By John Popko
VALORANT Champions 2025 has secured its place as the third most-watched event in VCT history, achieving a peak viewership of 1.47m and 47.58m hours watched.
The North American NRG Esports’ championship win capped off a tournament that generated nearly 48 million hours watched across 102 hours of broadcast, according to Esports Charts. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of Masters Madrid last year (1.69m peak), the Paris event proved VALORANT’s Tier 1 scene remains as popular as ever.
What’s particularly interesting about this year’s Champions is how fans chose to watch it. Co-streamers absolutely dominated the viewing landscape, pulling in 58.4% of total hours. The ratio represents one of the biggest shifts towards community broadcasts seen in VCT history.
The Case For Co-Streaming
While familiar faces like Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta topped the hours watched charts with 3.87m across his streams, the breakout star was Counter-Strike creator Mark ‘OhnePixel’ Zimmermann.
The German streamer only tuned in for the final day, but his infectious enthusiasm for a game he barely covers professionally struck a chord. OhnePixel maintained over 70,000 average viewers for six hours straight during the Grand Finals, outpacing established VALORANT personalities and even beating his own viewership records from CS2’s Shanghai Major.
His success makes a powerful case for Riot’s increasingly open approach to co-streaming. Rather than competing with official broadcasts, creators like OhnePixel are bringing in viewers who might never have watched otherwise. The fact that a CS2 personality could jump in and immediately connect with VALORANT fans suggests there’s even more crossover potential between tactical shooter communities.
Popular streamer Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik pulled in 2.2m hours watched but has clearly lost some ground to an increasingly saturated market. Streamers from Spain and Japan also drew significant audiences, showing the global nature of co-streaming’s appeal.
Pacific Teams Drive International Engagement
The matches that really moved the needle tell their own story. While the NRG-Fnatic Grand Final predictably topped the charts at 1.47m peak viewers, the next biggest draws all featured Paper Rex: its clash with Fnatic hit 961,280, the regional rivalry with DRX reached 876,084, and its meeting with Team Heretics drew 835,439.
This Pacific dominance extended to team popularity metrics. Despite not making the Grand Final, PRX accumulated 10.4m hours watched, while DRX pulled in 11.1m. Tournament runners-up Fnatic led everyone with 14.7m, but champions NRG weren’t far behind at 11.6m.
English broadcasts unsurprisingly led language viewership at 793,990 peak, but the Portuguese stream’s 179,683 peak and Japanese coverage hitting 134,343 show how truly international Champions has become. Even TikTok Live managed to attract 71,637 concurrent viewers at its peak, suggesting younger audiences are finding new ways to engage with competitive VALORANT.
VALORANT Champions 2025 reinforced the game’s place at the forefront of global esports. While it didn’t break viewership records, the numbers highlight a thriving competitive scene that continues to evolve. The surge in co-streaming — now commanding the majority of total viewership — marks a major shift in how fans consume esports, empowering creators and deepening community engagement.