It’s only been a month since the release of VALORANT‘s closed beta, but there’s already signs of greatness coming from the game’s esports scene. In the month of April, Western VALORANT tournaments garnered 7.08 million hours watched, according to Esports Charts.
It’s understandable that VALORANT esports would have a successful debut, especially with the closed beta release having taken place at the beginning of April. Riot Games’ new tactical shooter dominated the streaming world for a while, sitting at the top as the most-watched game on Twitch with 344 million hours watched for the month.
North America had the lion’s share of hours watched compared to Europe, with NA picking up 4.51 million of the 7.08 million hours watched. Many popular NA-based streamers like Shroud, timthetatman, DrDisrespect, and Summit1g contributed heavily to this number, since they all moved over to play the game—and brought their sizable viewer bases with them.
The most popular VALORANT esports event of the month was the 100 Thieves Invitational, where multiple big-name streamers and pro players joined forces to battle for glory. The tournament had a peak viewership of about 443,000 fans, and held just over 400,000 average concurrent viewers during the stream.
There are multiple esports teams that are forming rosters already, with huge organizations like T1, Gen.G, Cloud9, and Sentinels picking up big-name talent from other various esports.
In fact, many pro players have already shown their faith in the budding esports scene by retiring from their respective game to go pro in VALORANT. The Overwatch League’s 2019 MVP Jay “sinatraa” Won recently switched over to VALORANT after he “straight up lost passion for the game.”
