The VCT LOCK/IN final that featured LOUD and Fnatic is likely to go down in the annals of Valorant lore as the best match ever played in the game, and it came very near to surpassing the viewership record for the game.
According to the statistics website Esports Charts, more than 1.4 million people were watching at one point as Fnatic defeated LOUD 3-2 in the grand final of the VCT LOCK/IN tournament. In the annals of Valorant esports, this is the second-highest peak viewership ever recorded.
The streams in other languages and co-streams are also included in the collected data, in addition to the significant English streams found on English and YouTube. The previous event that held the title of second place was the grand final of Valorant Champions 2021, which was contested between Gambit and Ascend and reached a peak of 1,089,068 viewers.
VCT LOCK/IN Sets Viewership Records Amid Industry Struggles
The nail-biting VCT LOCK/IN battle came within 80,000 viewers, surpassing the most popular esports match for the game, the Valorant Champions 2022 final between LOUD and OpTic. Almost one and a half million viewers watched as LOUD came out on top with a 3-1 victory over Ascent and Breeze in an entertaining match that went into numerous overtime periods.
The impressive viewership ratings recorded by VCT LOCK/IN stand in contrast to the typical trend seen across the industry: many events across multiple esports are struggling to get spectators. It was also disclosed earlier this week that Twitch, the largest videogame streaming platform in the world, had suffered a 9.4% fall in both average viewership and hours watched year-over-year. This information came to light earlier this week.
Throughout its 15-day run, VCT LOCK/IN attracted an average audience of over 430,000 viewers, making it only the fourth-highest average viewership in the game’s entire history. This is due, in part, to the punishing single-elimination nature of the competition, which sees teams ousted from contention after suffering just one loss. According to Esports Charts, Sentinels, the group with the highest average viewers at VCT LOCK/IN outside of the two finalists, was eliminated in the first round.
The reintroduction of elite-level Valorant will coincide with the restart of international leagues in the EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and Americas regions at the end of this month. The following local area network competition that will feature teams from all around the world is the VCT Masters Tokyo, which will take place from June 11-25.
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