VRL 2022 overview — how important are regional leagues for the Valorant esports scene?
The Valorant esports scene may seem confusing and complicated, but that is only at first glance. In fact, Riot Games has chosen a fairly flexible format that allows any team to rise from the bottom to the pedestal of the World Championship. One of the intermediate steps on this road in Europe is Valorant Regional Leagues. In a new article, Esports Charts tells you more about the VRL format and shares the results of the last inter-regional tournament.
What's the Place of VRL on Valorant Esports Scene?
It is reasonable to compare the Valorant esports scene with the League of Legends one, as the main organizer of both disciplines is Riot Games, the developer of these games. This similarity can be seen in the context of the European leagues. The European League of Legends tournament system has sort of a division into two parts — the LEC franchise league and national leagues (Spanish, French, Turkish, etc.). The franchise leagues are made up of the top teams in the region that play in the Mid-Season Invitational and World Championship. Members of national leagues do not have this opportunity — they live in their own ecosystem and the ceiling for them are inter-regional championships like European Masters. In other words, if a player plays in a regional league, he will never get to the World Championship with his team. The best possible scenario is that a scout from a franchise league will recognize his skill and arrange a transfer for him.
The system is a little different in Valorant. There are regional Challengers leagues with top teams as well, but they are not as structured as LoL leagues. You can get there via regular qualifiers or by winning an intermediate tournament where the best VRL teams play. In relatively small leagues like South Korea or North America there is a system of invites and qualifiers, when the team registers in a common bracket with everybody else.
In larger regions, like Europe (EMEA), there are also intermediate tournaments apart from qualifiers, called Promotion. The thing is that EMEA covers several big countries, each of them has a lot of teams. In order to sift out only the best teams, Riot runs Valorant Regional Leagues. It works like this: for example, a Spanish team qualifies for the Spanish league, then qualifies for VRL Spain league. If it wins that league, it qualifies for VCT 2022: EMEA Challengers Promotion with the champions of other VRL leagues (from France, Turkey, etc.). If the team wins there, it qualifies for VCT 2022: EMEA Challengers.
Ivan Johnta Shevtsov, coach of FENNEL:
«VRL is great place for both regional competition, and competition between the best teams from each region that can young players to get needed experience and new talent to be discovered».
Why Are There So Many Teams in Europe?
There are indeed many teams on the European Valorant scene. They have a good financial base and aspire to enter the big leagues. Some European FCs choose the shooter game by Riot Games as one of the entry points into esports. For example, the Portuguese FC Boavista, the Spanish Real Betis, the Turkish Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, etc.
Even individual players have their own esports clubs: Real Madrid midfielder Casemiro founded Case Esports, Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea owns Rebels Gaming, and Everton midfielder Dele Alli is the ambassador of Excel Esports.
Famous streamers' teams gather the most viewers in VRL
There are also many esports projects in Europe with popular streamers or studios as owners. For example, the Spanish club Team Heretics is co-owned by TheGrefg, and the French organization Karmine Corp is owned by Kamet0. The German club Angry Titans is owned by TaKeTV, an esports studio well known for its HomeStory Cup series.
KOI in this respect has a combo — its co-owners are popular streamer ibai and Barcelona defender Gerard Piquet. Each of the aforementioned clubs has Valorant lineups and they all compete in the European region. As you can see, there are a lot of competitive teams, which makes the format in EMEA rather large, but Riot Games itself is unlikely to change or cut anything. Such a number of popular athletes and streamers is the best advertising for the league itself, and for the discipline as a whole. Especially if any of these clubs make it to the World Championship one day.
VALORANT Regional Leagues 2022: Finals Overview
VALORANT Regional Leagues 2022: Finals ended in August and saw the winners of seven major national championships — Turkey, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Northern Europe, the Middle East, France, Spain, and Eastern Europe — compete. There used to be eight of these regions, but the war in Ukraine has temporarily prevented the league from being held with teams from the CIS.
Since two Masters series have already been held in 2022 with the championships in Reykjavik and Copenhagen, the participants of VRL 2022: Finals did not fight for quotas to the Challenger stage, but only for the prize pool of €150K. It is likely that the same teams will then enter the Promotion tournament before the Masters series in 2023, but Riot Games has not made an official announcement yet. It is possible that next year the organizers will come up with some additional qualifications or change the format.
All the VALORANT Regional Leagues 2022: Finals participants were split into two groups, from which the four best teams made it to the double-elimination playoffs: FUT Esports, Team Vitality, Case Esports and Angry Titans. In the decisive match, the Turkish FUT Esports defeated the French team Team Vitality 3-2 and won €50K.
VRL fiinal championship's viewership
As for audience coverage, VALORANT Regional Leagues 2022: Finals accumulated 1.3 million Hours Watched. The Average Viewers number was 33.6K and the Peak Viewers number — 93K. The most popular match is the Grand final between FUT Esports and Team Vitality, and the Turkish team got the most Hours Watched on broadcasts (782K). In comparison, the French team had 12% fewer.
The most popular broadcast languages are English (37.6K) and Turkish (36.1K). Spanish, French and German are also in the Top-3, but their audiences were not comparable with the leaders by number. Viewers mostly followed matches on Twitch — 78.8K Peak Viewers. The Peak Viewers number on YouTube was just over 14.2K people.
What Are the Most Popular Regions in VRL?
The main regions in VRL are France and Spain — these are the championships that gather the most audience. It is largely thanks to community casting and the fact that the teams are run by top streamers or star athletes. All of this has a direct impact on league advertising and match viewership.
VRL Stage 2 statistics
If we compare VRL 2022: Finals with the results of VRL 2022 France and VRL 2022 Spain, we have to take into account that the national leagues were on air for 129 hours, while the inter-regional finals had only 40 hours on airtime — hence the gap in Hours Watched. The Peak Viewers number did not reach the French league totals and that is because of Karmine Corp — the most popular French team did not make it to the VRL 2022: Finals, so some of its fans lost interest in the final tournament.
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As reported by Oneesports.gg, Riot Games has already started negotiations with esports organizations about franchises in Valorant. It does seem that in the near future the shooter will adapt the system similar to the one that is currently used in League of Legends. Reportedly, the developers are currently in contact with Sentinels, TSM, Cloud9, XSET, Gen.G and other clubs. Conditions for the candidates are unknown, but journalists believe that Riot is unlikely to force clubs tu buy slots in franchise leagues. Most likely, the main selection criteria will be the media and financial capabilities of organizations.
If franchising is underway, then the VRL league format will also most likely undergo changes. There is a chance that regional leagues will become even more similar to the European ones in League of Legends.
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