VCT 2024 Stage 1 regional leagues finish the first weekend with new teams on top
Following the success of the Masters Madrid events, Valorant’s top teams of the early season returned to their respective regions to continue the season at home. Interestingly, the most popular teams and matches of the opening week of each regional league do not necessarily reflect the pecking order seen in the Kickoff events and Masters Madrid.
Madrid champions Sentinels returned home to the Americas for the first week of VCT 2024: Americas League - Stage 1, and enjoyed a competitive but dominant 2-0 win against 100 Thieves. Sentinels are riding the hype wave after their success at the year’s first international LAN event, and 100 Thieves are always popular among North American fans; and yet, their match against one another was not close to being the most popular match. Instead, Leviatán’s match against Cloud9 reached 455.5K PV, becoming the most popular game of the Americas league so far.
Both Cloud9 and Leviatán have almost entirely rebuilt their rosters coming into 2024, and fans are excited to see them on stage. Their match received more than 120K viewers more at peak than Sentinels’ game against 100T, and almost 20K more than NRG’s game against LOUD. Aspas of Leviatán is also one of South America’s most popular players, and he consistently brings high viewership to their matches. At the Kickoff event for the region, Leviatán was one of the more popular teams of the event, despite their early exit from the tournament.
The most popular game of the VCT 2024: EMEA League - Stage 1 was also slightly unexpected. Heading into and throughout the Masters Madrid event, Karmine Corp was consistently at the top of the region’s viewership. French-language audiences have reached new heights over the last year at the Ascension tournament and most recently at the EMEA Kickoff event, both tournaments being the most popular Valorant tournaments for French speakers ever. Despite being one of Madrid’s most popular teams, viewers were more interested in checking up on Fnatic.
Fnatic were the favourites to win last year’s Championship event, and they remained in many’s minds as one of the strongest teams in the circuit. They experienced minimal team changes coming to 2024, and they were disappointed by their early playoffs exit at the EMEA Kickoff event. Fnatic felt confident they would come back strong after the disappointing Kickoff event, but they ultimately lost their debut match of the VCT Stage 1 league against Team Heretics.
The Spanish roster is also popular within EMEA, although historically not as popular as Karmine Corp, but their match-up against EMEA’s titan brought 244.7K Peak Viewers to spectate. Although the EMEA teams were some of the most popular at Masters Madrid, the viewership for the regional league is lower compared to the previous year. The EMEA region was the only Major league in Valorant to record fewer peak concurrent viewers in the first week of 2024’s Stage 1 compared to 2023.
So far throughout 2024, the Japanese audiences have been the driving force for viewership in the Pacific region. However, for the VCT 2024: Pacific League - Stage 1 the match between Paper Rex and T1 was the most popular of the opening games. ZETA DIVISION’s game against Global Esports did receive high viewership, especially from the Japanese audiences, but the match-up of Paper Rex and T1 was too exciting for fans to ignore.
Paper Rex is currently looking like one of the region’s strongest teams alongside competitors Gen.G Esports, but viewership was generally higher for Paper Rex so far this year. Paper Rex have a particularly explosive and exciting methodology when it comes to approaching Valorant, and their games are always fast-paced games that are perfect for the big screen.
Gen.G are yet to play their first match of Stage 1, but they will need strong support from their fans to outperform the viewership reached by Paper Rex and T1. Although not as deeply established in Valorant as Paper Rex, T1 have a large following from League of Legends they brought to Valorant, and many of their games receive high viewership.
In the first year of the Chinese league, the most popular match of the VCT 2024: China Stage 1 so far was the game featuring EDward Gaming and JD Gaming. Alongside Bilibili Gaming, these teams were the Chinese representatives for last year’s Champions event. The match reached 20.8K PV, although it is worth noting we cannot track viewership statistics from Chinese live-streaming platforms, due to potential inaccuracies in the data.
So far, the standings of the regional leagues in Valorant are as they were earlier in the year. The Americas region is the most popular, bringing in the most viewers, whereas Pacific is continuously growing and catching up to the leading region. EMEA has enjoyed strong viewership peaks thanks to avid fan followings of certain teams, but generally the viewership for the league as a whole is a step behind other regions.
The VCT Stage 1 regional events have only yet begun, but as they stand some unexpected teams snatched the most popular match of the opening week. Keep in touch with the wells and waves of viewership statistics with Esports Charts as we track the viewership performance for each match of the events as they progress.
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