LOCK//IN final almost becomes the most-watched game in history

The night of March 4-5 marked the end of VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo, the first official VALORANT tournament of the 2023 season.

The competition grand final took place between LOUD and Fnatic, drawing up to 1.4 million viewers.

About VCT: LOCK//IN

Thirty-two teams participated in the VCT: LOCK//IN São Paulo. The tournament format was a single elimination bracket, so the teams had no chance to make any mistakes. The team that made a mistake and lost the match was eliminated from the competition immediately.

The first finalist was the Brazilian team LOUD. They beat several teams on their way to the championship, including Gen.G, Karmine Corp, NRG Esports, and DRX.

Fnatic Europe was the best team, as its players eliminated Sentinels, FURIA Esports, 100 Thieves, and Natus Vincere one by one. Fnatic wins the championship after playing five maps in the showdown with rival LOUD.

VCT: LOCK//IN audience statistics

The event’s matches attracted 432,000 viewers on average and received more than 44.1 million hours of viewing. For its part, the Grand Final between LOUD and Fnatic attracted 1.4 million viewers, the maximum audience of the event. In the entire tournament, it was the only game to exceed 1 million viewers. Interestingly, the show match starring streamer Tarik, and members of the contending teams ranked third on this list.

With nearly 14 million Hours Viewed, LOUD emerged as the team with the largest audience during the competition. In terms of average viewers, it reached first place with 684,000. Fnatic occupies the second place in metrics.

The language with the most hours viewed was English, with 41%, while Portuguese, with 21%, ranked second.

Where were the games broadcast?

Over 200 YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch channels covered all the games. In addition, the tournament had a large number of community casters, as well as official channels.

The best-known of all casters was the American Tarik, whose channel accumulated 7.4 million hours of views, surpassing VALORANT’s official English channel, which reached 6.2 million.

VCT: LOCK//IN almost reaches the first place of the most-watched events

The second most-watched tournament in the history of VALORANT esports is So Paulo, which came very close to surpassing VALORANT Champions 2022 and had over 1.5 million peak viewers.

VCT: LOCK/IN So Paulo ranks fourth compared to World Championships and VCT 2021 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavik regarding average viewers per broadcast. We can conclude that the season got off to a solid start and that the teams warmed up well ahead of the local leagues.

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