VCT Ascension 2025: Co-casters boost viewership in Americas, EMEA
Two key Valorant events that will shape the new season of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) concluded over the weekend. The VCT Ascension leagues in the Americas and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) regions saw a total of three teams qualify for the 2026 International League of their respective territories.
Esports Charts looks back at the two regional Valorant Challenger tournaments, including which teams qualified for their respective international territories. While the EMEA and Americas had contrasting fortunes in terms of their watch time and peak concurrent viewers compared to the 2024 editions, both averaged slightly more viewers this year.
VCT Ascension Americas 2025 viewership dynamics
The VCT Ascension Americas 2025 saw a total of eight teams from the various regional Challenger leagues battle it out for the single promotion spot into the VCT Americas League for 2026. Team EnVy beat TSM 3:1 in the final to secure its spot in the top-tier circuit next year.
Team EnVy will join a heavyweight VCT Americas line-up in 2026, with other prominent names like Sentinels, G2 Esports and LOUD set to be its opponents. Meanwhile, Brazil's 2GAME Esports dropped from the VCT Americas after failing to qualify for the Valorant Champions 2025 and not meeting the criteria to qualify for the Ascension event.
The VCT Ascension Americas 2025 put up 97,341 Peak Viewers (PV) and 1.89 million Hours Watched (HW) over 44 hours of airtime, both lower than what we saw at the VCT 2024: Ascension Americas. The watch time dipped by 69.3% due to the change in format from a Group Stage to a Swiss Stage, which meant that despite an increase in the number of participating teams from six to eight, each side played fewer games in the first phase. As a result, the airtime of the VCT Ascension Americas 2025 fell by over 30 hours.
The peak online viewership also plummeted by 63.7%, with the absence of prominent names like M80 affecting this metric. Despite Team EnVy clinching perhaps its biggest trophy to date, the interest among audiences was not so high.
Another reason that this Valorant event fell short of its 2024 predecessor is that Portuguese-speaking representatives had a forgettable time. 2GAME Esports won last year to drive up the viewership numbers, led by the Portuguese community, but with only one side making the Playoffs, the interest among these fans was lower this time around.
With the new season not starting until March 2026, it will be interesting to see what roster moves these Valorant teams make in the meantime.
VCT Ascension EMEA 2025 viewership dynamics
The VCT Ascension EMEA 2025 promoted two new teams to VCT for the next year: ULF Esports and BBL PCIFIC. Both sides were able to punch their tickets because of Apeks and Gentle Mates getting relegated from the VCT EMEA after failing to qualify for the Champions 2025 and not meeting the criteria to qualify for the Ascension event.
Interestingly, like its Americas counterpart, the VCT Ascension EMEA 2025 also had a format change, but the viewership impact was different. Unlike the 2024 edition, where the two round-robin format groups were followed in the Group Stage, this year, it switched to two double-elimination format (GSL) groups.
As a result, teams played fewer games in the first phase, leading to the overall airtime dropping by around 18 hours. That also meant that the 1.01 million HW it hit was 48.6% less than the VCT 2024: Ascension EMEA.
However, the peak live viewership figures were more or less the same. The series between ULF Esports and Mandatory, owned by star French streamer and commentator Adrien "ZeratoR" Nougaret, touched 70,391 PV, a minuscule decline of around 1.9% compared to the 2024 iteration.
The fact that ZeratoR was covering his side's matches played a major role in the PV numbers remaining stable. Perhaps, if Mandatory had gone on to win this Grand Finals clash, the peak online viewership would have been higher than last year.
Nevertheless, it continued to shine a spotlight on the role of community casters in the success of Valorant esports. In fact, French played a big role in maintaining a stable viewership for this regional league, as he and Toma "jltomy" Abdellaoui ended as the VCT Ascension EMEA 2025's most popular channels overall, easily outperforming the official channels.
We also have to mention Turkey's Ferit "wtcn" Karakaya, who followed a lot of the matches of his esports organization, BBL PCIFIC. Alongside fellow Turkish side ULF Esports, it qualified for the VCT EMEA 2026, helping generate major interest among Turkish viewers and making wtcn's Kick and YouTube channels the tournament's third and fourth-most popular ones overall.
One thing to be pointed out about both the 2025 Ascension events above is the fact that, despite falls in their HW and PV numbers, they both were more consistently followed. Both enjoyed marginal gains in their average online viewership, showing that they can hold the same interest among audiences from start to finish.
Of course, this stability depends on certain factors, as the viewership can only hold steady if the correct sides reach the latter end of the tournament. Moreover, compared to their 2024 Ascension events, both competitions this year saw a lot more channels covering the action, with the increase being by 107 for Americas and 40 for EMEA.
Valorant esports in 2025 enjoyed a great run, punctuated by three of its global championships finishing among the game's most popular competitions ever. A comparison of its four regional leagues may not have led to milestone numbers in these circuits, but it maintained the agent shooter's stellar run as one of the eminent competitive offerings for fans.
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