On the 11th of March Riot confirmed the 4 Twitch partners they were allowing to co-stream VCT NA Masters. The list consisted of Shroud, Myth, Ninja and Pokimane.
To many Twitter users' dismay, the list excluded former 100T starter Dicey. Dicey co-streamed the NA Valorant Challengers Series after being replaced on the 100T roster by former CS:GO professional Nitr0. Many flocked to Dicey's channel to hear the commentary of a former player, and no doubt 100 Thieves' recent success in Valorant helped his channel's surge in popularity.
Myth and Shroud have both been almost exclusively playing Valorant and have sunk dozens of hours into watching Valorant events. Myth's channel was given a second life due to his co-streams during some of the first Valorant events.
Ninja's involvement in Valorant has been more in the direction of playing professionally with his team "Time In". Their last match was at the VCT Challengers 3 Open Qualifier on the 26th of February. With Ninja’s active involvement in the Valorant esports scene, and most important of all his 16.8 million followers, it should come as no surprise permission was given to co-stream the tournament.
Pokimane has also been playing and improving in Valorant since the game's release, reaching Diamond (top 4% of players) in September 2020.
At the time of writing, all 4 matches in the first round of VCT NA Masters have been played. Ninja and Pokimane have yet to co-stream a single game from the event. This has caused further anger on Twitter and Reddit, especially given that Dicey, someone who would have most likely co-streamed every match was not given such permissions.
How Riot decides who can co-stream.
Riot had no intention on adding value to matches when deciding on co-streaming partners. Although not confirmed, Riot would have chosen the biggest possible streamers to try and have Valorant esports reach the largest possible audience.
This is clear when looking at the list of co-stream partners, all of whom, being topping the Valorant category on Twitch. While some Twitter and Reddit users may find this frustrating, it is a sound business decision. Allowing anyone to stream the matches would lose Riot a lot of viewers on the main broadcast, a statistic which is focused on intently in esports.
Why Ninja and Pokimane did not watch the games.
Neither streamer has given a direct response to the question on social media. However, some of their tweets as well as streams show possible reasons for not streaming the games.
Ninja has been streaming another of Riot’s games, League of Legends, almost exclusively over the past 20 days. He does claim on his Twitter that he is back to scrimmaging teams in Valorant, which could be using up his daytime, as he is mainly streaming League at night.
On the first day of VCT NA Masters, Pokimane was playing Valorant and watching the Valorant Twitch Rivals Finals on stream over Masters. It seems she had more of an interest in Twitch Rivals, which unfortunately coincided with the professional matches. On the second day, she streamed for less than 4 hours playing Among Us.
Riot must be sure that its business decisions to grow the Valorant esport do not hurt its popularity. With the company’s efforts made to grow the esport, keeping in favour of the viewers is essential.
EDIT: Pokimane has apologised for being able to stream the tournament, saying that she was unaware pros who wanted to could not.
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