CS:GO vs Valorant: Breaking Down the 2021 Esports Circuit

2021 was a great year for competitive tactical First Person Shooter (FPS) titles like CS:GO and Valorant as they transitioned from an online phase to organizing more in-person LAN tournaments. We finally witnessed the first CS:GO Major after more than two years with the PGL Major Stockholm 2021, breaking all viewership records in the history of the game. We also observed the completion of the Valorant Champions Tour 2021 (VCT) – the first official tournament circuit by Riot Games which was won by the European esports organization Acend.

The esports circuits for both the titles were executed really well, but there were certain things that Riot Games implemented better with Valorant that gave it the slight edge over the Valve shooter. From rolling out its inaugural esports circuit, engaging with the community, and releasing content for the game to celebrating its anniversary and setting milestones, Valorant in its debut year, as a PC FPS esports title, has found substantial success.

AFK Gaming has crunched the numbers and analyzed why Riot has succeeded with Valorant esports, surpassing CS:GO’s viewership in such a short duration, and what the future of FPS esports is going to look like.

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Riot Games proves that consistency is key with Valorant Champions Tour 2021

Riot mostly likes to keep things simple and under its control, an approach that is in contrast to how Valve operates (using mostly third-party organizers) with its esports titles. Both these methods have worked effectively for the respective companies, but when it comes to esports Riot Games does have a slight edge over its competitor.

Riot’s entry into the competitive PC FPS scene was questioned by the community at first, but Valorant has proven to be a strong and viable esport following the completion of its first-ever competitive circuit, Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2021. This accomplishment was built upon the success of the ‘Ignition Series’ (IS) that was organized in 2020, a set of regional tournaments organized by multiple third-party organizers in partnership with Riot.

Valorant was quick to expand its esports viewership, sharing its broadcasts with the help of popular content creators from every region where its tournaments were taking place. The title managed to hit 14 million average monthly players and dominated the world of streaming by averaging 111,700 viewers on Twitch in early 2021. This move was specifically effective in Asia where Valorant ended up giving CS:GO a run for its money in terms of tournament viewership.

Building on this momentum, VCT 2021 was announced and Riot has done a commendable job running its debut circuit by,

• Creating hype for its tournaments through various promotional activities.

• Engaging with the community.

• Organizing multiple LAN tournaments despite several real-world challenges including COVID-19 and travel restrictions.

• Providing world-class production quality through partners like Esports Engine.

• Maintaining a presence across multiple livestreaming platforms and utilizing co-streaming to grow viewership.

• Ensuring a high level of esports integrity.

• Hosting a truly global world championship where every region was given an opportunity to make it to the top.

Riot Games’ execution and planning resulted in the viewership of all the three main VCT 2021 tournaments being consistently healthy with increasing runtime and total hours watched.

Let’s take a look at how some of the bigger CS:GO tournaments that took place on LAN fared through 2021.

Valve hit the jackpot with the PGL Major Stockholm 2021, which broke all-time CS:GO viewership records to set new highs. The world championship was taking place after a gap of more than two years and the response it received from the community was mindblowing.

However, while the Stockholm Major did really well, viewer metrics across multiple other CS:GO LAN tournaments were highly inconsistent and volatile.

Here are a few interesting differences between CS:GO and Valorant LAN events in 2021 that are worth noting:

• IEM Cologne 2021 was probably the worst performing LAN tournament for CS:GO last season with an average of just 235,277 viewers. This is really poor when compared to its peak of 842,972 concurrent viewers, which is the second-highest peak for an offline CS:GO event in 2021.

• IEM Winter 2021 despite having more participants and tournament air time than BLAST Premier: World Final 2021 had a far lesser total watch time. This could be a cause of concern for competitive CS:GO going forward, as it means that inviting only a certain number of handpicked teams could determine the success of a tournament. This is something that could destabilize the competitive ecosystem and could be a hindrance for other upcoming or smaller teams, who may not have a dedicated fan following.

• The Valorant tournament with the least total watch time – VCT 2021: Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík at roughly 25 million hours watched is more than all the CS:GO offline tournaments except the Stockholm Major.

  Additionally, the increase in total watch time between BLAST Premier: World Final 2021 which streamed for 51 hours, and IEM Cologne which streamed for 94 hours is just 6,446,432 hours. While the air time increased by about 184% between the two tournaments, the total watch time only increased by about 141%.

  This is concerning as a similar comparison between VCT 2021: Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík and VALORANT Champions 2021 results in an air time increase of about 188.5%, while the total watch time increases by almost 183%.

• PGL Major Stockholm 2021 is the singular CS:GO LAN tournament to cross a peak of more than a million concurrent viewers last year, whereas two Valorant events were able to reach this mark. The Stockholm Major was also the only event to rival Valorant’s consistently high average viewership.

  Basically, it was the only CS:GO event to beat Valorant tournaments in 2021 by a significant margin. If the Major is sidelined or excluded, the CS:GO competitive circuit crumbles in front of what Valorant was able to generate in its debut season.

  The image below shows that Valorant had an upper hand through 2021, registering almost twice the average viewership than CS:GO while having more air time, up by a margin of 12 hours and a higher average peak viewership.

