What's in store for Valorant Esports Viewership in 2023?

When Riot Games was originally rumored to be working on a competitive FPS counterpart to their wildly popular MOBA League of Legends, people were very obviously excited and intrigued as to how this game would perform in the Esports scene. Fast forward a few years and over 1500 tournaments later and Valorant is most definitely a top tier Esport. However, due to the fact that the game was released right in the middle of Covid times, the official tournaments were held online. Even when players got to travel to the same location, they were placed in opposite rooms, and with no crowd in sight. Thankfully, there were hundreds of thousands of people in the virtual crowd, typing and cheering along with their favorite teams as they battled it out from the beginnings of First Strike North America Regional Final all the way to VCT 2022 - Champions Istanbul. Let’s focus on the 2 major end of the year events from 2021 and 2022 and figure out what's in store for Valorant Esports viewership in 2023.

VCT 2021 - VALORANT Champions 2021 was the grand finale of the first international Valorant Champions Tour in 2021. Pitting the world's best and brightest Valorant pros against one another in group stages before continuing on with the top 8 teams in a more traditional bracket. This was the first true showing to the world on just what Valorant was as an Esport. To feel that sense of hope or dread for your favorite players and favorite teams. Boasting a sizable 1,089,068 peak viewership during the tournament, as published by Esports Charts.

With an almost 1.1 million peak viewership in their first full year of tournaments, Riot Games was aiming to make 2022 bigger and better than ever before. Sparing no expense, VCT 2022 - Champions Istanbul was the culmination of everyone's hard work throughout the year. Players giving it everything they’ve got to qualify and get a chance to raise the trophy. Casters traveling from around the world to be in a studio together live and give constant updates and commentary to the viewers. Production doing their best, fans being allowed in the stadium for the first time in a VCT champs tourney. The list goes on and on. Yet even with a chunk of their core audience being present at the location in Istanbul, the tournament raked in a peak viewership number of 1,505,804 according to publications by Esports Charts. Beating out the previous year's peak as well as setting a new record for the most viewed tournament in Valorant’s history.

It’s no secret that people love playing Valorant. Based on numbers published from ActivePlayer, Valorant has seen about an average of 2 million active players per day as of recent. Not only that, the introduction to the new VCT 2023 league system has given the scene quite a stir. Certain organizations expected to make it into the league have been snuffed, relegating them to the Challengers circuit for the 2023 season. While this might hurt 2023’s end of the year tournament viewership slightly, given Riot Games’ track record with supporting Esports scenes, they’ll be sure to include plenty of in-game incentives and other ways for certain players to watch regardless of team playing. That being said, an upwards trend for VCTs viewership into 2023 is a very likely event given its past two years of viewership numbers. As well as the overwhelming support it’s receiving not only from fans who will be showing up to the many in person events planned for the upcoming season, but the millions and hopefully millions more expected to be watching during the new year.