VCT 2024: Pacific Kickoff becomes the game’s most popular event for the region ever
The VCT 2024: Pacific Kickoff ended its grand final match on February 25. The event is the first completed stage of the Valorant Champions Tour 2024 season and sets out a preliminary ranking of the best Pacific teams in the league. Although Valorant’s viewership is growing in the region, it heavily relies on certain patriotic audiences.
The Kickoff events are a new edition to Valorant’s esports calendar, replacing last year’s international LAN event with regional leagues for each of the game’s major provinces. As such, there are no early-season regional leagues from 2023 we can directly compare to. However, compared to last year’s VCT 2023: Pacific League, peak viewership for the Kickoff event increased significantly. Trying to account for this increase in viewership, there are two significant changes to the league for the 2024 season.
In 2024, a new team joined the top tier of Pacific Valorant competition, Bleed Esports. Bleed was the victor of the Challengers Ascension 2023 Pacific tournament, securing their spot in the franchised league for at least two years. After winning the event, the organisation shuffled their roster and added two new players, Egoist and yay, the latter of which is a fan favourite for North Americans. He secured his popularity through his Counter-Strike career and his Chamber-meta dominance, which led him to second place at Valorant Champions 2022 with OpTic Gaming.
While yay brought viewership to the league from North Americans, DetonatioN FocusMe secured a stronger hold in the Japanese market through a business partnership with Crazy Raccoon. Crazy Raccoon is a beloved Japanese esports organisation that also hosts its own tournaments, and it commands a serious following among Japanese fans. Crazy Raccoon and DetonatioN FocusMe combined their rosters, bringing fans from both organisations together.
VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff viewership statistics
In total, the Pacific Kickoff event garnered 16.2M Hours Watched across 19 matches and over 60 hours of airtime. The event also held 254.5K Average Viewers throughout its entirety, roughly 115K more AV than the VCT 2023: Pacific League event. However, it is worth noting the Pacific League of 2023 ran for over 180 hours of broadcasting time; average viewership usually decreases the longer an event runs, as it is difficult to keep viewers’ attention for so long.
Japanese was by far the most popular language of the event, receiving more than double the peak viewership of the second-most popular language, English. Japanese viewership capped at 302.3K Peak Viewers for ZETA’s match against T1 during the Group Stage. Japanese official broadcasts on both Twitch and YouTube were also the most popular channels to cover the tournament.
Japanese was the most popular language, but English saw significant growth compared to the 2023 Pacific events. Yay’s entrance to the league was thought to bring significant English-language viewership to the league, but the peak viewership for English was recorded during the grand final match. Almost 149K concurrent viewers tuned in at peak for the match, which could originate from English-speaking Pacific countries like Singapore, or increased interest from international fans outside the region.
Although the official Japanese broadcasting channels were the most popular channels to cover the event, many community casters supported the event. Over 140 channels covered the Pacific Kickoff, and many of these were Japanese Twitch community casters who received tens of thousands of concurrent viewers at peak. One of the most noticeable community casters of the event was former Paper Rex starting player Jinggg.
Jingggxd, as he is known on Twitch, built a following for himself as an integral part of Paper Rex’s signature aggressive playstyle. Jinggg quickly became one of the star duelists of Valorant, but as a Singaporean national he is required to complete a two-year national service. Jinggg had to unfortunately step down during a high point of his career, but his fans followed him to his Twitch channel. For his coverage of the Pacific Kickoff grand final, Jinggg received over 22.5K Peak Viewers, setting a personal record.
Japan continued to be the most critical region for Pacific viewership throughout the Kickoff event, and ZETA’s match against T1 during the Group Stage was the most popular match of the entire event. 462.6K Peak Viewers tuned in for the match, and well over 65% of these viewers came from Japanese-language broadcasts.
The Grand Final between Gen.G and Paper Rex did receive a considerable amount of viewership, and with 433.5K Peak Viewers, it did earn more concurrent viewers at peak than the 2023 Pacific League. Although viewership for this match was high, it was undercut by a lack of support from the strong Japanese audience.
Japanese viewership remained high throughout the Group Stage; naturally, games featuring local teams reached higher viewership but even matches without Japanese teams saw Japanese broadcasts contribute significantly to viewership. However, ZETA Division was eliminated in the post-groups Play-In stage, and throughout the playoffs, the language’s stats were far lower than many Group Stage matches.
Ultimately, the VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff received 433.5K PV for its grand final match, far higher than any other Pacific-based event in Valorant so far. However, the true potential of the Pacific League’s viewership remains to be seen. If a Japanese team, especially ZETA who is especially popular, had advanced to the playoffs stage of the tournament, viewership would have likely reached much higher: potentially even rivalling the VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff, which currently sits at 592.2K Peak Viewers.
Just as the Americas Valorant region relies heavily on LATAM and especially Brazillian viewership to reach its peaks, the Pacific region has Japan to rely on for high viewership. If ZETA or DFM are able to compete on the top level within the Pacific scene, we may see the Pacific region’s events reach a higher peak viewership than the traditionally stronger Americas region.
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