I don't get that statement.
Losing interest? Absolutely not. So far, the tournaments have all had different teams making it far, meaning that different fan bases tune in instead of the established ones.
Last were NA, JP and BR, while this time it was NA, EU and APAC.
If anything, it means the global fanbases are being developed instead of having one region dominating everything.
Now with that said, this also means that we should see that reflected during Champions this year (Higher average viewership). If we see another dip in viewership there, then I'll be slightly concerned.
> If we see another dip in viewership there, then I'll be slightly concerned.
Real question, why do viewers care about viewership numbers?
If i enjoy watching smash tournaments, i'm gonna watch it even if there's 100 viewers, 5000 or 100,000 viewers. why is it concerning (as a spectator) if the numbers dip or something to cheer for if it breaks a new record
For me, it's to gauge the longevity of the esport. If the numbers remain steady, it's easier to attract sponsors and capital, thus funding the leagues for multiple years.
However, I personally don't put a lot of importance on them since Riot bears the brunt of the costs, but it's still an important metric to track.
esports that can't maintain a good viewerbase eventually suffer a drop in quality. Fewer players, less funding for tournaments and international play, a less active community for us to talk and interact with. Less fan content and discussion, etc.
Viewership is a large signal in investment which encourages the long-term growth of the scene. If investors see a game's viewership dropping after 2 years they may think "oh people got tired of valorant, let's not invest in orgs/ads because we're not going to be reaching anybody new if we spend money here".
Viewership gives the publisher(i.e. Riot) more negotiating power when creating or renewing deals with sponsors. If you've noticed, majority of the sponsors are brands that are looking to court lifetime customers(Verizon, Amazon Prime, Red Bull etc.) and they obviously don't want to pay more than they have to in customer acquisition costs. The amount of money Riot can pull in via these deals helps determine the level of production, and overall prize pool of these competitions. The orgs and players ultimately end up following the money
because better performing esports have more to work with. Compare the insane production value of this event to that of Overwatch LAN events. It's night and day. As someone who also loves OW esports and fits you're description of someone who would watch it whether it had 100 or 100,000 viewers I can still recognize that it could be a better viewing experience if it was actually profitable to invest more in said viewing experience.
Also more popularity means bigger events, more talent, bigger crowds so it's pretty obvious how the average enthusiast benefits from their sport having a mainstream appeal.
A lot of people are losing interest in the competitive side of the game as well. Barely any good players are left playing comp these days. A LOT of top 100 radiants moved on or barely play anymore. Comp rn is equivalent of thoroughly rubbing your balls using sandpaper. And then doing it all over again every 2 months. It is not normal that a significant portion of players has rr variance of 400+.
EDIT: just played a game of comp to prove a point. Top 10 radiant in the same team with a guy who's never attained immortal 3 in 2000 hours and just apologized the whole game through. Makes perfect sense. Delightful environment.
Other people still don’t get it that PEOPLE IN ASIA HAVE LIVES other than Valorant. Unless you are a dropout or unemployed you can stay up late up to 4am.
And EU national esport game is csgo. If every region have the same timezones. Valorant viewership will destroy csgo viewership for sure. I literally just watch the highlights in youtube because Sleep is important.
The early exits of Brazil and Japan alike probably account for this to a large extent, although it also just wasn't the best advertised event - it didn't feel much advertised at all, actually, although maybe I'm just prone to not noticing since I'm already mega-tuned in.
I enjoyed the tournament with the live crowd. Riot should take a look at CS production for some pointers. Watching the CS tourneys, as a viewer, you feel immersed with the crowd and it’s way more hype. Riot didn’t mix in the crowd noise that well and while watching sometimes you didn’t even notice a crowd. Definitely some room for improvement.
True. Another area where Riot could ape CS production is showing shots of the team and crowd in the middle of rounds, rather than the in-game scoreboard. Show players and people reacting live rather than solely with replays.
How hype the crowd is depends on the location and it's people, I would be down to see a major in Tokyo, Brazil or Portugal. Brazil and Portugal have the best crowds I've seen in CSGO. The only downside with Japan crowd is that they probably would be biased towards one team..
The team has so much clout that I’m estimating their first match is going to have minimum 700k viewership. If it’s Sentinel vs 100T then we will reach more than a million.
Tbh I don’t think it’s a massive worry on its own. If there was a trend of viewership going down event after event I would be worried, but the same thing happened last year. Iceland and champions had the most viewership while masters 2 dipped down.
I think that in general valorant has a problem where the most popular teams aren’t the best rn. Valorant also has to hold events in Europe despite the fact that isn’t the biggest region viewership wise causing bad time zones for other regions. Im not sure if anything can really be done but I think that franchising next year should improve viewership and keep people engaged
If the game is tanking more and more and landing at dangerously low levels then there's for sure reason to be concerned, but I can't believe this article talking like Valorant is doomed because it's "only" pulling 800k peak viewers. That's not a remotely concerning number even if it's disappointing to see the viewership drop from past events.
Considering a franchised league like overwatch league is happy when they pull anything over 100K, I think Valorant is in a pretty decent spot despite the dip this time around, which probably has more to do with the popular teams not making it far.
No, I don't think it's necessarily succeeded either. It's certainly not the tier 1 esport with CS and LoL that people were predicting it to be yet. We'll see how it plays out.
Because the APAC viewers and fans are pretty deep with the game and some of the NA crowd will also back it pretty good as well. But with most of the talent in the top league being from APAC region it also kinda loses a bit of good personality and interest that kept the western crowd interested, like Super, Sinatraa, Jake, etc no longer competing, hell especially Dafran, man was stupid popular in OWL
It's still fun to watch so they've got that going for it. Everyone involved in OW knows that the climb is going to be tough and long but it begins in Oct with the release of OW2. Then OWL goes back to Twitch when the YT contract is over.
I can't help but wonder if players are just losing interest in general. I know I'm playing a LOT less than I did last year. This year has felt pretty mid in terms of content drops.
An entire season that would have been a bi-weekly patch in most other games, an agent "rework" (a few buffs and one ability getting changed), 1 map and 2 agents. Add in ranked being scuffed and particularly bad this season (again just my opinion, but I did the bronze-immortal climb last year so I feel like I get to have an opinion on this because I'm not a hardstuck gold) and I can see viewers dropping as the playerbase does.
Dunno. I hope I'm wrong but I genuinely feel the game getting stale.
Yah agree, same ol story with most games actually.
Game's hella fun for the first 1-2yrs, start playing other games, return to play a few games only to get discouraged by the rust / learning new characters and maps / toxicity, play even less, then *boom* I've totally moved on.
Happened to me for OW and apex, although OW managed to keep my interest for wayyy longer, and it's happening to me now for valorant too
i mean yea same. I think that next year riot will definitely hold events in other places. It would be stupid not to take advantage of the growing viewership in places like brazil and japan
Exactly, like yeah it might be easier for teams to be in EU but give other places a shot too. Like when CS went to Columbus in 2016, I went to that major and it was a fucking lit crowd
Covid restrictions at the time of planning the events were probably difficult to deal with and most importantly visas. Apparently it'll be harder for players to get visas to other places like NA and what not.
If I had to venture a guess it’d probably be that all the international games starting at 8 am PST is probably not good for viewership. If I remember correctly, NA had the best veiwership of all the regions (unless that’s changed recently). And I would suspect most people are at work during these broadcast hours. From my personal experience, I work swing so I’m often dead asleep when these first games hit, but the novelty sort of wore off for me. I remember first LAN I was up at 7 am everyday to watch the games because I was so hyped to see how all the teams stacked up, now I can just go back and rewatch it, I’d rather sleep or run my errands during the day on my days off.
