The Global Head of VALORANT Esports, Leo Faria, has revealed that the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) generated $44.3m (~£34.8m) from digital goods for teams in 2024.
The financial numbers were published in Faria’s end-of-year blog post, which reviews the VALORANT esports scene from a business and competitive standpoint.
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Including stipends and prize pools, VALORANT’s Global Head of Esports noted that the VCT shared a total of $78.4m (~£61.4m) for its 44 partner teams, signalling growth from the previous year.
Aside from the financial milestones, the VALORANT scene also saw strong growth in viewership and engagement across both regional and international tournaments.
VCT Masters Madrid was the first international event of the year, recording 3.1m peak concurrent viewers, the highest achieved for VALORANT esports at that time, according to Faria. While Masters Shanghai didn’t break new viewership records online, the Global Head of VALORANT Esports stated that the event sold out in 22 seconds and broke the record for the largest live attendance at a VCT event.
It was, however, VCT Champions Seoul that took the highlights of the season, reaching 9.13m peak viewers (including Chinese viewership) and 44.38m unique viewers during the Grand Finals, over five times higher than the VCT Champions from the previous year.
It is worth noting that these figures from Faria do differ from Esports Charts, however, the data platform does not include viewing figures from China.
Together with the Game Changers Championship, which recorded over 460,000 in viewership, according to Esports Charts, and the introduction of several off-season events, VALORANT is looking to expand and improve the esports scene even further. Faria also noted that international leagues will expand to twelve teams per league, raising the competition to new heights.
An excerpt of Faria’s post stated: “This was our best season yet. Record-breaking, by almost every measure. We’ve been saying for some time that the VCT is the fastest growing esport in the world.
“Well, 2024 solidified VALORANT as the most-watched FPS in the world, as well as one of the most popular esports across all titles and genres. This was a big year of expansion for the game, in new regions and platforms, and the sport grew with it.”
