EWC VALORANT final reaches 451k peak viewers

The inaugural EWC VALORANT final between Fnatic and Team Heretics reached a peak of 451k concurrent viewers. Additionally, there was an average of 164k viewers across the six-day tournament.

EWC VALORANT viewership

The Esports World Cup grand final, which saw Team Heretics finally end its grand final-losing streak with a sensational 3-2 reverse sweep against Fnatic, reached a peak of 451,943 viewers, according to data available from esports viewership analytics platform Esports Charts.

The tournament also maintained an average of 163,750 viewers and racked up 8,296,620 hours watched across its 50 hour and 40 minute runtime.

The event’s semi-final matchups marked the second and third most-watched games, with Paper Rex versus Fnatic and Gen.G versus Team Heretics reaching respective peaks of 340,210 and 275,738 spectators.

Fifth-highest VALORANT peak in 2025

The peak reached during the first-ever Esports World Cup VALORANT tournament was the fifth-highest reached by one of the game’s events so far this year.

The Masters events — Bangkok and Toronto — unsurprisingly occupy the top two spaces, each reaching more than 1m peak viewers. For Toronto, the grand final viewership was likely somewhat cannibalised by the BLAST.tv Austin Major final that occurred on the same evening and reached a considerably higher peak.

That said, the EWC VALORANT event still falls behind some regional VALORANT Champions Tour legs. Namely, the Americas Kickoff and Pacific Stage 1 finals both saw spectator peaks that eclipsed that of the Riyadh tournament, respectively reaching 553k and 460k viewers.

There could be a number of reasons for the reduced interest in the EWC compared to the Riot-run tournaments, including worries around the Esports World Cup’s role as a sportswashing tool by the Saudi Arabian state, whose public investment fund bankrolls the event.

In a video published in January titled ‘They own 40% of esports. Let’s keep VALORANT.’, popular VALORANT commentator Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson urged fans not to tune in to the tournament in the hopes that poor viewership could prompt developer Riot Games to revoke the game’s licence from the Esports World Cup in future years.

Much of the prominent VCT talent who frequently work global VALORANT events, notably those from Americas and EMEA broadcasts, did not appear in Riyadh. Retired VCT legend TenZ — who regularly co-streams the game’s tournaments — also opted out of covering EWC, however a large number of other popular streamers, such as FNS, mixwell, and tarik did co-stream the bulk of the event.

Additionally, the EWC may lack the pedigree of VCT Masters, given that the Riot tournaments have now had 10 iterations over five years, as well as four VALORANT Champions events. Viewer fatigue could also have played a part, since many of the teams present in Riyadh had also just competed in Masters Toronto.