Looking back at the Ignition Series

The Japanese fan base grew, Vision Strikers emerged as the region’s best team, and VALORANT was brought to the masses in Asia under the Ignition Series.

Other

The Latin American scene developed in a very interesting way. Smaller organizations Estral Esports and Trident x Rebirth won the first Ignition events in the region, then had their rosters bought out by larger teams. Estral managed to put together another competitive team to win the GGTech VALORANT Invitational 2 LATAM S, while their previous roster under INFINITY won the GGTech VALORANT Invitational 2 LATAM N. Brazil saw Gamelanders Blue emerge as a top-tier team, with their win in the Gamers Club Ultimate and semifinal appearance in the Team DylanteroLIVE. Vorax Fusion also had great performances in each event, while the new mix paiN Gaming, featuring the first two members of paiN Gaming, won the latest. Lastly, in Oceania, the fan-favourite Team Launch and EXO Clan played in the finals of both Ignition Series events in the region, with Team Launch winning the first and EXO Clan the second.

Viewership

Let’s talk about viewership. A key part of growing an esports scene and one of the main goals of the Ignition Series, VALORANT viewership grew steadily over the series.

Esports Charts shows solid numbers early on in the Ignition Series, with North America and Europe ahead, as expected, but the Brazilian scene not very far behind. The key thing, though, is the comparison to the numbers of later events.

As we can see, the Ignition Series was a roaring success, especially on the North American side. The FaZe Clan Invitational nearly tripled the viewership of the T1 x NSG Showdown, while Pop Flash nearly doubled it. Europe also saw a large increase in viewership with the BLAST VALORANT Twitch Invitational over the WePlay! VALORANT Invitational. In the two big regions, at least, the Ignition Series achieved its goal of growing VALORANT viewership significantly.

Potential

While the Ignition Series kick-started VALORANT to where it could be, it didn’t finish. With the global First Strike event coming up, VALORANT is only just beginning to see what it could be.

We’re already seeing the effects of the Ignition Series and First Strike on organizations and players. NRG Esports have been reported to be entering VALORANT by bringing over well-known Counter-Strike professionals Sam “s0m” Oh and Damien “daps” Steele, and Team Heretics are in the process of announcing a roster as well. This should continue into the future. There’s been plenty of speculation regarding Fnatic getting into VALORANT, and more European orgs is likely where the scene will begin growing to, seeing how packed North America is.

While viewership has already been elaborated on in a different article, it’s good to look at it again. I believe that, as a point of reference, VALORANT ultimately has the potential to match top-tier Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition in viewership. LANs and competitive VALORANT running concurrently to top-tier Counter-Strike will be important tellers in the next few months, but the game has already reached massive numbers. VALORANT will be big.

I hope in the future we see more orgs get invested, particularly in the European scene. I hope we see consistently high tournament viewership no matter the matchups. And I also hope we see the growth of the global scene, particularly a start in China. With First Strike, Riot is clearly going full steam ahead fulfilling the potential of VALORANT esports. But it’s always interesting to see what has gone. The Ignition Series was full of triumphs, disappointments, successes, failures, and everything in between. VALORANT esports wouldn’t be where it is today without it.