Cover-Credits:
2022’s Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) circuit is well underway and fans are waiting for Valorant Masters Copenhagen to kick off on 10th July. But which region do you think has the most esports fans in the world of Valorant esports? If you guessed North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA), or Brazil, you are wrong. It is in fact Japan, and by a massive margin. The Challengers events took place recently in all regions and Japan dominated in terms of esports viewership.
Valorant esports viewership stats from Stage 2
Esports Charts revealed the viewership stats for all regions in the VCT 2022 Stage 2 and this is what the numbers look like:
Japan - 291,787 peak concurrent viewers
North America - 216,858 peak concurrent viewers
EMEA - 159,693 peak concurrent viewers
Brazil - 142,367 peak concurrent viewers
Asia Pacific - 106,512 peak concurrent viewers
Latin America - 89,633 peak concurrent viewers
Japan has 34.5% more viewers than the second-largest region North America. What make’s Japan’s viewership even more impressive is that the country has less than half the population of the United States and it still dominates viewership numbers.
Valorant started surging in popularity in Japan after Masters Reykjavik earlier this year. With ZETA Division pulling off an impressive run at the event, it garnered a lot of attention within the Japanese esports community.
With Riot Games also supporting the region through various local events that have allowed the Japanese Valorant esports viewership to mature and grow, the scene has exploded in popularity. Recently, RAGE hosted an All-Stars event that let fans interact with esports personalities from the Valorant community and the audience turnout was wild. You can check out a snippet of what the event was like in the tweet below.
Valorant Champions Tour’s women’s circuit - ‘Game Changers’ is also expanding to Japan this year and Japanese women’s teams will compete in the first-ever women’s Valorant world championship in Q3 2022.
Northeption will be representing Japan in the upcoming Masters event in Copenhagen and if the team pulls off a run as impressive as ZETA Division, it could boost the region’s viewership even further. The region is known for producing some of the most iconic fighting game players of all time and it’s great to see other esports titles receiving a lot of love by the players and fans in Japan.