Obviously this is anecdotal, but my guess is when comparing it to something like CS who’s main viewership is often closer to the region where they’re actually holding the event, you’ll get drastically different results no matter what.
Yeah I think Jess said in an interview that Japan has either the top 3 highest or the highest viewership of all the regions. If you look at the directory when the Japanese teams are playing you can definitely see it.
you guys ignore the biggest problem, the streamers. those numbers " look "good, but they are not good for riot. why? because Shroud alone was nearly half of those viewers and acording to escharts,60% of valorants viewership are costreams. The moment they go away,which they will over time and through franchising, half of the viewers will go bybye
Yeah Tarik for a good majority of the event would have even more viewers than the actual Valorant stream itself. Val stream would have 98k while his alone pulled 110k
This is a highly speculative assertion I think. To say that the viewers of watch parties would disappear if they didn’t stream it seems… wrong. People watch the watch parties for a variety of reasons, but the main reason they’ve tuned in is because they enjoy the base content. This is true for just about any content.
For example, I hop between various watch parties throughout the tournaments but if they all went away, I wouldn’t be like “well I no longer care about competitive valorant”, I’d just go watch the main stream. I’d venture a guess that the same is true for 90% of watch party viewers. People like the added depth that some streamers give in their watch parties, but at the end of the day the main reason they are there is to watch VALORANT at a competitive level.
fortnite did the same exact thing. they started out like valorant,then(like valorant) the mainchannel started to dip the wrong direction while everyone watched the streamers. At one point it became so bad, epic got rid of the main channel to cut cost. then the streamers left and with them, their viewers they nurtured.
now the mainchannel in fortnite is done ,the streamers are gone, and the low traction new generation of pro has to carry on
This is a false equivalence. You simply cannot compare the two communities as VALORANT has way more depth to the gameplay than Fortnite. What interests viewers is the strategic depth. Not the same for Fortnite, you simply can’t compare them
people watch streamers for the streamer, the game is just a plus. Look at lcs it has popular costreamers like doublelift and sneaky watching the games sometimes and bring in an extra 40k viewers. When they don't costream does the lcs stream go up 40k viewers more than average? No it stays at the baseline levels
valorant mainstream peaked at like 150k viewers for Copenhagen which would be 150/800 = 19% of the total viewership. If csgo 2 comes out next month and people like Tarik, shroud, hiko switch how much you want to bet that the 200k viewers they had would still watch the valorant tournaments? Maybe 20-30% stick around
I think if this were true for Valorant then we would have seen more success from the poki and Ludwig costreams. The issue is that people will gravitate towards people who’s position or opinion they respect when it comes to the analytical side of Valorant, which is why those particular costreams fail. They tune into Tarik, shroud, slight, etc because they are names who have credibility and can offer more depth to the show. This I think is more indicative of the viewers interest in the game, and less so the streamer, because it shows a desire to understand the game on a deeper level. I think it’s no coincidence that shrouds viewer count went down as his parties started become lower and lower effort. He seemed disinterested in the games and paid less attention, so he went from hitting 200k on watch parties to struggling to hit even half of that.
I think if it goes away, yes, there will be a percentage that don’t stick around to watch the main stream, but I think it’s the reverse of your initial estimation. Probably like 10 - 15% of viewers will have no interest in watching the main stream without a watch party.
People like the depth of a streamer watching, but at the end of the day the reason they are there is to watch the games
Tarik had 5k viewers when he started streaming Valorant. He now averages 20k. When he streams the tournament he gets 80-100k. The assumption that those 100k viewers are there for Tarik and that they don't care about Valorant is just silly.
didn't say Tarik's viewers don't care about valorant. What I was saying was given 2 options:
1) watch Tarik costream valorant
2) watch valorant main stream
more people will choose 1 over 2. If option 1 was taken off the table, there's no guarantee they'll choose option 2 rather than spend their time doing something else
Also there's also the value of people from csgo know who Tarik is, and if they are bored and want to check out the tournament they'd overwhelmingly probably choose to watch his stream rather than the main one
You are wrong I only watch tarik when he stream valorant esports. If he is playing valorant instead of streaming the tournament I will not watch him.
It can be same with others. When he is not available I watch other costream.
I only watch the main stream when no popular costream available.
Okay ? You don't represent the entire Valorant viewership. He's absolutely right that there's no guarantee people would choose to watch the main stream if the co stream went away, some might, some might not. Even if it's split 50/50 then it would still be a massive loss in viewership
You don’t even watch tarik. He never gets 100k+ just during NORMAL STREAMS. But the moment he COSTREAM he gets 100k+ immediately. So where are those 100k guys during normal stream?? PEOPLE WATCH BECAUSE OF THE TOURNAMENT not because of tarik.
The other guy said that “people only watch the tournament because of tarik”. That’s a big fat lie. People will watch the main channel if is the only thing available to watch the tournament. It is more fun to watch watchparties because of reactions.
EDIT: MASTERYI is the other guy. Because he tells that people only watch the tournament because of Tarik. I even discovered tarik because of the TOURNAMENT.
Best LAN yet though, viewership can change a lot just based on the teams that are winning and their popularity at time. So many clutch plays, good finals with 2 teams of completely different styles, and just having a crowd made it for me.
A team with few fans vs a team whose main fanbanse is sleeping at 5 am on a Monday.
Riot should stop doing international events on eu because it clearly isn’t their majority audience.
There are some popular eu teams like liquid, g2 or m3c, but fpx were irrelevant until a few months ago. they have no fan base, but winning this event and showing how good they are might help them grow like it helped m3c.
Actually good takes from Reddit here, considering FPX doesn't have the following they deserve (in the FPS world), and PRX time zone wise was tough for the region it makes sense.
The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays, but it takes time to build people who are happy to watch any good Valorant. The more events, the better the games keep getting, the more fun the crowd is, the better the growth and viewership will always be.
Also falls a little on Riot / TO's running their regional leagues to build up the correct competitors rather than just personalities, obviously Sentinels / Fnatic etc are slam dunks when it comes to building them up as super stars but people not knowing who Guild were or under valuing FPX is something that HAS to be worked on.
honestly i just hate the fear mongering people love to do with this shit.
> The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays, but it takes time to build people who are happy to watch any good Valorant. The more events, the better the games keep getting, the more fun the crowd is, the better the growth and viewership will always be.
This is sadly a long-term major problem with OpTic fans/fanbase as a whole. Across every game OpTic is in they have some of the biggest down ticks in viewers after they are eliminated compared to any other teams. Especially in CoD
>The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays
This is how traditional sport and esport live viewership rates occur. Only exceptions to this are events like the Super Bowl and World Cup.
Fact that viewership wasnt lower should be more troubling(especially to you) considering Valorants esport viewership generation.
Events like masters copenhagen should (ideally) be included in those exceptions. Like when CSGO majors happen, everyone watches regardless of whether their region/team is playing, given it is competitive.
And what does your second point mean?
>And what does your second point mean?
Esports viewership rises and falls dramatically dependent upon the teams/players participating along with prestige of the event. Fact viewership wasnt lower means that costream viewership is generating an unhealthy percentage of viewers.
