Valorant Masters 2 audiences rivaled multiple CSGO Majors

The anticipation for Valorant’s first international LAN event resulted in massive viewership throughout Masters 2, with online audience averages rivaling some of the biggest CSGO Majors in recent years.

Riot’s emerging esport has drawn multiple comparisons with Valve’s timeless tactical shooter. While the two have their own fan bases, it’s been a surprise to see how well Valorant has been performing in its early development.

The first Valorant tournament where international regions came together didn’t disappoint, as Sentinels dominated the upper bracket all the way to their championship moment against Fnatic.

Now that the dust has settled, we have a much better picture of how Masters 2 stacks up with some of the biggest events in CSGO history.

Valorant Masters 2 peak views

ESCharts

Stats from the VCT Masters 2 viewership combined from Twitch and other platforms.

Valorant Champions Tour 2021 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík easily broke viewership records for the developing esport. But the event also managed to reach numbers that are typically reserved for Majors.

According to Esports Charts, the $600,000 had an overall peak of 1,085,527 concurrent viewers during the Grand Finals between Sentinels and Fnatic, counting Twitch and other platforms combined.

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Their data shows that the other NA vs EU matchup between Team Liquid and Version1 had the second highest peak at 748K concurrent viewers.

Valorant and CSGO Major average viewers

ESCharts

VCT Masters 2 average viewership compared to past CSGO Majors.

There were a ton of people tuning in to Masters 2 across the seven-day event, and it only ramped up the deeper we got into the tournament.

On average, Masters 2 managed to haul in 488,000 viewers. The milestone rivals CSGO Majors, particularly PGL Krakow 2017 and the ELEAGUE Boston Major 2018 that had 448,000 and 423,000 average viewers, respectively.

It’s a good start for Valorant, a game that is only just celebrating its first full year of operation. But it still has ways to go to compete with CSGO.

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The ELEAGUE Major 2017 topped out the average viewership of Masters 2 with an incredible 592,000 people watching the Astralis dynasty take shape over Virtus.Pro’s classic CSGO lineup at the time.

Even with Twitch partners co-streaming the event to draw more hype than the Riot marketing machine could muster, VCT Masters 2 was a solid primer to see the attraction that Valorant on LAN can make.