channels.
Speaking of comparing Masters Shanghai to Masters Madrid, the Chinese event has received viewership far below the bar set by Masters Madrid. In terms of watch time, Masters Shanghai received 37.6% fewer Hours Watched than Masters Madrid on Day 1. Even more critically, the average viewership for the event has dropped by 45.9%.
The Peak Viewers metric for the opening day of Masters Madrid was clearly boosted by LOUD’s appearance. The Brazilian team’s match against Gen.G was the most popular match of the day, and Portuguese-speaking audiences contributed 30.8% of the total peak viewership achieved on the day. Masters Shanghai, however, features no Brazilian teams, and Portuguese-speaking audiences have not followed the event with as much passion.
Masters Shanghai’s viewership is suffering from a multitude of factors: core audiences are not represented by attending teams, leaving demographics such as Portuguese-speaking and French viewers uninterested in the event, time zones and the event schedule are dissuading international viewers from tuning in, and perhaps even the broadcast talent of the official English broadcast.
Masters Shanghai still has 12 more days of intense action planned for viewers, but it also faces many challenges to match the high bar set by Masters Madrid earlier this year. Visit the tournament page’s schedule tab to see when the next upcoming matches are, and PRO users can actively check the Statistics tab for advanced statistics which will be updated throughout the event.
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