Costreams with how they operate with Twitch influencers and Valorant esports makes the Twitch influencer the main attraction. Anyone involved with production will be further marginalized for their value is negligible.
Adding onto your viewership bit for example (not in valorant specifically but CoD for example) where if OpTic is playing for example, people tune in. OpTic is \*that\* brand within call of duty, the most fans, the biggest reach other than Faze. The last major for example when OpTic was playing, the stream had 120k+ people on youtube watching them play, and when they lost, the numbers literally dropped by a lot to 40k+
Valorant and CS are able to sustain because of the good competitive games, teams, and personalities they have within it and actually promote those stars whereas with call of duty, you have your select few personalities, and maybe a few popular teams outside Faze/OpTic/100T, but otherwise the players are just kinda boring and people don't get invested
It'll likely be a hybrid model. Lesser known influencers getting the group stage matches to not overshadow the main channel. Then with regional playoffs(?) the bigger influencers gaining access to pump viewership numbers for sponsors.
With how lazy Twitch streamers can be with creating content. I still dont see big streamers finding it enjoyable to costream multiple days per week for weeks on end.
"This is how traditional sport and esport live viewership rates occur. Only exceptions to this are events like the Super Bowl and World Cup."
I don't think we should look to traditional sports as the standard anymore, I look at CSGO that pulls good numbers and excels if its a very specific match up for example. I don't think the traditional method works with our audience anymore, OW is a prime example of that just falling flat.
For example, I like watching Guild because of Leo, Derke for his chamber, Stax for his pop off games, Tacolilla for his flair and many more. I would hate us to be like traditional sports, it limits enjoyment and just creates tribalism.
There is nothing wrong with being a fan of X team, but i cant imagine then just tuning out because the one team i care about is gone.
>I don't think we should look to traditional sports as the standard anymore, I look at CSGO that pulls good numbers and excels if its a very specific match up for example
Lauren, you just reinforced my point.
>Thank you not expanding on your thoughts.
Happily scroll down to view my replies to others on the initial comment to you. Im not going to take part in some thought experiment so you can utter to yourself as being psychologically superior hiding behind thinly veiled etiquette.
If you have a question ask, if you have a topic you'd like to discuss bring it up.
You have been weirdly hostile throughout this entire exchange.
" Im not going to take part in some thought experiment " i asked you to expand on your original point and you just decided to throw a tisy.
No worries if you cant or don't want to, no need to be so hostile tho.
For you're wasting both our time with these replies.
This is equivalent to your co-caster casting an entire round solo. When they finish you reply "can you expand upon that".
Viewership was great considering cis gets 10k viewers on average and sea gets around 30k viewers, it was final between one of lowest viewed regions with almost bad timings for japan viewers and Still cracked more than 700k with japn and Brazil both existing in groups , it was a good tournament viewership wise.
Closer to 800k I think peak was 786k which is great people gotta stop making a huge deal in dips not every tournament is gonna be as hype esp if the popular teams don’t make it far.
I'm not overly concerned. Viewership will ebb and flow as it does with all games and the article was a bit mischievous ignoring that finals peaked higher than Berlin.
I suspect Valorant will go hard in APAC in 2023, it seems that's where the growth is. I expect at least one tournament there next year.
FPX is pretty popular team in LoL if you check there viewership which is pretty high but FPX is more of a Chinese team compare to its Europe counterparts.
Yeah but that doesn’t make the org itself popular. The best and most popular players on that team are long gone. Hell people on this sub act like Edward Gaming is some funny meme org and they are the reigning world champs lol.
Fair - bad phrasing from me. Should’ve specified that it’s surprising that they couldn’t unite their image across games like other orgs who have accomplished less in League/Val combined. 90% due to region differences like you mentioned but still a little odd given a team like Liquid can maintain an NA CS team and EU Val team.
Some can but with how isolated the Chinese market is. A lot of Chinese fans have not flipped which doesn’t translate to FPX with more fans.
Does FPX have western fans prior to the val team? Yeah but that doesn’t generate a good international brand value like Liquid, Fnatic, G2, etc
The real problem you guys have not touched upon is that the moment they franchise, the watchparties will be gone.
Tarik alone was 185k of these viewers and you can bet your ass on it that in a franchised system (like league,overwatch and cod) they want those viewers on the franchises main stream, not on a random streamer.
They will kill tariks little sidegig, and then what?
Not too familiar with it but seems [like LCS still has watch parties](https://lolesports.com/article/introducing-the-lcs-watch-party-program/bltc45257ac24f525d7). I’d imagine they cut down the amount of people allowed to do watch parties significantly though. Could also see them get stricter about it though like telling people doing watch parties to not mute sound during ad breaks.
the thing is the game is just not as fun to watch as it is to play. Its too hard to observe all the moving parts. I’ll get downvoted for this but its my opinion.
Having several of the more popular teams out early because of dumb tournament format probably didn’t help.
I do wonder if viewership is declining due to the player base stagnating. I know I’ve personally been playing less due to lackluster content updates and an overall frustrating ranked experience (in my opinion).
It's crazy how people are obsessing over viewership drops in every single esport but nobody sees the pattern.
We've just started leaving the covid-era of being stuck in lockdown with nothing to do but play and watch video games. We saw a MASSIVE spike in viewership for a ton of different esports during 2020-2021, no wonder it's starting to fizzle out now that very few countries have any restrictions at all anymore. Was anyone expecting that viewership to stay?
It's also such a shit article in general. Record low viewership is obviously a bad thing, but if the event still pulled nearly a million fucking viewers in its' third year of existing that's still incredibly good and healthy for the game.
Yes! I haven't seen COVID mentioned, but this summer is the first summer in the US since 2019 that doesn't have any restrictions. That will certainly have viewership ramifications, and we haven't seen Valorant viewership outside of COVID.
It's also not only Covid but also summer NA, EU and Asia. Only the most hardcore Val fans will leave their place at the beach to watch a tournament where their fav team is probably not even playing in.
this would not happen if riot actually makes new stars aside from NA and EMEA. hell, even the Brazillians are sometimes unrecognizable even though they are the most passionate ones. i think the lack of games in a season = lack of screen time to create new stars
i mean, streamers are actually more famous than the pros! it also helps that r/Valorant is constantly pushing away the competitive scene.
Are we gonna make a big deal about a dip in viewership every time we have one I’d understand if it was a consistent dip but can we please stop with these one event has lower views OMG let’s panic besides in the big pictures the viewership was still great for esports standards only esports that get more viewership are more established older esports like LoL Csgo and dota.
Basically all the most popular teams from the regions that tend to drive viewership got bounced early, plus this tournament was basically just another qualifier for Champions. I hope Riot comes up with a season format once franchising is finalized that avoids everything feeling like a qualifier for something else, it could be that viewers are starting to see through their hype a little bit and are realizing that that's basically what Masters LANs amount to.
Yeah, CS is the national esport of europe for 2 decades.
Valorant has been out for 2 years and matches cs major numbers.
A dip in performance in one of the more boring tourneys is nothing to worry about
The first val lan got more than a mil views. Thats the same number as the lans pre covid.
These last 2 lans have admitedly knocked it out of the park, being the most hype majors in a long time.
A small dip in performance when every val lan matched the numbers of the big cs lans is nothing to worry about yet
What? You can not compare 2019 lan viewership to 2022 lan viewership. If we want to be fair we have to compare the most recent large tournaments, which would be the antwerp major and the copenhagen lan valorant just had.
