Record number of viewers for first week of VCT Americas League

19 April 2023

On April 1st, 2023, the first-ever edition of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Americas League kicked off at the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles, California, and looking back at the first week of action, viewership numbers are pointing towards a big success for the organization. The VCT Americas League is one of the new international leagues that were recently inaugurated by developer Riot Games and it has already broken records in its first week. The American teams and the Brazilian teams, in particular, garnered a lot of attention from viewers, which makes sense considering the popularity of Valorant and esports in general in those regions.

Peak viewership approaching half million

One of the most impactful and looked at statistics in terms of esports viewership and indeed viewership in general is the number of peak viewers. Peak viewership refers to the maximum number of viewers during any live stream, so in the case of the VCT Americas League, the maximum number of viewers at any point during the first week. For the new Valorant league, this number currently sits at 407,641, which is considerably higher than all of Riot’s other new international leagues. For the sake of comparison: the new VCT EMEA League achieved a peak viewership of 288,816 in its first week, while the VCT Pacific League reached 272,093 peak viewers.

The VCT Americas League features Valorant teams from North America and South America, which includes big countries like Brazil and Argentina. As a result, the event was streamed on different platforms and in different languages, with English, Spanish and Portuguese being the three dominant ones. Valorant is hugely popular in these regions, a fact that it only emphasized by the fact that even the North American second division, the VCT Challengers North America, garnered 106,850 peak viewers during its recent Mid-Season Face Off.

Brazil and USA leading viewership numbers

The dominant presence of the USA and mainly Brazil (from South America) also becomes apparent when looking at the participating players. Around 37% of all participating players in the VCT Americas League is from the United States, while 31% is Brazilian. The number three in this list is Chile with 14% of all players, followed by Argentina with 6%. As a result, it’s no surprise that the most-watched matches during the first week were the all-American clash between Sentinels and 100 Thieves, and the all-Brazilian clash between MIBR and LOUD.

The Valorant Champions Tour Americas League has so far resulted in well over ten million hours of watched content (10.199.754 hours, to be precise) and the tournament boasted an average of 207.805 viewers per match in the first week. The previously mentioned day 1 match-up between Sentinels and 100 Thieves recorded the event’s peak viewership so far (407,641 peak viewers), with the other previously mentioned match between LOUD and MIBR coming in second in terms of peak viewership with 336,678 peak viewers.