VCT Americas 2025 Stage 1 sees Sentinels back on top, qualified for Masters Toronto

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The VCT 2025: Americas Stage 1 spanned three months and supplied more than 100 hours of entertainment for Valorant fans around the globe. While still a highly popular event, the Americas International League (IL) has seen viewership slide backward this year, with all metrics recording at least slight drops. Esports Charts explores this and more with the viewership results for the first Stage.

In total, the viewership for the VCT 2025: Americas Stage 1 totalled over 25.61M Hours Watched (HW). This watch time stemmed from over 130 individual channels, which covered the esports league, contributing 209,220 Average Viewers for the circuit. Notably, both metrics decreased slightly compared to the opening stage of 2024.

In its grand showdown between Sentinels and G2 Esports, the first stage of the VCT Americas in 2025 reached 390.8K Peak Viewers (PV). G2 Esports has been consistently a competitive team on the international stage of Valorant, and Sentinels is one of the most popular Valorant teams globally, however, even this grand final failed to match the English-language PV of 2024. 

Portuguese-language viewership from Brazil suffered the largest drop, continuing the trend of decreasing viewership as we move forward from LOUD’s previous domination. Brazil formerly managed to field a world champion roster in 2022, but since LOUD suffered more and more defeats, the excitement behind their team faded. 

Now, MIBR stands a chance at reigniting some Brazilian passion for Valorant; the team of star player Erick “aspas” Santos started 2025 strong with 3rd place at the Kickoff, and collected another 3rd place in this Stage 1 after losing the LB Final against G2 Esports. These results represent the peak of MIBR’s results so far in Valorant, but the future is looking bright for this promising Brazilian roster. 

The league’s YouTube Peak was the only metric to record an increase this year. This follows a trend of growth for esports viewership on YouTube, as more and more viewers move away from Twitch. Kick and TikTok are also rapidly gaining popularity as esports broadcasting platforms, but they are yet to find a strong foothold in Valorant viewership.

Throughout the season of matches, both groups and playoffs, Sentinels reigned supreme as the most popular team of the competition. The red organization was present in four of the five top matches, one of which was not even a playoff game: LOUD and Sentinels have had a competitive rivalry for years, and their showdowns always attract significant viewership as the perfect balance of North and South American viewership.

While Sentinels were unable to topple G2 in the grand finals, ultimately losing 1-3, the silver lining is that their playoff games were the most popular moments of the Americas Stage 1. After missing out on the Masters Tokyo last year, the North American team is returning to international events. English-language viewership was undoubtedly missing something in Tokyo, a mixture of factors like time zones and Sentinels’ failure to qualify, and hopefully, the upcoming VCT 2025: Masters Toronto can enjoy a passionate wave of English viewership.

Of the total 25.61M HW generated by the Americas Stage 1 in 2025, roughly two-thirds of this total came from community casters hosting co-streams of the matches. Tarik “tarik” Celik of Sentinels was once again the most-watched channel of the entire event. The co-streamer took some breaks from streaming in the latter parts of 2024 and saw his viewership slip slightly, but he’s once again back on top.

Both the official English-language Valorant Americas and Brazilian Valorant Esports BR channels were highly-watched. While English-speaking viewers preferred tarik slightly over the main broadcast, Brazilian viewers were much more likely to watch through Heitor “TcK10” Tomazela’s co-stream than the official YouTube stream. Spain’s Oscar “Mixwell” Cañellas Colocho was also a popular option for Spanish-speaking fans, generating almost as watch time as the official Brazilian broadcast.

While the first Americas Stage of 2025 may not have broken any records, there are silver linings to the results for the VCT. With Sentinels in attendance at Masters Toronto and MIBR on the verge of becoming a top team internationally, Americas viewership has the potential to once again drive Valorant viewership to new records at international events. 

VCT 2025: Masters Toronto kicks off in July this Summer, and in the build-up to this international spectacle, Esports Charts will present reports on the current state of the Valorant scene, as well as contextual information for the Canadian tournament. Keep an eye on our blog for new Valorant articles as the world gears up for another Masters.