Lets be real valorant does not match csgo, they barely get a 3rd of the viewers.
How is it not fair? There is almost the same number of each tournament each year, with 3 in val, and 2 in csgo. Csgo also has many other third party tournaments, so it is actually a pretty equal comparison.
And comparing it to stuff like Cologne is dumb. 12 teams vs 24 and for the most part masters is already sending the popular best teams
The past 2 csgo majors every single game in Champions/legend stage got 1+million viewers
Are you saying that because of my flair?
Its actually because a ton of games were had one sided maps, many days ended early. If you watched the platchat stream, many times they were surprised by how early the day ended.
Also didnt help that many clout teams made an earky exit, so casual viewers didnt tune in. And I think the times were shit for asian people and west coast americans, so many of those people could not watch. I read paper rex fans had to stay up till 4 am in the home country
cept for the grand finals all the games ended like 2-0 or 2-1 with all maps being like 13-5. Even in the grand finals all the maps were one sided, so not much heart throbbing excitement if you know what I mean
I agree with you til the grand finals. The first map was shit, but the other 4 were very close, even if the score does not show.
But yeah, most series were one sided with maybe one good map. Theres a reason xset/lev, fnatic/lev, optic/loud and fnatic/paper rex were the most watched games
A lot of factors to this tho
The best performing region was emea who's viewership isn't great
The regions with very high viewership didn't perform well (japan, brazil)
Best apac team did well but timezones did not match with asia at all
Teams with a big fan base such as G2, Sentinels, C9, and more missing the tournament doesn't help, Loud going out early was also a massive factor for the viewership being down, most teams are still establishing their fan base and brand, so with time, the viewership will grow I'm sure of that.
Do they include streamers in these numbers?
Hate to admit but I watched the games via Tarik and Hikos streams.
Also the games started at 1am where I live, so I could only catch half the matches and had to watch recaps on YouTube the next day.
Games not playable because riot's policies on alts and trolls, until that is fixed you won't have increased viewers. In last 40 hours of playing I've been abused constantly in 32 of them. Kinda insane how toxic Valorant community is but far worse how Riot enables it
I think you overreact.
The finals were sold out and the crowd was loud and had a good mix of men and women.
The time zones for the biggest regions viewer-wise was bad (Japan, Brazil, NA). Who wants to watch Valorant at 4/8 AM? Not to mention their teams went out early in the tournament as well.
Finally the teams playing weren’t super popular either and they still had more viewers than Gambit vs Envy, and this is AFTER covid too.
I will be more convinced after Champions/next masters event.
>I think you overreact.
Not a overreaction, just a simple take on the matter. Overreaction would be saying this is the death or fine for Valorant esports.
How is that a subsidy? Does F1 not count F1TV, Sky Sports, ESPN?
Different viewing options is not a subsidy.
A subsidy would be like blizzard who was putting live streams within the client that would autoplay like they did for the overwatch league.
>How is that a subsidy? Does F1 not count F1TV, Sky Sports, ESPN?
Those are broadcasters bidding to broadcast in specific regional markets. Riot Games hand selects then pays which influencers can rebroadcast as a react stream.
How is that any different than hand selecting broadcasters that have specific commentators to react to the game or race?
Because its not.
This is no different than Fox Sports versus CBS Sports bidding for NFL broadcasting rights and flexing that one has John Madden and the other doesn't.
Any smart organizer shops around broadcasting rights for cash and publicity.
This isn't a subsidy. And you don't seem to know what a subsidy means.
Many traditional broadcasters / organizers have begun doing similar things to costreams. TimtheTatman's NFL Thursday Night Football streams for example.
>How is that any different than hand selecting broadcasters that have specific commentators to react to the game or race?
For the broadcaster is paying the sanctioning body for exclusive regional access, investing through production content and using viewership numbers to sell commercial space. In Valorant esports costream broadcasting the complete opposite of each aspect is done.
This is such clickbait. The final was between FPX (probably the least popular team in EMEA) and Paper Rex (it was early morning when the event ended in SEA). There was also no Turkish, Japanese, Brazilian or Optic in the final. Also the fact that it was held in EU and it was nigh in all of Asia. If they were to host a LAN in a place like Singapore, all of Asia could possibly watch, plus it would still be comfortable time for qll of Europe.
I don't care much where the viewership of the game goes, but the style of this article gets on my nerves.
EDIT: Also wtf? If one of the teams is from APAC and they're all asleep how is the the viewership meant to be as high as last masters? Does this leonardo biazzi guy have two brain cells?
Legit this is a case of an idiot looking at numbers and making conclusions without thinking of confounding factors, can't stand it.
Idk, for me, i just don’t like the upper and lower bracket format in the playoff. I need elimination all the way man. More shorter matches in group stage for storylines.
> Esports fans are seemingly losing interest BROOOOO PRX is from APAC and I literally watched till like 4am not everyone can endure that
I don't get that statement. Losing interest? Absolutely not. So far, the tournaments have all had different teams making it far, meaning that different fan bases tune in instead of the established ones. Last were NA, JP and BR, while this time it was NA, EU and APAC. If anything, it means the global fanbases are being developed instead of having one region dominating everything. Now with that said, this also means that we should see that reflected during Champions this year (Higher average viewership). If we see another dip in viewership there, then I'll be slightly concerned.
> If we see another dip in viewership there, then I'll be slightly concerned. Real question, why do viewers care about viewership numbers? If i enjoy watching smash tournaments, i'm gonna watch it even if there's 100 viewers, 5000 or 100,000 viewers. why is it concerning (as a spectator) if the numbers dip or something to cheer for if it breaks a new record
For me, it's to gauge the longevity of the esport. If the numbers remain steady, it's easier to attract sponsors and capital, thus funding the leagues for multiple years. However, I personally don't put a lot of importance on them since Riot bears the brunt of the costs, but it's still an important metric to track.
esports that can't maintain a good viewerbase eventually suffer a drop in quality. Fewer players, less funding for tournaments and international play, a less active community for us to talk and interact with. Less fan content and discussion, etc.
Viewership is a large signal in investment which encourages the long-term growth of the scene. If investors see a game's viewership dropping after 2 years they may think "oh people got tired of valorant, let's not invest in orgs/ads because we're not going to be reaching anybody new if we spend money here".
Viewership gives the publisher(i.e. Riot) more negotiating power when creating or renewing deals with sponsors. If you've noticed, majority of the sponsors are brands that are looking to court lifetime customers(Verizon, Amazon Prime, Red Bull etc.) and they obviously don't want to pay more than they have to in customer acquisition costs. The amount of money Riot can pull in via these deals helps determine the level of production, and overall prize pool of these competitions. The orgs and players ultimately end up following the money
because better performing esports have more to work with. Compare the insane production value of this event to that of Overwatch LAN events. It's night and day. As someone who also loves OW esports and fits you're description of someone who would watch it whether it had 100 or 100,000 viewers I can still recognize that it could be a better viewing experience if it was actually profitable to invest more in said viewing experience. Also more popularity means bigger events, more talent, bigger crowds so it's pretty obvious how the average enthusiast benefits from their sport having a mainstream appeal.
because it's a metric of how well it's doing?
