Sentinels vs. LOUD becomes Valorant’s most popular non-final match

Loading

Sentinels and LOUD are two of the Americas’ strongest teams not only competitively, but also in terms of raw viewership power. At the VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff, the grand final featuring both teams garnered 823K Peak Viewers. Now, they are both competing through the VCT 2024 Masters Madrid international LAN event, and their playoff match was one for the record book.

Sentinels have been a dominant force throughout the ongoing Masters event. They defeated both EMEA teams to advance to playoffs, and their matches have been some of the event’s most popular ones yet. LOUD on the other hand, has not had it so easy. The Brazilian esports organisation lost their opening match against Gen.G Gaming, and their following two matches were easy victories, but against Chinese teams, they were not able to draw their usual characteristically high peak viewership.

Heading into the Playoffs, the two best teams of the Americas had to face off once more for the Upper Bracket Semifinals. The match would determine which team would fall to the Lower Bracket and which team would face Gen.G Gaming in the upper bracket final, and excitement was high for the game. 

At its peak, the match between Sentinels and LOUD reached 1.06M Peak Viewers, becoming the first game of the Masters Madrid event to reach a seven-figure peak viewership. Even more impressively, the game was the most popular non-Finals match for a Valorant tournament ever.

  The most popular non-Finals Valorant matches by peak concurrent viewership   

The game between Sentinels and LOUD culminated in a 2-1 victory for Sentinels, knocking LOUD down to the lower bracket semifinal. It just barely received more viewership than Gambit Esports’ match against KRÜ at the Valorant Champions 2021 event, which recorded a Spanish-speaking peak viewership yet to be beaten.

The finals of the Masters Madrid may become one of Valorant’s most popular matches ever, depending on who qualifies. Sentinels and LOUD would be an ideal match-up, but this is sadly no longer possible as Sentinels lost 1-2 against Gen.G in the upper bracket semifinal.