VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo Final attracts over a million viewers
VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo, the first official tournament of the Valorant 2023 esports season, ended on the night of March 4-5. The final match between LOUD and Fnatic drew almost 1.5 million Peak Viewers, and the winning team earned its region an extra slot in the Masters championship. Find more details in the Esports Charts article.
Tournament Results
There were 32 teams participating in VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo, twice as many as in the last World Championship in Istanbul. The teams had no right to make a mistake, as the tournament was held in a single-elimination bracket format. A losing team was eliminated from the competition immediately.
The Brazilian team LOUD was the first finalist. On its way to the final match, it defeated such teams as Gen.G, Karmine Corp, NRG Esports and DRX. In the other part of the bracket, Fnatic Europe was the dominant team as its players knocked Sentinels, FURIA Esports, 100 Thieves, and Natus Vincere out of the tournament one by one. In the end, LOUD and Fnatic faced off in the title match, and after five maps played, Fnatic was victorious.
Tournament Viewership Statistics
VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo matches accumulated more than 44.1 million Hours Watched and drew 432K Average Viewers. The event saw the Peak Viewers number at the Grand Final between LOUD and Fnatic, with 1.4 million viewers. It was the only match in the entire tournament with over a million Peak Viewers. It is interesting that the show match, played by streamer Tarik and representatives of the participating teams, took third place by this metric.
LOUD became the most-watched team of the tournament, with nearly 14 million Hours Watched. It also became the leader by Average Viewers — 684K. As for Fnatic, the European team takes second place according to both metrics.
English became the main language of the tournament — it accounted for more than 41% of the total Hours Watched. Portuguese is in second place with 21%. Considering the PV number, the situation is opposite: the Portuguese broadcast reached 543.1K PV compared to 494K PV on the English broadcast. This disproportion occurred at the Grand Final when the LOUD players first battled back after a 0-2 score, but literally let the victory out of their hands on the decisive map, being only a couple of rounds away from the championship. Fnatic then made an unbelievable comeback — after losing 3-11, the European team won 14-12. Brazilian fans were shocked.
VCT 2023: LOCK//IN São Paulo matches were covered on more than 200 channels on Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms. In addition to the official channels, the tournament also had many community casters. Tarik, an American, became the most popular of them — his channel gained 7.4 million HW and reached 190.5K PV. In comparison, the official English-language channel Valorant had about 6.2 million Hours Watched and almost 210K PV.
VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo has become the second tournament by Peak Viewers in the history of the Valorant esports scene. It fell short of beating VALORANT Champions 2022, which had over 1.5 million Peak Viewers. However, other tournaments, including VALORANT Champions 2021, are far behind.
Comparing the Average Viewers number per broadcast, VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo comes in fourth place, behind both the World Championships and VCT 2021 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík. In any case, we can say that the start of the season was very strong and the teams warmed up well before the regional leagues.
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VCT 2023 regional affiliate leagues take place in Berlin (EMEA League), Los Angeles (Americas League), and Seoul (Pacific League) from March 25 to May 28. The best teams from these leagues will get a quota for VCT 2023: Masters Tokyo, which takes place on June 11-25. We should remind you that thanks to Fnatic's victory at the LOCK/IN tournament, EMEA will have four quota places instead of three.
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