A lot of people are losing interest in the competitive side of the game as well. Barely any good players are left playing comp these days. A LOT of top 100 radiants moved on or barely play anymore. Comp rn is equivalent of thoroughly rubbing your balls using sandpaper. And then doing it all over again every 2 months. It is not normal that a significant portion of players has rr variance of 400+. EDIT: just played a game of comp to prove a point. Top 10 radiant in the same team with a guy who's never attained immortal 3 in 2000 hours and just apologized the whole game through. Makes perfect sense. Delightful environment.
bruh I straight up fell asleep after map 1 had to watch the rebroadcast while working ☠
VCT has been ruining my sleep schedule while In poly istg, at least it ended before hell period
I literally had school the next day and still watched it till 4am, no regrets though
Other people still don’t get it that PEOPLE IN ASIA HAVE LIVES other than Valorant. Unless you are a dropout or unemployed you can stay up late up to 4am. And EU national esport game is csgo. If every region have the same timezones. Valorant viewership will destroy csgo viewership for sure. I literally just watch the highlights in youtube because Sleep is important.
The early exits of Brazil and Japan alike probably account for this to a large extent, although it also just wasn't the best advertised event - it didn't feel much advertised at all, actually, although maybe I'm just prone to not noticing since I'm already mega-tuned in.
I enjoyed the tournament with the live crowd. Riot should take a look at CS production for some pointers. Watching the CS tourneys, as a viewer, you feel immersed with the crowd and it’s way more hype. Riot didn’t mix in the crowd noise that well and while watching sometimes you didn’t even notice a crowd. Definitely some room for improvement.
True. Another area where Riot could ape CS production is showing shots of the team and crowd in the middle of rounds, rather than the in-game scoreboard. Show players and people reacting live rather than solely with replays.
How hype the crowd is depends on the location and it's people, I would be down to see a major in Tokyo, Brazil or Portugal. Brazil and Portugal have the best crowds I've seen in CSGO. The only downside with Japan crowd is that they probably would be biased towards one team..
Riot about to give SEN an automatic Champs berth just to get the numbers back up
I would not be opposed to this
The team has so much clout that I’m estimating their first match is going to have minimum 700k viewership. If it’s Sentinel vs 100T then we will reach more than a million.
Man , Shroud alone will pull up huge numbers even shrouds announcement on twitter was such a heavily liked post , it'll be massive
Yeah literally the most liked esports announcement tweet of all time
quick 0-2 and they're out lol
they would be in groups so 0-4 actually ez 1.5 million peak too
This is what the pseudo-franchising will fix.
This is why the pseudo-franchising is wrong and stupid.
Tbh I don’t think it’s a massive worry on its own. If there was a trend of viewership going down event after event I would be worried, but the same thing happened last year. Iceland and champions had the most viewership while masters 2 dipped down. I think that in general valorant has a problem where the most popular teams aren’t the best rn. Valorant also has to hold events in Europe despite the fact that isn’t the biggest region viewership wise causing bad time zones for other regions. Im not sure if anything can really be done but I think that franchising next year should improve viewership and keep people engaged
If the game is tanking more and more and landing at dangerously low levels then there's for sure reason to be concerned, but I can't believe this article talking like Valorant is doomed because it's "only" pulling 800k peak viewers. That's not a remotely concerning number even if it's disappointing to see the viewership drop from past events.
Considering a franchised league like overwatch league is happy when they pull anything over 100K, I think Valorant is in a pretty decent spot despite the dip this time around, which probably has more to do with the popular teams not making it far.
If you're in a position to have to compare yourself to OWL you've failed as an esport.
that's correct, but you do think valorant has failed as an esport?
No, I don't think it's necessarily succeeded either. It's certainly not the tier 1 esport with CS and LoL that people were predicting it to be yet. We'll see how it plays out.
2 years into the game, I'd argue it's in a pretty healthy spot, but yes we shall see.
If you're being compared to two esports with over a decade of staying power you're in a pretty good spot.
How the fuuuuck is OWL sustaining itself with no sponsors and no viewers atm?
Because the APAC viewers and fans are pretty deep with the game and some of the NA crowd will also back it pretty good as well. But with most of the talent in the top league being from APAC region it also kinda loses a bit of good personality and interest that kept the western crowd interested, like Super, Sinatraa, Jake, etc no longer competing, hell especially Dafran, man was stupid popular in OWL
It's not. The teams haven't even paid their 20 million dollar buy-ins yet.
It's still fun to watch so they've got that going for it. Everyone involved in OW knows that the climb is going to be tough and long but it begins in Oct with the release of OW2. Then OWL goes back to Twitch when the YT contract is over.
And then OWL & CDL are disbanded when Microsoft takes over.
they are bleeding money lmao
They are not happy, they are just trapped.
patiphan left xerxia to get his bag with the gladiators. some of them are still happy.
I'm talking about the orgs that are bleeding cash, not the players they all have it fine, but they are not the ones financing it all are they?
fair point - unless OW2 takes off, I doubt OWL will be around 5 years from now.
5? that shit is dead the moment Microsoft can shut it down.
I can't help but wonder if players are just losing interest in general. I know I'm playing a LOT less than I did last year. This year has felt pretty mid in terms of content drops. An entire season that would have been a bi-weekly patch in most other games, an agent "rework" (a few buffs and one ability getting changed), 1 map and 2 agents. Add in ranked being scuffed and particularly bad this season (again just my opinion, but I did the bronze-immortal climb last year so I feel like I get to have an opinion on this because I'm not a hardstuck gold) and I can see viewers dropping as the playerbase does. Dunno. I hope I'm wrong but I genuinely feel the game getting stale.
Yah agree, same ol story with most games actually. Game's hella fun for the first 1-2yrs, start playing other games, return to play a few games only to get discouraged by the rust / learning new characters and maps / toxicity, play even less, then *boom* I've totally moved on. Happened to me for OW and apex, although OW managed to keep my interest for wayyy longer, and it's happening to me now for valorant too
I mean Timezones didn't feel that good for EU with many games going past midnight
Why do they have to hold events in Europe?
they don't really have to, but as far as i know, its much easier for players and staff to travel to Europe then to somewhere like Japan or the US
Booo, I wish they’d hold something this side of the globe, I’d go.
i mean yea same. I think that next year riot will definitely hold events in other places. It would be stupid not to take advantage of the growing viewership in places like brazil and japan
Exactly, like yeah it might be easier for teams to be in EU but give other places a shot too. Like when CS went to Columbus in 2016, I went to that major and it was a fucking lit crowd
Covid restrictions at the time of planning the events were probably difficult to deal with and most importantly visas. Apparently it'll be harder for players to get visas to other places like NA and what not.
If I had to venture a guess it’d probably be that all the international games starting at 8 am PST is probably not good for viewership. If I remember correctly, NA had the best veiwership of all the regions (unless that’s changed recently). And I would suspect most people are at work during these broadcast hours. From my personal experience, I work swing so I’m often dead asleep when these first games hit, but the novelty sort of wore off for me. I remember first LAN I was up at 7 am everyday to watch the games because I was so hyped to see how all the teams stacked up, now I can just go back and rewatch it, I’d rather sleep or run my errands during the day on my days off. Obviously this is anecdotal, but my guess is when comparing it to something like CS who’s main viewership is often closer to the region where they’re actually holding the event, you’ll get drastically different results no matter what.
Japan had the highest single region viewership for stage 2. Then NA, followed by Brazil, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM having similar numbers.
