Riot claims Valorant Champions 2023 is most-watched ever thanks to China

Leo Faria, Riot Games’ Global Head of Valorant Esports, has said that the Chinese community is keeping Champions viewership at a very strong level.

Speaking to reporters during media day ahead of the top four stages, Faria said that viewership for Valorant Champions 2023 “has been very solid”, even though, he noted, the time zone “is not ideal for most parts of the world”.

He then revealed that an EDG group match had a peak of 1 million viewers in China, despite the fact that the series started at 3 am local time.

“Talk about passion,” he said. “That number alone officially makes Champions Los Angeles the most-watched Champions of all time. Which is really cool.”

In recent months, China has become a key part of the Valorant esports circuit. In 2024, the country will have its own official VCT league, which will be in the same category as the EMEA, Americas, and Pacific leagues. It will also host a Masters event in Shanghai with the best teams in the world.

Valorant Champions 2023’s group stage was the least-watched in the event’s history by a non-Chinese audience, drawing almost 90,000 fewer viewers than last year’s group stage, according to data firm Esports Charts. The number of hours watched was down 25 percent when compared to 2022, and the peak viewership was 17 percent lower.

Esports Charts’ reports do not include data from Chinese platforms, which display a rather abstract metric called the ‘Heat Index’, rather than the actual number of viewers tuned in, on their streams.

It remains unclear if Riot will release Chinese viewership data for the playoff stages of Champions, particularly the final two days, when fan interest is normally highest. EDG, Bilibili Gaming, and FunPlus Phoenix have all been eliminated already, leaving Chinese fans with no local team to cheer on.