Over 600,000 viewers across the main Riot Games’ Valorant Champions Tour broadcasts and multiple co-streams watched Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek play his first official match for Sentinels in the VCT North American Last Chance Qualifier.
The 608,385 peak viewership count makes the tournament the most viewed North American Valorant tournament to date already. It ranks seventh for highest peak viewership in the game, only behind Valorant Champions, the VCT Masters LANs and Twitch Rivals, according to Esports Charts.
In his first match for the squad against The Guard, Sentinels lost 2-1, with shroud going 39/59/25 on Viper and Astra.
SHROUD WITH THE 3K TO TAKE MAP 1! pic.twitter.com/tSzHRbMfFx
— Valorant News (@ValorINTEL) August 4, 2022
The viewership numbers are a combination of the Riot broadcasts, which peaked at 133,000 viewers on Twitch and 69,000 on YouTube, according to Esports Charts, and various big and small streamers like Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin, Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik, Jay ‘sinatraa’ Won, Kyedae Shymko and shroud’s own Twitch channel with his partner Hannah ‘Bnans’ Kennedy hosting.
tarik held the highest individual viewer count, peaking at around 196,000 viewers, eclipsing the main broadcast. Kyedae and shroud’s channels brought in the next-most amount of viewers from watch parties peaking at around 41,000 and 78,000 peak viewers respectfully. Valorant as a category on Twitch reached over 550,000 viewers during the match.
shroud on Sentinels
The former Counter Strike pro and content creator announced his signing with one of the most popular organizations in Valorant on July 8 for the NA LCQ. A popular streamer for almost three years after his esports retirement, shroud’s debut was highly anticipated.
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Sentinels as a team itself also helped bring in viewers as one of the more dominant teams in Valorant in 2020 and 2021, with Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo, the most popular player in the region, also in the squad.
we believe pic.twitter.com/Hyot8BYcD3
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) August 4, 2022
Sentinels as a team has gone through a rough 2022 as the team has failed to make an international tournament, they made every major event in 2021, and have gone through multiple roster moves.
One of those moves saw them secure Jordan ‘Zellsis’ Montemurro, who also debuted for Sentinels in this match.
Sentinels and shroud will continue their LCQ journey in the lower bracket against a yet-to-be-determined team as of publishing.