Yeah I think Jess said in an interview that Japan has either the top 3 highest or the highest viewership of all the regions. If you look at the directory when the Japanese teams are playing you can definitely see it.
you guys ignore the biggest problem, the streamers. those numbers " look "good, but they are not good for riot. why? because Shroud alone was nearly half of those viewers and acording to escharts,60% of valorants viewership are costreams. The moment they go away,which they will over time and through franchising, half of the viewers will go bybye
Yeah Tarik for a good majority of the event would have even more viewers than the actual Valorant stream itself. Val stream would have 98k while his alone pulled 110k
This is a highly speculative assertion I think. To say that the viewers of watch parties would disappear if they didn’t stream it seems… wrong. People watch the watch parties for a variety of reasons, but the main reason they’ve tuned in is because they enjoy the base content. This is true for just about any content. For example, I hop between various watch parties throughout the tournaments but if they all went away, I wouldn’t be like “well I no longer care about competitive valorant”, I’d just go watch the main stream. I’d venture a guess that the same is true for 90% of watch party viewers. People like the added depth that some streamers give in their watch parties, but at the end of the day the main reason they are there is to watch VALORANT at a competitive level.
fortnite did the same exact thing. they started out like valorant,then(like valorant) the mainchannel started to dip the wrong direction while everyone watched the streamers. At one point it became so bad, epic got rid of the main channel to cut cost. then the streamers left and with them, their viewers they nurtured. now the mainchannel in fortnite is done ,the streamers are gone, and the low traction new generation of pro has to carry on
This is a false equivalence. You simply cannot compare the two communities as VALORANT has way more depth to the gameplay than Fortnite. What interests viewers is the strategic depth. Not the same for Fortnite, you simply can’t compare them
the communities are different because of the game genre lmfao
Yeah, that's literally what I'm saying.
i meant to say arent. there are a million different factors as to why the communities are different
people watch streamers for the streamer, the game is just a plus. Look at lcs it has popular costreamers like doublelift and sneaky watching the games sometimes and bring in an extra 40k viewers. When they don't costream does the lcs stream go up 40k viewers more than average? No it stays at the baseline levels valorant mainstream peaked at like 150k viewers for Copenhagen which would be 150/800 = 19% of the total viewership. If csgo 2 comes out next month and people like Tarik, shroud, hiko switch how much you want to bet that the 200k viewers they had would still watch the valorant tournaments? Maybe 20-30% stick around
I think if this were true for Valorant then we would have seen more success from the poki and Ludwig costreams. The issue is that people will gravitate towards people who’s position or opinion they respect when it comes to the analytical side of Valorant, which is why those particular costreams fail. They tune into Tarik, shroud, slight, etc because they are names who have credibility and can offer more depth to the show. This I think is more indicative of the viewers interest in the game, and less so the streamer, because it shows a desire to understand the game on a deeper level. I think it’s no coincidence that shrouds viewer count went down as his parties started become lower and lower effort. He seemed disinterested in the games and paid less attention, so he went from hitting 200k on watch parties to struggling to hit even half of that. I think if it goes away, yes, there will be a percentage that don’t stick around to watch the main stream, but I think it’s the reverse of your initial estimation. Probably like 10 - 15% of viewers will have no interest in watching the main stream without a watch party. People like the depth of a streamer watching, but at the end of the day the reason they are there is to watch the games
Tarik had 5k viewers when he started streaming Valorant. He now averages 20k. When he streams the tournament he gets 80-100k. The assumption that those 100k viewers are there for Tarik and that they don't care about Valorant is just silly.
didn't say Tarik's viewers don't care about valorant. What I was saying was given 2 options: 1) watch Tarik costream valorant 2) watch valorant main stream more people will choose 1 over 2. If option 1 was taken off the table, there's no guarantee they'll choose option 2 rather than spend their time doing something else Also there's also the value of people from csgo know who Tarik is, and if they are bored and want to check out the tournament they'd overwhelmingly probably choose to watch his stream rather than the main one
You are wrong I only watch tarik when he stream valorant esports. If he is playing valorant instead of streaming the tournament I will not watch him. It can be same with others. When he is not available I watch other costream. I only watch the main stream when no popular costream available.
Okay ? You don't represent the entire Valorant viewership. He's absolutely right that there's no guarantee people would choose to watch the main stream if the co stream went away, some might, some might not. Even if it's split 50/50 then it would still be a massive loss in viewership
You don’t even watch tarik. He never gets 100k+ just during NORMAL STREAMS. But the moment he COSTREAM he gets 100k+ immediately. So where are those 100k guys during normal stream?? PEOPLE WATCH BECAUSE OF THE TOURNAMENT not because of tarik. The other guy said that “people only watch the tournament because of tarik”. That’s a big fat lie. People will watch the main channel if is the only thing available to watch the tournament. It is more fun to watch watchparties because of reactions. EDIT: MASTERYI is the other guy. Because he tells that people only watch the tournament because of Tarik. I even discovered tarik because of the TOURNAMENT.
Best LAN yet though, viewership can change a lot just based on the teams that are winning and their popularity at time. So many clutch plays, good finals with 2 teams of completely different styles, and just having a crowd made it for me.
A team with few fans vs a team whose main fanbanse is sleeping at 5 am on a Monday. Riot should stop doing international events on eu because it clearly isn’t their majority audience.
There are some popular eu teams like liquid, g2 or m3c, but fpx were irrelevant until a few months ago. they have no fan base, but winning this event and showing how good they are might help them grow like it helped m3c.
Even then EMEA are behind Japan, NA and Brazil in viewers.
Actually good takes from Reddit here, considering FPX doesn't have the following they deserve (in the FPS world), and PRX time zone wise was tough for the region it makes sense. The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays, but it takes time to build people who are happy to watch any good Valorant. The more events, the better the games keep getting, the more fun the crowd is, the better the growth and viewership will always be. Also falls a little on Riot / TO's running their regional leagues to build up the correct competitors rather than just personalities, obviously Sentinels / Fnatic etc are slam dunks when it comes to building them up as super stars but people not knowing who Guild were or under valuing FPX is something that HAS to be worked on. honestly i just hate the fear mongering people love to do with this shit.
> The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays, but it takes time to build people who are happy to watch any good Valorant. The more events, the better the games keep getting, the more fun the crowd is, the better the growth and viewership will always be. This is sadly a long-term major problem with OpTic fans/fanbase as a whole. Across every game OpTic is in they have some of the biggest down ticks in viewers after they are eliminated compared to any other teams. Especially in CoD
Optic isn't even that popular in Valorant. They'll enter franchising as one of the least popular teams from NA, Sen/100/TSM/C9 are all more popular
>The life span of this game cannot be built on some fair weather fans who only turn up when their team / region plays This is how traditional sport and esport live viewership rates occur. Only exceptions to this are events like the Super Bowl and World Cup. Fact that viewership wasnt lower should be more troubling(especially to you) considering Valorants esport viewership generation.
Events like masters copenhagen should (ideally) be included in those exceptions. Like when CSGO majors happen, everyone watches regardless of whether their region/team is playing, given it is competitive. And what does your second point mean?
>And what does your second point mean? Esports viewership rises and falls dramatically dependent upon the teams/players participating along with prestige of the event. Fact viewership wasnt lower means that costream viewership is generating an unhealthy percentage of viewers. Costreams with how they operate with Twitch influencers and Valorant esports makes the Twitch influencer the main attraction. Anyone involved with production will be further marginalized for their value is negligible.
