Americas, Pacific, and EMEA: Who leads VCT 2025 viewership ahead of Masters Toronto?
As the VCT Pacific crowned a new underdog champion in Rex Regum Qeon, Valorant fans celebrated the rise of the surprise contender just as the Americas International League (IL) faced an uncomfortable reality, their lowest viewership on record. In the lead-up to the Masters Toronto international event this summer, Esports Charts presents an overview of the viewership results for Stage 1 VCT tournaments across the globe.
Although Valorant esports was dominated on the international stage by North American and European players for its first few years, Asian audiences have quickly grown to love the tactical shooter and grow their own superstar talents for esports. So far through 2025, we’ve seen international viewership results of Valorant’s International Leagues (IL) reflect this rapid growth of Asian presence in both fan base and on the esports stage.
With VCT 2025: Masters Toronto on the horizon, a non-Pacific team has not claimed an international title since VCT 2024: Masters Madrid, when Sentinels claimed their second title and set the current viewership record for Valorant at over 1.68M Peak Viewers (PV). In this article, Esports Charts will explore the viewership results for Valorant’s 2025 Stage 1, pointing out which regional audiences are poised for strong viewership showings in Toronto.
Rex Regum Qeon’s underdog, championship run excites Pacific fans
For the VCT 2025: Pacific Stage 1, Rex Regum Qeon slowly put together a team of players discarded by tier-one teams or called up exciting talents from the game’s second-tier of competition. In late 2023, the team picked up Maksim “Jemkin” Batorov, who had finished second in the VCT Ascension Pacific 2023 with Japanese organization SCARZ. This pick-up has paid massive dividends for the team; Jemkin has quickly become one of the strongest duelists in the VCT Pacific, backed up by a team that play for wins, not stats.
In mid-2024, Rex Regum Qeon managed to snatch up Cahya “Monyet” Nugraha, an Indonesian player who was originally signed to Paper Rex. Monyet was originally signed by PRX to be Wang “Jinggg” Jingjie’s replacement, but after the star player was deemed medically unfit for his National Service in Singapore, he was able to return to the team and Monyet was left to sit on PRX’s bench.
PRX’s Ngô "crazyguy" Công Anh was also picked up by RRQ following the exit of Disguised from Valorant. Crazyguy made his VCT debut in 2024 with Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker on Bleed Esports, but this roster was ultimately unable to find any synergy, and crazyguy was even benched after only one event. Now, Crazyguy is rebuilding his reputation as not only one of Pacific’s stronger IGLs, but one who can hold his own in a gunfight. The team also secured Bryan "Kush" Setiawan just at the end of 2024, an Indonesian player who has been steadily impressive in the Asian tier-two scene.
Rex Regum Qeon is one of Indonesia’s most well-known esports organizations, and they have built a competitive Valorant team out of exciting Indonesian talents and other leftover talents from the VCT Pacific. In an ever-growing esports scene, RRQ has proven how quickly a franchised VCT team can build themselves a potential international champion roster. RRQ’s surprise run to the playoffs of the VCT saw Indonesian viewership set a new record for Valorant esports. A team like RRQ could be the key for Valorant to expand deeper into the Indonesian esports market, which regularly hosts millions of viewers for mobile gaming esports tournaments.
The VCT 2025: Pacific Stage 1 received over 20.8M Hours Watched and reached over 460,000 Peak Viewers for its grand final between RRQ and Gen.G. On top of the new language record for Indonesian Valorant viewership, the Pacific circuit remained strongly viewed by Japanese, English, and Korean-speaking viewers.
The rise of Korean teams to the top of Valorant’s international competition has seen Korean viewership grow massively over the years; compared to the VCT 2023: Pacific League, Korean peak viewership has roughly doubled. If RRQ can continue to deliver results, we could well see this happen with Indonesian viewership too, which could especially be leveraged in tandem with TikTok’s growing esports broadcasting presence.
Japanese teams remain massively popular in the VCT Pacific thanks to the long-existing Japanese audience for Valorant esports. DetonatioN FocusMe’s group stage match against PRX received 410,963 Peak Viewers, far more than any other group stage match and standing as a testament to the power of Japanese viewership. Unfortunately, without any Japanese teams in attendance of Masters Toronto, this audience is unlikely to reach any new heights during the tournament.
The VCT Pacific’s core audience of Japanese, English, and Korean-language viewership remains strong. On top of this, the exciting underdog story of RRQ is not only driving new viewership records for Indonesian fans, but giving long-time VCT fans a fresh team and narrative to rally behind. Expect high viewership from Asian fans throughout Masters Toronto, and if an Asian team once again makes it to the finals, the represented audience could well set a new viewership record.
