EG vs Paper Rex Champions 2023 final enters top 3 most-watched matches in Valorant history

The 2023 Valorant Champions final was the third-most-watched match in the history of the game, as the tournament fell short of last year’s viewership records.

Saturday’s title decider in Los Angeles had a peak viewership of 1,291,045 viewers, according to data firm Esports Charts. This figure, which was reached during the first map of the series, makes it the third-most-watched Valorant match of all time, behind last year’s Champions final (1,505,804) and the VCT LOCK//IN final (1,444,670)

Breaking last year’s viewership record was always going to be a tall order, given the fact that the match was held outside prime-time viewing hours for the Asian market. “We’re hosting the event in a time zone that is not ideal for most parts of the world,” Leo Faria, Riot Games’ Global Head of Valorant Esports, said on Wednesday.

Four of Paper Rex’s players are from Asia, hailing from Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. In those countries, fans had to stay up late, or wake up very early, to watch the match.

When compared to last year’s Valorant Champions event, average viewership was down only 6 percent, while the number of hours watched dropped almost 12 percent (airtime also decreased nearly 6 percent).

Still, it’s worth noting that there was a surge of interest from Valorant fans as the tournament reached the decisive stages. Before the playoffs, both average viewership and peak viewership were down 17 percent, and the number of hours watched was down 24 percent when compared to the 2022 group stage.

The biggest drops in peak viewership from the 2022 event occurred in the Japanese-language (38 percent) and Portuguese-language (19 percent) streams. The English-language peak viewership, on the other hand, was up 7 percent when compared to 2022.

According to Faria, Champions 2023 was the most-watched Valorant world championship on account of Chinese viewers. Esports Charts does not track data from Chinese streaming platforms, which do not display the number of viewers who are tuned in.

The next global Valorant event will be VCT Masters Madrid, scheduled for spring 2024. It will be the first international tournament to be held in Europe since Valorant Champions 2022 in Istanbul.

Highest viewership peaks in Valorant history:

• OpTic vs LOUD (Valorant Champions 2022) – 1,505,804
• Fnatic vs LOUD (VCT LOCK//IN) – 1,444,670
• Evil Geniuses vs Paper Rex (Valorant Champions 2023) – 1,291,045
• Gambit vs Acend (Valorant Champions 2021) – 1,089,068
• Sentinels vs Fnatic (VCT 2021 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík) – 1,085,850