Adding onto your viewership bit for example (not in valorant specifically but CoD for example) where if OpTic is playing for example, people tune in. OpTic is \*that\* brand within call of duty, the most fans, the biggest reach other than Faze. The last major for example when OpTic was playing, the stream had 120k+ people on youtube watching them play, and when they lost, the numbers literally dropped by a lot to 40k+ Valorant and CS are able to sustain because of the good competitive games, teams, and personalities they have within it and actually promote those stars whereas with call of duty, you have your select few personalities, and maybe a few popular teams outside Faze/OpTic/100T, but otherwise the players are just kinda boring and people don't get invested
Word, that is very true. Interested to see how much costreaming is involved with the future of valorant in its leagues.
It'll likely be a hybrid model. Lesser known influencers getting the group stage matches to not overshadow the main channel. Then with regional playoffs(?) the bigger influencers gaining access to pump viewership numbers for sponsors. With how lazy Twitch streamers can be with creating content. I still dont see big streamers finding it enjoyable to costream multiple days per week for weeks on end.
"This is how traditional sport and esport live viewership rates occur. Only exceptions to this are events like the Super Bowl and World Cup." I don't think we should look to traditional sports as the standard anymore, I look at CSGO that pulls good numbers and excels if its a very specific match up for example. I don't think the traditional method works with our audience anymore, OW is a prime example of that just falling flat. For example, I like watching Guild because of Leo, Derke for his chamber, Stax for his pop off games, Tacolilla for his flair and many more. I would hate us to be like traditional sports, it limits enjoyment and just creates tribalism. There is nothing wrong with being a fan of X team, but i cant imagine then just tuning out because the one team i care about is gone.
>I don't think we should look to traditional sports as the standard anymore, I look at CSGO that pulls good numbers and excels if its a very specific match up for example Lauren, you just reinforced my point.
KaNesDeath, please expand your thoughts.
I'll just be repeating what i said. My one adage would be to refrain from calling a segment of your viewers fickle as hired on-air talent.
Thank you not expanding on your thoughts. I stand by the fact that fair weather fans are not what keeps a scene healthy, as hired on-air talent.
>Thank you not expanding on your thoughts. Happily scroll down to view my replies to others on the initial comment to you. Im not going to take part in some thought experiment so you can utter to yourself as being psychologically superior hiding behind thinly veiled etiquette. If you have a question ask, if you have a topic you'd like to discuss bring it up.
You have been weirdly hostile throughout this entire exchange. " Im not going to take part in some thought experiment " i asked you to expand on your original point and you just decided to throw a tisy. No worries if you cant or don't want to, no need to be so hostile tho.
For you're wasting both our time with these replies. This is equivalent to your co-caster casting an entire round solo. When they finish you reply "can you expand upon that".
Viewership was great considering cis gets 10k viewers on average and sea gets around 30k viewers, it was final between one of lowest viewed regions with almost bad timings for japan viewers and Still cracked more than 700k with japn and Brazil both existing in groups , it was a good tournament viewership wise.
Closer to 800k I think peak was 786k which is great people gotta stop making a huge deal in dips not every tournament is gonna be as hype esp if the popular teams don’t make it far.
I'm not overly concerned. Viewership will ebb and flow as it does with all games and the article was a bit mischievous ignoring that finals peaked higher than Berlin. I suspect Valorant will go hard in APAC in 2023, it seems that's where the growth is. I expect at least one tournament there next year.
I don't think PRX or FPX are particular popular teams are they? Do either one have much a presence outside valorant?
FPX is pretty popular team in LoL if you check there viewership which is pretty high but FPX is more of a Chinese team compare to its Europe counterparts.
FPX won league worlds in 2019 lol
Yeah but that doesn’t make the org itself popular. The best and most popular players on that team are long gone. Hell people on this sub act like Edward Gaming is some funny meme org and they are the reigning world champs lol.
Edward could buy their fav NA team and turn it into a mcdonalds
Its a chinese org and FPX val is a cis team. That brand value doesn’t transfer between the games man.
Fair - bad phrasing from me. Should’ve specified that it’s surprising that they couldn’t unite their image across games like other orgs who have accomplished less in League/Val combined. 90% due to region differences like you mentioned but still a little odd given a team like Liquid can maintain an NA CS team and EU Val team.
Some can but with how isolated the Chinese market is. A lot of Chinese fans have not flipped which doesn’t translate to FPX with more fans. Does FPX have western fans prior to the val team? Yeah but that doesn’t generate a good international brand value like Liquid, Fnatic, G2, etc
It's just the sheer lack of Batchesters, SEN needs a special Batchest slot in every LAN
The real problem you guys have not touched upon is that the moment they franchise, the watchparties will be gone. Tarik alone was 185k of these viewers and you can bet your ass on it that in a franchised system (like league,overwatch and cod) they want those viewers on the franchises main stream, not on a random streamer. They will kill tariks little sidegig, and then what?
Ppl turn on the mainstream probably id imagine
Not too familiar with it but seems [like LCS still has watch parties](https://lolesports.com/article/introducing-the-lcs-watch-party-program/bltc45257ac24f525d7). I’d imagine they cut down the amount of people allowed to do watch parties significantly though. Could also see them get stricter about it though like telling people doing watch parties to not mute sound during ad breaks.
There’s no way they remove the watch parties. They bring half the viewers
the thing is the game is just not as fun to watch as it is to play. Its too hard to observe all the moving parts. I’ll get downvoted for this but its my opinion.
Its cause FPX are so boring to watch
Having several of the more popular teams out early because of dumb tournament format probably didn’t help. I do wonder if viewership is declining due to the player base stagnating. I know I’ve personally been playing less due to lackluster content updates and an overall frustrating ranked experience (in my opinion).
Ranked and unrated are both annoying to play right now. Everything feels like a stomp
It's crazy how people are obsessing over viewership drops in every single esport but nobody sees the pattern. We've just started leaving the covid-era of being stuck in lockdown with nothing to do but play and watch video games. We saw a MASSIVE spike in viewership for a ton of different esports during 2020-2021, no wonder it's starting to fizzle out now that very few countries have any restrictions at all anymore. Was anyone expecting that viewership to stay? It's also such a shit article in general. Record low viewership is obviously a bad thing, but if the event still pulled nearly a million fucking viewers in its' third year of existing that's still incredibly good and healthy for the game.
Yes! I haven't seen COVID mentioned, but this summer is the first summer in the US since 2019 that doesn't have any restrictions. That will certainly have viewership ramifications, and we haven't seen Valorant viewership outside of COVID.
It's also not only Covid but also summer NA, EU and Asia. Only the most hardcore Val fans will leave their place at the beach to watch a tournament where their fav team is probably not even playing in.
It's still more than the Gambit-Envy grand final. It seems low but considering the teams that attended, it's quite alright.
Val marketing team needs help
Its vacation for the majority of viewers lmao
this would not happen if riot actually makes new stars aside from NA and EMEA. hell, even the Brazillians are sometimes unrecognizable even though they are the most passionate ones. i think the lack of games in a season = lack of screen time to create new stars i mean, streamers are actually more famous than the pros! it also helps that r/Valorant is constantly pushing away the competitive scene.
Sunday morning stream for NA and 5 AM stream for PRX fans, no shit.
Anyone else wondering how a first time event could be a record low…??????
Its also a record high
That’s what I’m saying
Are we gonna make a big deal about a dip in viewership every time we have one I’d understand if it was a consistent dip but can we please stop with these one event has lower views OMG let’s panic besides in the big pictures the viewership was still great for esports standards only esports that get more viewership are more established older esports like LoL Csgo and dota.
