Valorant Champions Tour

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Valorant Champions Tour
Valorant Champions Tour logo.png
GameValorant
Founded2020
Inaugural season2021
Owner(s)Riot Games
CountryGlobal
Most recent
champion(s)		LOUD
Official websitevalorantesports.com

The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is a global competitive esports tournament series for the video game Valorant organised by Riot Games, the game's developers. The series runs multiple events throughout each season, culminating in Valorant Champions, the top-level event of the tour. The VCT was announced in 2020, with its inaugural season taking place in 2021.

History[]

Inaugural season[]

In November 2020, Riot Games announced the first Valorant Champions Tour, a tournament series divided into three tiers: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. Challengers would act as the lowest tier, split into six regions. Teams that advance past Challengers would move on to Masters, where teams would not be divided by regions anymore, and the top 16 teams from Masters would move on to Champions, the final tournament of VCT.[1] In February 2021, they announced the VCT Game Changers, a supplementary tournament initiative for women and marginalized genders.[2]

Riot hired esports infrastructure company Nerd Street Gamers to be the operators and producers for all North American Challengers and Masters events.[3][4] They also hired several third-party companies to broadcast their events, such as Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP) for their Spanish-language broadcasts and LetsPlay.Live for their Oceania broadcasts.[5] The 2021 Champions tournament took place on December 1–12 at the in Berlin, Germany, concluding with team Acend defeating Gambit Esports in the grand finals by a score of 3–2.[6][7]

Over 10,000 teams competed in the VCT in 2021. Outside of Champions, VCT saw its highest viewership at the Reykjavik Masters tournament in May, with a peak viewership of 1,085,850. The Champions grand finals match in December reached a peak viewership of 1,089,068, making it the VCT's highest peak viewership.[8][9]

2022 season[]

Riot made several changes to the format of VCT for its second iteration. While the overall structure of Challengers, Masters, and Champions remained unchanged, it reduced the number of stages of Challengers and Masters events from three to two. VCT Challengers began on February 11, 2022.[10] The 2022 Champions tournament will take place from September 1 to 18 in Istanbul, Turkey.[11]

2023 season[]

Riot announced a new format to the VCT starting 2023. [12]

Format[]

As of 2022, the VCT format consists of three tiers: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. Challengers and Masters are split across two stages, known as Stage 1 and Stage 2. The tour starts with the Stage 1 Challengers, regional events in which teams qualify for through open qualifiers. The top teams from each region then move on to the Stage 1 Masters, where teams are no longer split by region. Following the Masters, the top performing teams from Stage 1, as well as teams from another open qualifier, advance to their region's Stage 2 Challengers. Like Stage 1, the top teams from Challengers advance to the Stage 2 Masters.[13]

Performance in Challengers and Masters events earn teams circuit points for advance to Champions, the world championship event of Valorant's esports. The 10 teams qualify through circuit points, and the final 6 teams qualify through a "Last Chance Qualifier" event.[14]

Riot Games has announced a new format starting in 2023[15] which uses a new Challengers format which will be split into 3 regions - Americas, EMEA and Pacific instead of the 7 regions format (NA, EMEA, SEA, Korea, Japan, Brazil, and LATAM) used in VCT 2021 and VCT 2022. The new format has teams competing in their region's Challengers event to qualify for Challengers Ascension. Every region's Challengers event will have three winners which earns them a two-year promotion into their respective territories’ international league. The promoted teams will qualify for the global events, as well as getting benefits provided by Riot Games. Each year, through the Challengers promotion system, the three international leagues will expand by one team each year until they reach a cap of 14 teams per region in 2027 (42 teams in total).

On the 21st of September 2022, Riot Games announced the 30 teams that has been selected as part of their new franchise format.[16]

Valorant franchised teams[]

Source:[17]

Americas
(playing at Los Angeles) 		EMEA
(playing at Berlin) 		Pacific
(playing at Seoul)
100 Thieves BBL Esports DetonatioN Gaming
Cloud9 Fnatic DRX
Evil Geniuses FUT Esports Gen.G
Furia Esports Giants Global Esports
KRÜ Esports Karmine Corp Paper Rex
Leviatán Rex Regum Qeon
LOUD Natus Vincere T1
MIBR Team Heretics Talon Esports
NRG Team Liquid Team Secret
Sentinels Team Vitality ZETA DIVISION

Winners[]

Valorant Champions[]

Year Location Final 3rd–4th
Champion Score Runner-up
2021 Berlin Acend 3 2 Gambit Esports Team Liquid
KRÜ Esports
2022 Istanbul LOUD 3 1 OpTic Gaming DRX (3rd)
FunPlus Phoenix (4th)

References[]

  1. ^ Webster, Andrew (November 24, 2020). "Valorant Champions Tour is a global season-long esports competition for 2021". The Verge. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  2. ^ Takahashi, Dean (February 23, 2021). "Valorant's Game Changers tournaments will highlight women and marginalized people". VentureBeat. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  3. ^ Nicholson, Jonno (January 19, 2021). "Nerd Street Gamers to operate first stage of VALORANT Champions Tour". Esports Insider. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  4. ^ Nicholson, Jonno (March 10, 2021). "Nerd Street Gamers expands Riot Games partnership". Esports Insider. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  5. ^ Murray, Trent (February 5, 2021). "LVP to Serve as Official Spanish Language Channel for Valorant Champions Tour". The Esports Observer. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  6. ^ McLauglin, Declan (November 18, 2021). "How to watch VALORANT Champions". Upcomer. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  7. ^ Klimentov, Mikhail (December 12, 2021). "Acend wins 'Valorant' world championship, defeating Gambit in Berlin". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  8. ^ Klimentov, Mikhail (December 15, 2021). "The 5 big questions facing 'Valorant' esports in 2022". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  9. ^ Utama, Kenneth (December 12, 2021). "VALORANT Champions breaks viewership record once again". Upcomer. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  10. ^ Robertson, Scott (February 7, 2022). "VALORANT Champions Tour 2022 guide: Schedule, results, format, roster moves". Dot Esports. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  11. ^ Zucker, Coby (May 13, 2022). "Riot Games announces VALORANT Champions 2022 will be in Istanbul". Upcomer. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  12. ^ "Valorant Champions 2022: Schedule, results, and teams | ONE Esports". www.oneesports.gg. 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  13. ^ Robertson, Scott (February 7, 2022). "VALORANT Champions Tour 2022 guide: Schedule, results, format, roster moves". Dot Esports. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  14. ^ Heath, Jerome; Robertson, Scott (June 6, 2022). "Here are the circuit point standings for all regions in the 2022 VALORANT Champions Tour". Dot Esports. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  15. ^ Daniels, Tom (2022-08-16). "VALORANT Champions Tour unveils Challengers ecosystem, introduces annual VCT expansion and promotion system". Esports Insider. Retrieved 2022-09-14.
  16. ^ "VALORANT Esports". valorantesports.com. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  17. ^ "2023 VALORANT TEAMS REVEAL". VALORANT Esports. 2022-09-21.

External links[]

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