Valorant is becoming more popular as an esport, with VCT (Valorant Champions Tour) NA (North America) Masters having a peak of over 365,000 viewers. So why is it that Europe’s numbers are so low? VCT EU Masters’ peak viewership was less than NA’s average, a worrying figure for Europe’s Valorant scene.
Valorant was a saving grace for North American CS:GO players
As far back as when Riot Games teased Valorant in early 2020, many named it the “CS:GO killer”. While that accusation is yet to be proven worldwide, Valorant has definitely made an impact in North America.
Due to Valorant’s competitive nature, there was a lot of chatter around its esports scene in NA especially with many NA organisations having left CS:GO. Before the game had officially released many esports organisations made Valorant teams of former CS:GO players. One such player was Brax (aka Swag) who was the first-ever player signed to a professional Valorant team. Brax had quite the redemption arc signing to T1 as he and 3 members of his team iBUYPOWER were indefinitely banned from all Valve (CS:GOs developer) sponsored events in 2015 after a match-fixing scandal. This meant that the then prodigy could not play in “Major” events (the most prestigious tournament to win in CS:GO), which left few teams willing to pick him up. Up until Valorant, Brax had played on small teams in ESL and Dreamhack events (i.e. the biggest non-Valve sponsored events) from 2017 when both tournament organisers unbanned the iBUYPOWER squad. Brax’s signing brought a lot of attention to Valorant esports in NA, as many wanted to see if the once prodigy was still as good as he was known for.
After Brax came many others including all his former iBUYPOWER teammates and retired pros, all of which came with their fanbases and legendary careers from CS:GO. The exodus from CS:GO did not end with the release of Valorant. As the game’s esport grew and the doubt over North American CS:GO’s future became an ever-worrying prospect, others followed. The most high-profile and in many ways shocking transition was Nitr0. The North American support had played for Team Liquid since 2015 and won the Intel Grand Slam with the team in 2019, the organisations best performing year. A player from North America’s most successful organisation to switch games was a major talking point, casting further doubt over the longevity of North American CS:GO.
So many well-known North American CS:GO players moving over to Valorant created hype for the game and put it on many CS:GO players' radar despite Riot Games’ FPS receiving a lot of hate from the community for it being a “clone”.
The Teams
VCT Masters NA was stacked with well-known organisations, many of them natively North American. The list includes FaZe Clan, 100 Thieves, Luminosity, Envy, and Immortals, all of whom had or still have prominent CS:GO rosters. Luminosity even won a Major title with their legendary Brazilian roster and FaZe is well-known for losing in the finals of the Boston Major to Cloud 9, which remains NA's only Major title. Sentinels did not have a CS:GO roster to boost their intrigue, but instead had drama with their star player Sinatraa being benched and former Valorant Cloud 9 player turned popular content creator TenZ take his place.
The players these teams signed were valuable in contributing to the tournament’s viewership. 100 Thieves roster included Steel, one of the players banned in the iBUYPOWER scandal, and Hiko, a legendary player with YouTube montages showing off his skill while competing in CS:GO having tens of thousands of views, as well as his famous “inhuman reactions” clip reaching over a million. 100 Thieves also managed to pick up Nitr0 after he left CS:GO, which undoubtedly made the team one viewers were interested in.
100 Thieves roster is just an example of the many players in VCT Masters NA that gave people a reason to watch.
Co-Streaming
After the success of allowing content creators to co-stream the VCT Challengers 3, Riot gave 4 popular Twitch streamers permission to co-stream the VCT Master NA.
One of these streamers was Shroud. The former CS:GO professional’s stream blew up in 2017 due to the success of the Battle Royale PUBG. Since, Shroud has played a variety of FPS games on stream, with the most recent addition to his catalogue being Valorant. He has often praised Valorant for the issues it has resolved from CS:GO, as well as talking about NA CS:GO’s dying esports scene and the game’s cheater problem.
