According to Esports Charts, the peak viewership record was beaten at the VALORANT Champions 2022 grand finals, with the stream peaking at 1.4 million viewers on the first two maps. The previous record was just under 1.1 million viewers from Champions 2021’s grand finals. Also, this marks this final as the sixth VALORANT series that has attracted at least a million viewers, with each grand final in the past two years doing so.
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1.1M+ Peak Viewers now on @LOUDgg vs @OpTic, #VALORANTChampions.New viewership record for VALORANT.
Stats excl. Chinese platforms.LIVE stats of Grand Finals:https://t.co/d8jXSiB3OR@ValorantEsports #VCT
— Esports Charts 🇺🇦 (@EsportsCharts) September 18, 2022
Champions 2022 breaks new ground in viewership
Just the other day, the lower bracket finals between OpTic Gaming and DRX peaked at over a million concurrent viewers. That was the fifth series in VALORANT history that peaked at over a million viewers. With how close that match was to breaking the VALORANT esports record for viewership, the finals were set to do so. Even without the finals, Champions 2022 had already broken new ground with other viewership records, particularly total hours watched. As of map two of the Champions 2022 grand finals, the event has over 59 million hours watched. This is 15 million more hours than Champions 2021. Plus, the average number of viewers for Champions 2022 is just over 500,000, 20,000 more than any other VALORANT event. Part of it has to do with the event itself being the longest in VALORANT history, but only by about 20 hours. In comparison, Stage 2 Masters this year was only about 10 hours shorter than Champions 2021.
It's only map 2 and we've got a new record #VALORANTChampions pic.twitter.com/XqcC3l7xKu
— VALORANTING (@VALORANTING) September 18, 2022
Now, Champions 2022 hit the new viewership record on the first map of the grand finals. As suspected, the matchup between NA and Brazil brought a lot of fans to the streams. After passing the 1.1 million viewer mark, the start of map two marked 1.4 million peak viewers. As the series goes on, no matter how much higher it can peak, it will be the most watched VALORANT event so far.
With all the changes coming to the VALORANT Champions Tour from 2023 onwards, this is a big deal for a relatively new esport like VALORANT. The plans around franchising haven’t come to fruition yet, and already the game is consistently amassing million viewer finals.