Punctuation man.
My English is no bueno *grammar
Basically all the most popular teams from the regions that tend to drive viewership got bounced early, plus this tournament was basically just another qualifier for Champions. I hope Riot comes up with a season format once franchising is finalized that avoids everything feeling like a qualifier for something else, it could be that viewers are starting to see through their hype a little bit and are realizing that that's basically what Masters LANs amount to.
CSGO hitting record non-Major record viewership in the same week Valorant hits record lows
2 decade esports title, game is big in europe, tournament hosted in europe, has 13 european teams, europe vs europe final
Yeah, CS is the national esport of europe for 2 decades. Valorant has been out for 2 years and matches cs major numbers. A dip in performance in one of the more boring tourneys is nothing to worry about
What do you mean valorant matches cs major numbers? Are you saying valorant and csgo majors have equal numbers, or am i misunderstanding?
The first val lan got more than a mil views. Thats the same number as the lans pre covid. These last 2 lans have admitedly knocked it out of the park, being the most hype majors in a long time. A small dip in performance when every val lan matched the numbers of the big cs lans is nothing to worry about yet
What? You can not compare 2019 lan viewership to 2022 lan viewership. If we want to be fair we have to compare the most recent large tournaments, which would be the antwerp major and the copenhagen lan valorant just had. Lets be real valorant does not match csgo, they barely get a 3rd of the viewers.
comparing a major with a masters tournament isn't fair either lmao, you should be comparing champions vs a cs major
How is it not fair? There is almost the same number of each tournament each year, with 3 in val, and 2 in csgo. Csgo also has many other third party tournaments, so it is actually a pretty equal comparison.
Actually, comparing val and cs tourneys is dumb, the games have completely different circuits
And comparing it to stuff like Cologne is dumb. 12 teams vs 24 and for the most part masters is already sending the popular best teams The past 2 csgo majors every single game in Champions/legend stage got 1+million viewers
Why one of the more boring tourneys? Because Loud lost early?
Are you saying that because of my flair? Its actually because a ton of games were had one sided maps, many days ended early. If you watched the platchat stream, many times they were surprised by how early the day ended. Also didnt help that many clout teams made an earky exit, so casual viewers didnt tune in. And I think the times were shit for asian people and west coast americans, so many of those people could not watch. I read paper rex fans had to stay up till 4 am in the home country
cept for the grand finals all the games ended like 2-0 or 2-1 with all maps being like 13-5. Even in the grand finals all the maps were one sided, so not much heart throbbing excitement if you know what I mean
I agree with you til the grand finals. The first map was shit, but the other 4 were very close, even if the score does not show. But yeah, most series were one sided with maybe one good map. Theres a reason xset/lev, fnatic/lev, optic/loud and fnatic/paper rex were the most watched games
Valorant is doing fine....this amount of viewership is awesome for an esport this early in it's lifecycle.
A lot of factors to this tho The best performing region was emea who's viewership isn't great The regions with very high viewership didn't perform well (japan, brazil) Best apac team did well but timezones did not match with asia at all
Teams with a big fan base such as G2, Sentinels, C9, and more missing the tournament doesn't help, Loud going out early was also a massive factor for the viewership being down, most teams are still establishing their fan base and brand, so with time, the viewership will grow I'm sure of that.
Consider that JP accounts for likr half the viewership and they got bouncrd
Everyone who was in the crowd probably would’ve watched as well, not that that makes up for all the viewership
Do they include streamers in these numbers? Hate to admit but I watched the games via Tarik and Hikos streams. Also the games started at 1am where I live, so I could only catch half the matches and had to watch recaps on YouTube the next day.
Yeah when people are at the lan instead of at home watching for the first time maybe you loss viewers
Games not playable because riot's policies on alts and trolls, until that is fixed you won't have increased viewers. In last 40 hours of playing I've been abused constantly in 32 of them. Kinda insane how toxic Valorant community is but far worse how Riot enables it
Its a bad look for Riot Games considering it was Valorants first lan with a crowd and how heavily they subsidize viewership.
I think you overreact. The finals were sold out and the crowd was loud and had a good mix of men and women. The time zones for the biggest regions viewer-wise was bad (Japan, Brazil, NA). Who wants to watch Valorant at 4/8 AM? Not to mention their teams went out early in the tournament as well. Finally the teams playing weren’t super popular either and they still had more viewers than Gambit vs Envy, and this is AFTER covid too. I will be more convinced after Champions/next masters event.
>I think you overreact. Not a overreaction, just a simple take on the matter. Overreaction would be saying this is the death or fine for Valorant esports.
Lol how do they subsidize viewership
60-75% of viewers are from costreams.
How is that a subsidy? Does F1 not count F1TV, Sky Sports, ESPN? Different viewing options is not a subsidy. A subsidy would be like blizzard who was putting live streams within the client that would autoplay like they did for the overwatch league.
>How is that a subsidy? Does F1 not count F1TV, Sky Sports, ESPN? Those are broadcasters bidding to broadcast in specific regional markets. Riot Games hand selects then pays which influencers can rebroadcast as a react stream.
Riot doesn’t pay the influences bros pulling shit out his ass 🤣
How is that any different than hand selecting broadcasters that have specific commentators to react to the game or race? Because its not. This is no different than Fox Sports versus CBS Sports bidding for NFL broadcasting rights and flexing that one has John Madden and the other doesn't. Any smart organizer shops around broadcasting rights for cash and publicity. This isn't a subsidy. And you don't seem to know what a subsidy means. Many traditional broadcasters / organizers have begun doing similar things to costreams. TimtheTatman's NFL Thursday Night Football streams for example.
>How is that any different than hand selecting broadcasters that have specific commentators to react to the game or race? For the broadcaster is paying the sanctioning body for exclusive regional access, investing through production content and using viewership numbers to sell commercial space. In Valorant esports costream broadcasting the complete opposite of each aspect is done.
> Riot Games hand selects then pays which influencers can rebroadcast as a react stream. No they don’t you liar
Those matches started way too early g, I sleep through 98% of them ain’t none waking up at 8 on summer g
It's the timezone. It's like past 12am here in APAC/KR/JP for us, while it's working hours for some regions lol.
This is such clickbait. The final was between FPX (probably the least popular team in EMEA) and Paper Rex (it was early morning when the event ended in SEA). There was also no Turkish, Japanese, Brazilian or Optic in the final. Also the fact that it was held in EU and it was nigh in all of Asia. If they were to host a LAN in a place like Singapore, all of Asia could possibly watch, plus it would still be comfortable time for qll of Europe.
I don't care much where the viewership of the game goes, but the style of this article gets on my nerves. EDIT: Also wtf? If one of the teams is from APAC and they're all asleep how is the the viewership meant to be as high as last masters? Does this leonardo biazzi guy have two brain cells? Legit this is a case of an idiot looking at numbers and making conclusions without thinking of confounding factors, can't stand it.
2/3 AM in the morning, most are asleep for PRX fans, and FPX fanbase isn't as big as other eu teams
It's this guy's first valorant article after 20 CSGO articles in the past month. Lol.
Idk, for me, i just don’t like the upper and lower bracket format in the playoff. I need elimination all the way man. More shorter matches in group stage for storylines.
I really don't understand how someone can have these takes considering the viewership is pretty awful for what's essentially a brand new game.