VALORANT’s inaugural VCT Kickoff events for the 2024 season concluded over the weekend, with VCT Americas’ Kickoff being the ninth-highest-viewed event in the game’s history.
VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff saw more than 820,000 viewers, with VCT 2024 Pacific Kickoff and VCT 2024 EMEA Kickoff recording peak viewership of 460,000 and 420,000, respectively, according to data platform Esports Charts.
The Kickoff series of events are new for 2024 and are aimed to commemorate the start of the competitive season in each region. There are four Kickoff events in total: Americas, EMEA, Pacific and China, with the latter being the latest major region to receive a VCT partner league. The tournaments replaced VCT LOCK//IN 2023 that took place last year in Brazil. The top two teams of each Kickoff event have qualified for VALORANT’s next international showcase: VCT Masters Madrid.
The tournaments all started around mid-to-late February, with Americas being the last one to end. Due to the limitations around collecting viewership data from China, the region gathered just above 61,000 viewers at its peak on Esports Charts. However, the number would be much higher in reality if Chinese platforms could be taken into account. VCT China saw EDward Gaming walk out victorious, with FunPlus Pheonix finishing second.
VCT Americas was the stand-out league out of the four events, with fan-favourites Sentinels walking out victorious. Alongside the victory, the North American esports organisation gathered more than 10.7m hours watched throughout the event, ahead of another well-known favourite, LOUD. (8m)
Pacific and EMEA were similar in terms of peak viewers, with only around 40,000 peak viewers separating the events. These numbers were enough to help the tournaments get in the top 20 of most-watched VALORANT events, which is a success. For example, the entire VCT Pacific saw 399,000 viewers at its peak last season. The EMEA League had around 300,000 peak viewers last season.
VCT EMEA’s victor was French esports organisation Karmine Corp, with Gen.G claiming the Kickoff crown for VCT Pacific. Team Heretics and Paper Rex walked out as runners-up, respectively.
The good viewership figures show that events commemorating the start of the season are popular with the VALORANT audience. The mentioned LOCK/IN tournament in 2023 is still the second-most watched tournament in the game’s history, with 1.44m peak viewers.
