One VALORANT channel was in the top 10 most-watched on YouTube Gaming last month

VALORANT has become increasingly popular among Eastern countries—with Japanese matches raking in the viewers. 

The first split of the VALORANT Challengers circuit in Japan reached a peak viewership of over 140,000 viewers, according to Esports Charts. The latest figures suggest that this split has pushed the Japan VALORANT YouTube channel to become one of the most-watched gaming channels in February. 

The channel had around 2.76 million hours watched, which made it the 10th most-watched YouTube Gaming channel from Feb. 1 to 28, according to Streams Charts. The channel is the only producer of VALORANT-related content in the top 10. 

Sister Riot Games product League of Legends is slightly above the channel with the LCK, the professional Korean league, with 3.01 million hours watched. 

Other popular YouTube creators such as IShowSpeed made the list with 3.46 million hours watched. 

Japanese VALORANT has become a global competitor for viewership. Compared to Challengers in North America, the peak viewership remains the same at around 140,000. The average viewership of the Challengers league in NA is 55,198 while Japan has accrued 71,245, by contrast. 

Japan is set to host the first and only VCT Masters event of the year. The tournament, which will feature some of the best teams from across the world, is set to be held in Tokyo. VCT Masters Tokyo is scheduled to take place in June.