EWC 2025 Valorant’s viewership fell short of Masters Toronto — 5 key factors explained

Loading

The debut Valorant Esports World Cup 2025 was one of the first games to kick off the summer gaming festival. Held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the inaugural Valorant EWC came out ahead of other EWC opening week games but performed poorly compared to other Valorant events. The tournament’s struggles can be summed up with a lack of community engagement, even being outright rejected by some members of the community.

Despite its ambitious debut as part of the Esports World Cup 2025, the Valorant EWC experienced a sizable viewership shortfall compared to Masters Toronto, with the EWC 2025 experiencing low engagement across many regional audiences. This article explores the viewership results of the EWC and five key reasons behind the disappointing numbers themselves.

Co-streamers & community members avoided the event

Firstly, various Valorant co-streamers and community members decided to not participate or engage with the tournament months prior. Shortly after the tournament’s announcement, British commentator Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson made a public decision to avoid the event, as well as calling on others to do the same. Later, player-turned-streamer Tyson “TenZ” Van Ngo announced he would not participate and top co-streamer Tarik “tarik” Çelik revealed he declined a seven-figure offer from the EWC to host the event — the Turkish-American streamer did however co-stream the tournament. 

The decisions of these community leaders to avoid the EWC seemingly had a knock-on effect on the wider Valorant community. Compared to Masters Toronto, 62% fewer total broadcasters covered the EWC 2025: under 150 channels across the globe. Co-casting has becoming increasingly important to Valorant’s viewership over the years, and the EWC 2025’s results show what can happen without this community support.

Few official broadcasters, no Riot Games broadcasting support

On top of the lack of community casters, the EWC was also only broadcast by a handful of official channels. These official broadcasts covered only a few languages (English, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, and Portuguese), and did not appeal to many of Valorant’s largest audiences. The Valorant EWC was also not streamed by any official Riot Games channels; these channels accounted for 40% of Toronto’s total viewership, and without them, the EWC struggled to reach a significant amount of Valorant fans. 

Without the support of some top co-streamers and official broadcasts to reach potential viewers, the Esports World Cup 2025 struggled to generate viewership. The grand finals which featured a legendary EMEA showdown between Fnatic and Team Heretics received just over 450,000 Peak Viewers (PV), becoming the most popular game of the event by a margin of over 100,000 viewers. 

  Viewership statistics of the EWC 2025 compared to Masters Toronto   

The peak concurrent viewership record of the EWC grand final was largely fuelled by English-language audiences. Atypical to other international Valorant tournaments, the EWC 2025’s viewership largely stemmed from Twitch, with YouTube dragging behind significantly. Usually, YouTube is a strong platform for Valorant esports viewership, however, various regional audiences remained unengaged throughout the event.

Unengaged regional audiences 

Besides English, very few other Valorant audiences were meaningfully engaged by the EWC. Demographics such as Korean recorded significantly lower viewership than at Masters Toronto, despite Gen.G Esports recording a better result at this mid-season tournament. While French did increase its viewership by 25%, this peak viewership came almost entirely from the co-stream of Kamel “Kamet0” Kebir for Karmine Corp's quarterfinal, representing the power and influence of this particular creator rather than a strong French viewership for the tournament. 

Following significantly behind English, Spanish-language viewers were able to claim the runner-up spot to celebrate Team Heretic’s victory and EWC title, but only due to a collapse of other demographics: Japanese Valorant viewers were largely absent during the tournament, recording a PV of under 500 concurrent viewers. Japan is a major audience for Valorant esports, making this a particularly egregious example of the lack of engagement faced by the EWC.

The absence of Japanese viewers contrasts starkly with the results of the recent Masters: they were the second-largest audience of Masters Toronto across all major metrics and accountable for 9.5% of the event’s total watch time. While it's true no Japanese team attended the EWC (and representation creates views), this audience still showed up for Masters Toronto, where no Japanese team competed either. 

Overlapping in schedule with other esports events, including Valorant Challengers Japan

The EWC 2025 also overlapped in schedule with some other significant esports tournaments. Most notably, the finals took place the same weekend as League of Legends’ Mid-Season Invitational 2025; although very different games, there was unlikely a non-zero amount of esports fans who chose to follow the MSI instead of this EWC. 

However, the most significant blow to the tournament’s viewership, the EWC 2025 overlapped with the beginning of Valorant Challengers’ Stage 3 in Japan. As we mentioned before, the EWC effectively received no Japanese viewership for its matches, but co-streamers and casters weren’t on vacation. Instead of covering the EWC, Japanese fans (and co-streamers) followed the opening matches of the VALORANT Challengers 2025 Japan: Split 3 Main Stage. The secondary Japanese circuit has quickly grown to become the most popular Challengers league in the world, and fans from Japan were entirely enthralled by their own league during the EWC.

  Watch time of the Valorant EWC 2025 compared to Masters Toronto 2025   

Missing key co-streamers, unable to engage some key regional audiences, and without official Riot Games broadcasting support, the Esports World Cup 2025 fell just short of 8.3M HW. This result is almost three-times less than that of the recent Masters Toronto, which actually boasted a slightly smaller prize pool — regardless of this factoid, the Masters series obviously carries more weight in the Valorant esports scene.

Fan burnout following Masters Toronto and leading to Stage 2

One final factor to consider in regard to the EWC’s low viewership is the simple answer of burnout. Professional player for G2 Esports Jacob “Valyn” Batio expressed his concerns with the EWC schedule on stream almost two months ago. The EWC kicked off just a couple of weeks after Masters Toronto, and ended days before Stage 2 begins — with such a saturated period of esports broadcasting, some fans might not have had the fresh energy to follow the event.

Unfortunately for the EWC, this may spell a poor omen for the upcoming League of Legends event. The tournament takes place just days after the record-breaking Mid-Season Invitational 2025, and some fans may not have recovered their appetite for esports action just yet. Last year, League of Legends was the top EWC game by peak concurrent viewers, but a repeat result here isn’t certain.

Esports Charts will continue to track viewership data and statistics for the Esports World Cup 2025 throughout the summer of gaming. Watch our blog and socials for new updates and results as the games at this year’s EWC pick up the pace.