Shroud is responsible for over half of the total hours watched for VCT Masters NA, clearly showing the power co-streaming has to increase esports viewership. His stream hit a concurrent viewer count of over 200,000 while watching Sentinels vs Luminosity. During the Sentinels vs FaZe Clan finals, Shroud with his co-host Just9n asked why so many people preferred his stream over the main broadcast. His chat responded saying his stream was more relaxed than the main broadcast, something both of the streamers were surely aware of given that they commonly referred to Shroud’s stream as “the casting couch”. The relaxed nature of the stream as well as the duos back and forth banter, sometimes irrespective of the match, gives viewers an environment where the source of entertainment is not only the high level of play and the hype casting.
With Shroud bringing his own regular viewers to Valorant esports and giving fans an option to watch the professional games in a more relaxed environment, his stream has increased Valorant’s viewership substantially. Whether those viewers continue to follow Valorant when Shroud decides not to co-stream an event remains to be seen.
The other 3 co-streamers (Myth, Pokimane, and Ninja), while they have not watched many of the matches of Masters, are also huge celebrities on Twitch, and bring their own audiences.
The combination of players moving over from CS:GO, well-known teams qualifying for Masters, and the popularity of co-streams, led NA Masters to have a huge success in viewership.
Europe
VCT EU Masters peaked at less than half of their counterpart's viewers and almost the same as NA’s average with 142,000. As explained above, NA got a lot of hype around the esport due to things that would be out of the control of European tournament organisers or Riot.
The lack of known players and teams
Europe’s CS:GO scene is a lot more robust than NA’s, meaning less CS:GO pros want to switch games. With the pandemic, CS:GO esports moved to Europe to centralise teams so that offline events are possible. This move made ESL Pro League possible, something many European fans may be watching, which clashed with the VCT EU Masters schedule.
As Europe is the hub of CS:GO, many large esports organisations continue to have rosters in that esport such as Astralis, Vitality, NA’VI, OG and G2. Consequently, many of these organisations would not want Valorant to flourish in Europe as it is a competitor to CS:GO. Out of the teams listed above only G2 made a Valorant roster shortly after the game released. Vitality and OG only got into the scene in February 2021, with Vitality not yet having a full 5-man roster. Astralis and NA’VI are yet to enter Valorant esports. In comparison to the ocean of NA organisations that have Valorant teams, Europe is lacking.
As if it was not bad enough having few known European organisations in Valorant, almost none qualified for the VCT Masters tournament. The only big name from CS:GO that made it was Ninjas in Pyjamas, but their hay day in CS:GO is long gone. The other team name that some may know from outside Valorant is FunPlus Phoenix, the team that won the 2019 League of Legends World Championship. However, FPX is a Chinese organisation and represented China at that event. Hence, European viewers will be less likely to root for them, as they are not a homegrown org.
All teams started somewhere, G2 for example not being well-known until qualifying for the EU LCS and creating its dynasty. If unknown teams consistently do well in tournaments, and/or promote themselves well they will grow their fanbase, and in turn European Valorant.
Other issues
Riot did not give any streamers permission to co-stream Masters as they did in NA which proved to be extremely effective in boosting the esport’s viewership. Had they done so, Europe’s numbers would have looked different. However, it would be difficult for Europe to reach NA’s numbers due to the multiple languages spoken on the continent. If Riot gave permission to a Spanish streamer to co-stream the tournament, viewership would rise but the cap on how many people it will bring to Valorant is lower as there are fewer people in Spain than the entire NA region.
European Valorant is very poorly advertised if at all. Co-streaming is a great way to advertise the esport to people who may not watch it otherwise. Many games including Riot’s own League of Legends promote the esport in their game client. This is also true for Valorant, however, despite Europe having its own Masters tournament, NA Masters was promoted to European players.
Overall, European Valorant understandably has fewer viewers to NA due to the lack of co-streaming, and well-known teams and players. The issue is more that NA has an abnormal number of viewers given the age of the game. European Valorant may never be as big as NA because of the strength of Europe’s CS:GO scene, but it will continue to grow and surely be a staple in the esports industry.
Comments