Pacific’s viewership grew by over 50% — VCT 2024 Stage 2 advanced statistics

Earlier this year, the VCT 2024: Masters Madrid event broke records by becoming Valorant’s most popular event ever by peak concurrent viewership. The following Shanghai-based event was far less popular, but still managed to enter top 5 by viewership. All in all, 2024 has been a wildly successful year for Valorant esports, and with the Stage 2 leagues coming to a close, Esports Charts has collected advanced viewership statistics of the events for our PRO subscribers. Quickly comparing the basic viewership statistics of each event, the VCT 2024: Americas League - Stage 2 emerged as the most-watched event with over 19.77M Hours Watched collected. The grand final of the event reached 395K Peak Viewers, and while the two teams playing were not the most popular teams of the league, both sides of the Americas were still represented, combining the North American English-speaking viewership and South American Spanish and Portuguese-language viewership. The VCT 2024: China Stage 2 may seem oddly small, but this is because we cannot account for Chinese livestreaming platform’s viewership. Viewership statistics for these platforms are not publicly available, and the statistics which are available are not fit for comparison to other Western and Asian platforms. In the rest of Asia, the VCT 2024: Pacific League - Stage 2 received 16.23M Hours Watched and 332K Peak Viewers for its grand final, falling slightly behind the Americas league. The all-Korean final was the league’s most popular match, but viewership would have likely reached much higher featuring other teams. ZETA DIVISION’s Week 4 match against Paper Rex reached 310.8K PV, thanks to the combination of the large Japanese-speaking audience and Asia’s most popular team. The same case can be made for the Americas, where the league’s most popular teams, LOUD and Sentinels, did not feature significantly in playoffs. Finally, VCT 2024: EMEA League - Stage 2 reached 8.76M Hours Watched and was the only international league whose grand final was not its most popular match. The early Playoffs match between Fnatic and Karmine Corp reached 199.8K PV, outperforming the grand final between Fnatic and Team Vitality, which reached only 174.2K PV. Comparing the viewership for Stage 1 and 2 of this year for each region, we can see each region lost viewership heading into Stage 2 this year. This is similar to what we can observe in League of Legends, where regional circuits usually achieve their highest viewership during the first Split of the year. In 2023, there were no Stages for Valorant esports. Each regional circuit had one singular event to last the entire year, and China had not received its own region yet, instead being included with other Asian countries. Comparing each region to last year, the Pacific league achieved the highest growth in viewership, with 53% more hours of watch time this year than last. Although Pacific led the way, both the Americas and EMEA league also achieved growth, but at a smaller scale. The Americas circuit increased its viewership by 31.9% and EMEA by 18.1%. Leviatán were one team to have a significant effect on their region’s viewership. The team entirely rebuilt its roster heading into 2024, and signed star player aspas, who is one of the region’s most popular players. With their new roster, matches they played in during Stage 2 accounted for 28.2% of the stage’s total watch time. As mentioned, LOUD and Sentinels are the most popular teams of the Americas league, and the Brazilian organization managed to outperform Sentinels this time. The team reached 267.1K Average Viewers for their matches throughout Stage 2, more than 21K concurrent viewers more than Sentinels. Despite being the league’s most popular team, LOUD has not qualified for the year-end Champions event. Paper Rex was Pacific’s most popular team, even outperforming the highly popular Japanese teams. ZETA DIVISION reached 195K AV, landing in second place behind Paper Rex’s 208.4K AV. Critically, ZETA DIVISION and DetonatioN FocusMe, Pacific’s two Japanese teams, ended Stage 2 in 8th and 10th place, respectively. These two Japanese teams did not qualify for the upcoming season-ending Champions event, which will likely have a significantly negative effect on Japanese viewership for the tournament. Despite their poor competitive showings, these teams are two of the Pacific’s top 5 most popular teams by AV, and if they were more competitive compared to other Asian teams, they would likely dominate the region’s viewership. Fnatic was EMEA’s most popular team, but just barely. The team’s 122K AV was closely followed by Karmine Corp and Gentle Mates, who emerged as the second-most and third-most popular teams of the stage. Both of these French teams supported by community casters did not achieve the competitive success they were hoping for, and French-language viewership could have reached much higher during the tournament. FunPlus Phoenix was China’s most popular team, although this only reflects viewership for the league from Western and Asian livestreaming platforms outside of China. Looking at overall language statistics for the four international leagues, English was by far the most influential language, contributing 40.7% to the total watch time of all four leagues. This is largely because English is a popular language among all four regional leagues, whereas most other languages are popular only among 1-2 regions. English’s 230K Peak Viewers was reached during Sentinels’ match against NRG during the opening week of the Stage 2 circuit. The two legendary North American rosters facing off against each other was enough to drive viewership higher than any other moment during the season. Also in the Americas’ league, Portuguese reached its peak during LOUD’s match against Evil Geniuses, also during Week 1. The match saw the Brazilian roster face off against the current world champion organization, and was pANcada’s return to professional play. PANcada, who previously won a world championship with LOUD in 2022, was moved off Sentinels’ starting roster at the beginning of this year. He eventually signed with LOUD, and his return to the organization was not only the most popular moment of the stage for Brazilian fans, but was the second most popular match of the entire circuit with 369K PV achieved. Portuguese-language broadcasts encapsulate both Brazilian and Portuguese viewership, as there is no differentiation made by livestreaming platforms between Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. However, the vast majority of the Portuguese-language viewership Valorant receives stems from Brazil. 98% of Portuguese watch time came from the Americas league, with the remainder stemming from the EMEA circuit. Japanese fans are quickly crowning itself as Valorant’s largest and most passionate audience. Japanese-language audiences contributed 13.5% to Valorant’s Stage 2 global watch time, and it was also the most popular language by Peak Viewers, having even outperformed English. In the Pacific region, Japanese-language broadcasts reached 235.3K Peak Viewers for the regular season derby match, ZETA DIVISION versus DetanatioN FocusMe. Without either of these teams attending the season finale this year, it will be difficult for Japanese audiences to compete with other languages. At first glance, things do not appear to be on the right track for this year’s Champions event. Masters Shanghai struggled to generate viewership due to a variety of factors, but one of the most crucial was the lack of representation for critical audiences. Champions 2024 might suffer from the same issues: LOUD is not attending, and neither are Gentle Mates nor Karmine Corp. The final VCT event of the year will likely struggle to generate viewership from Portuguese, Japanese, and French audiences, three of the most critical for Valorant esports viewership. However, if Sentinels or another popular team can make a significant playoffs run, viewership could still yet reach new heights.

Pacific’s viewership grew by over 50% — VCT 2024 Stage 2 advanced statistics

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