Viewership continues to slip for the VCT Americas
The VCT Americas has long been the strongest International League for viewership in Valorant’s esports scene. Not only was Valorant able to convert a significant audience of tactical shooter fans in the Americas, but teams like Sentinels and LOUD developed massive regional followings and achieved a cult status that almost eclipsed the league itself. However, it’s been three years since LOUD won Champions, and Tyson "TenZ" Ngo’s retirement has taken some of the wind out of Sentinels’ sails, how do things look for the VCT Americas in 2025?
Despite starting strong in 2024, LOUD’s early successes quickly fizzled out, and the team finished the second Stage of 2024 in 9th. Following the departure of their talents Matias "Saadhak" Delipetro and Felipe "Less" Basso to teams in EMEA, the team’s results have continued to disappoint. The team concluded the VCT 2025: Americas Stage 1 without a single win, finishing 0-5. Despite these poor results, LOUD was still massively popular in 2025, only marginally behind the most popular team of the tournament by Average Viewers.
Sentinels’ are undoubtedly still the most popular North American team in the VCT. They appeared in four of the five top matches of the stage by peak viewers, and their games were consistently highly-watched, especially thanks to the support of their streamer Tarik “tarik” Çelik, who was the most-watched channel of the entire Stage 1.
Aside from Sentinels, MIBR were also highly popular, contesting for the title of most popular team of the Americas in 2025. The Brazilian organization was not successful in 2024, but managed to acquire an almost-entirely new roster for 2025 built around star OPer and duelist Erick "aspas" Santos, fresh Brazilian talent from the tier-two scene, and Andrew "Verno" Maust, an exciting, emerging talent who was cut from NRG after only three games in 2025; he was acquired by MIBR and him and aspas have developed a brotherly relationship which has captivated fans of both sides of the Americas.
While the viewership results for the VCT 2025 Americas Stage 1 were poor, the IL is still leading global viewership in terms of overall watch time. With Sentinels and MIBR appealing to be back in competitive form, this could be a new pan-Americas rivalry to delight fans. MIBR are emerging as a new potential conduit for Brazilian viewership with the popularity of their star player aspas, but they could well also appeal to a significant North American audience too, thanks to Verno’s acquisition.
If MIBR and Sentinels’ can perform well at the Masters Tonronto, expect high viewership from English and Portuguese-speaking audiences, although it will unlikely be able to immediately match the hype of the classic rivalry between Sentinels and LOUD.
All quiet on the EMEA front
While the VCT 2025: EMEA Stage 1 still has to conclude its final playoffs matches this weekend, we can still examine the existing viewership statistics of the ongoing tournament. Although the viewership for the EMEA league has been relatively low compared to other circuits and past EMEA viewership, the playoffs section of the event so far has received particularly low viewership. So far, none of the playoffs matches the VCT 2025 EMEA Stage 1 have been able to break 200,000 Peak Viewers. The event officially concludes on May 18, with its grand final beginning at 18:00 CEST.
Ultimately, EMEA’s viewership has struggled to maintain itself over the years. Similar to the Americas circuit, 2025 marked one of the EMEA’s poorest viewership results so far, and EMEA largely only received sizable peak viewerships for French derby games, such as Karmine Corp against Gentle Mates. While the Americas still has popular teams leading the fray, the EMEA circuit does not have the same uniquely popular teams leading viewership.
French teams such as Gentle Mates and Karmine Corp are highly popular, along with more established organizations such as Fnatic, Team Vitality, and Team Heretics, but none of these teams were able to generate significant peaks for their playoffs matches. The final games of the VCT 2025 EMEA Stage 1 will see Team Heretics and Fnatic battle it out for a place in the grand finals, with the loser of this match-up playing the winner of Team Liquid vs BBL Esports for the other finals spot. With such exciting teams making up the final playoffs matches, hopefully the last games of the VCT EMEA this year will be able to break over 250,000 Viewers.
In summary, the Valorant circuit is experiencing some major changes in our viewership for 2025. Indonesian showed its potential during the Pacific stage while cheering for Rex Regum Qeon, and this could be a major esports audience for Valorant, especially if they can effectively leverage mobile esports broadcasting. Sentinels and MIBR are looking strong in the Americas, promising for a Brazilian-North American rivalry which always excites fans.
The upcoming Masters Toronto event promises to be one of the most exciting Valorant tournaments of the year. Can a North American or EMEA squad finally break the streak of Asian dominance in Valorant, or will RRQ solidify themselves as a global contender and potentially cause more Indonesian viewership records? Esports Charts will be creating other articles to examine the Valorant scene in the lead-up to Masters Toronto, and prepare our readers fully for the Canadian esports tournament this summer.
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