VCT LOCK//IN final becomes second most-viewed Valorant match ever

The VCT LOCK//IN final between LOUD and Fnatic went down as possibly the best match in Valorant history, and it came very close to shattering the game’s viewership record.

Over 1.4 million people were tuned in at one point as Fnatic beat LOUD 3-2 in the grand final of VCT LOCK//IN, according to statistics website Esports Charts. This is the second-highest peak viewership in Valorant esports history.

The data collected includes the main English streams on English and YouTube, as well as co-streams and streams in other languages. The previous holder of second place was the grand final of Valorant Champions 2021 between Gambit and Acend, which peaked at 1,089,068 viewers.

The nail-biting VCT LOCK//IN match was just 60,000 viewers short of the Valorant Champions 2022 final between LOUD and OpTic, which remains the game’s most popular esports match. Over 1.5 million viewers watched then as LOUD ran out 3-1 winners in an exciting match that had multiple overtimes on Ascent and Breeze.

The strong viewership figures posted by VCT LOCK//IN stand in contrast to the general industry trend as various tournaments across multiple esports struggle for viewers. Earlier this week, it was also revealed that Twitch, the biggest videogame streaming platform in the world, had seen a 9.4% decline in both average viewership and hours watched year-over-year.

VCT LOCK//IN averaged over 430,000 viewers during its 15-day run – only the fourth-highest average viewership in the game’s history. This is partly down to the tournament’s unforgiving single-elimination format, which sees teams eliminated after one defeat. Sentinels, the team with the most average viewers at VCT LOCK//IN outside of the two finalists, according to Esports Charts, were sent packing in the first round.

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Elite-level Valorant will return at the end of this month with the international leagues in EMEA, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. The next LAN event with teams from all over the world will be VCT Masters Tokyo, scheduled for June 11-25.