VCT Masters Madrid sets new VALORANT viewership record

VALORANT’s VCT 2024: Masters Madrid event has become the game’s most-watched tournament ever.

The tournament attracted 1.66m peak viewers and around 671,000 average viewers across its 52-hour airtime, according to esports data platform Esports Charts.

VCT Masters Madrid was the first large-scale international LAN event of the 2024 VCT Season, marking the conclusion of VALORANT’s first segment in its competitive calender. Two teams from VCT’s of the four international leagues qualified by reaching the final of their respective Season Kickoff event.

In the end, North America’s Sentinels won the tournament by beating Gen.G in the grand final. This series was the most popular match at the tournament, followed by Sentinels’ clashes with LOUD (1.07m) and Paper Rex (1.04m). Esports Charts’ data indicates that Sentinels was a standout draw in the competition. Overall, the North American organisation accumulated 19m hours of watch time and featured in all five most-watched matches of the tournament.

The Masters Madrid has dethroned VALORANT Champions 2022 as the most-watched event in the game’s history, which is a promising sign considering that the 2024 season has only just begun.

Compared to VALORANT’s previous Masters event, Masters Tokyo, Madrid had more than double the amount of peak viewers (1.66m compared to 830,000) and around seven million more hours watched (34.9m compared to 27.9m).

The good numbers continue the upward trend for VALORANT esports. The season kickoff events that took place earlier this year were also successful, with VCT 2024 Americas Kickoff seeing more than 820,000 viewers.

The tournament also saw an increase in reach through community broadcasts, notably tarik’s stream which had more than 290,000 peak viewers. The next Masters tournament for the VCT is VCT 2024: Masters Shanghai in May and June 2024.