The bottom line is that CS:GO might have won a few battles but Valorant edged out the year on the back of a robust competitive circuit which delivered spectacularly on all fronts. Let’s take a closer look at some of the factors that gave Valorant this upper hand.

Giving equal opportunity to every region for a global representation

An important aspect of Valorant esports that was implemented well by Riot was the inclusion of all regions for its inaugural Valorant esports circuit. This is something that CS:GO has lacked despite being in the business for a long time now. The Valve shooter has not provided regions like Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East proper opportunities to compete at a global level.

It wasn’t until the third CS:GO Major – ESL One: Cologne 2014 that teams from Australia and India were given one slot each at the world championship. The next few Majors went on to feature one or two Asian slots which were mostly won by Australian teams. Soon after, operations went back the way they were with all the three regions being ignored by the Major organizers.

Finally, rules were revamped starting with ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, giving Asian and Oceania teams at least two slots every CS:GO Major, but it was a little too late for CS:GO to initiate building opportunities for these regions. Valorant did not make the same mistakes as Riot established a strong presence in all regions within its first year, while also providing them with a chance to compete in the world championship.

Valorant has tapped into multiple regions from across the world right from the beginning by utilizing the local partnerships to manage their regional qualifier events. Riot propagated proper management of every event at the smallest level, while also effectively engaging with the audience.

Engaging micro-communities of various influencers and streamers across regions

One of the biggest factors that contributed to Valorant esports accelerated viewership growth has been Riot’s effective utilization of influencers and streamers to broadcast their tournament livestreams through co-streaming. Riot engaged their communities effectively to gain a huge number of viewers from various regions in a short period of time.

Riot has been open to co-streaming since the very first VCT tournament, locking in partnerships with popular streamers from different corners of the world like Shroud, Kyedae, fps_shaka, stylishnoob4, and many others. The viewership brought in by these influencers and streamers is substantial, as the aforementioned creators resulted in a total watch time of more than four million hours in just the first three days of VCT 2021: Stage 3 Masters – Berlin.

Co-streaming has also helped Valorant gain more regional audiences from countries like Brazil, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia as they prefer to watch the broadcast in their local native languages rather than English.

A perfect example to showcase this is the viewership breakdown for VCT 2021 Stage 3 Masters Berlin qualifiers which observed a total watch time of 35.17 million hours, collectively for all regions.

The top five regions from where maximum viewership was generated included Europe (32.9%), North America (29.3%), Japan (15.4%), Brazil (6.6%), and Southeast Asia (5.9%). Below is a breakdown of hours watched based on language.

Native language streams in Asian countries collectively contributed a quarter of the total watch time at 23.5%. Other regional streams also contributed significantly. This goes to show that the approach taken by Valorant to cater to its expanded audience from the various regions is quite successful and effective.

Learnings from the lost battle: How PGL Major Stockholm 2021 managed to be the best

While Riot did a lot of things right, it could only do so much in its Valorant esports circuit debut. Despite having a successful year overall, they could not overwhelm an almost decade-old title when it came to the world championship.

The PGL Major Stockholm 2021 was the fourth most-watched esports tournament of 2021 with a total watch time of 71.26 million hours, following an air time of 120 hours. Additionally, with a peak of 2.74 million concurrent viewers, it also became the most viewed Counter-Strike tournament of all time, registering an average viewership of more than half a million viewers.

The tournament outperformed every Valorant event that took place last year. Here are few key points Riot can learn from the success of the PGL Major Stockholm 2021:

• Competitive Valorant is still in its nascent stages and does not have any substantial rivalries, significant competitive storylines, or a deep history to build upon. This was a key factor that drove viewers towards watching the highly anticipated Stockholm Major 2021, which was in fact the first such event to take place in more than two years. So the entire community was excited for it, which in turn led to record-breaking viewership.

• The Valorant Champions 2021 was not too different from the two other master tournaments that were previously held. Though it followed a different format, the setting and the way it was conducted in a closed studio environment without a live audience made it feel underwhelming. In comparison, the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 was a grand affair as the final stage of the tournament was conducted in front of a live audience at the Avicii Arena in Stockholm, Sweden.

• Due to Valorant tournament livestreams being shared across multiple platforms, influencers, and content creators, it was not able to register a high peak viewership. The broad diversification of the livestream is certainly beneficial to reach more viewers and engage them in multiple languages, aiding in achieving a consistently healthy average viewership. But, as the audience gets divided it becomes difficult to hit a higher peak concurrent viewership. This is an aspect that tournament organizers in CS:GO capitalize on very well by limiting their livestream options to attain a healthy mix of both.

It is fair to say that Riot has done a good job with Valorant esports and deserve a pat on their back for bringing it all together fairly quickly. CS:GO far from being done and dusted but at the same time Valorant has managed to edge past them and prove that they are here to stay. Hopefully, Riot will learn from its few shortcomings and continue to improve by delivering an even better esports circuit for Valorant this year in 2022.

Work has already commenced on certain aspects related to the circuit, such as the readjustment of slot distribution based on the performance of teams that represented their particular regions last year. Such adjustments and other iterations can ensure an improved esports circuit that is fair, competitive, and robust in nature.

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