Online entertainment has been going through a huge change in the past decade as online gaming continues to become one of the primary forms of content consumed, whether this be through online gaming options that have grown in popularity with the likes of mega moolah slot and other online gambling services which have seen a surge in new users over the past year, or through to online streamed services as live streaming has become the most exciting way to deliver online content. The two combined have led to the growth of esports, and this past week has been a huge success for one of the newer games to enter the space; Valorant.
The developers behind the game, Riot Games, are also responsible for the biggest esports title in the world of League of Legends which in recent world championship events has managed to boast over one hundred million unique viewers, and over forty million concurrent viewers – whilst Valorant was unable to reach those similar numbers being the first big offline event for the game following it’s released a year ago, the numbers were certainly promising. Through the watch party streams with Shroud pulling in hundreds of thousands of viewers to the official stream doing the same, the tournament was able to rack up over 40 million hours of content watched throughout the week.
With numbers still being collected on viewership, initial numbers are certainly looking very promising for the game that is still fresh to the market. As the first-person shooter title looking to replace the grandfathered game of Counter-Strike, it has been a solid first step and shows that when done well there is plenty of opportunity for new games to break into the market and upset the status quo at the top which has been dominated by three big names for the better part of the decade, and with esports only looking to grow further these numbers will only increase.
As one of the first big offline events to return, it’s safe to say it was a huge success and bodes well for future offline events too, but also shows just how far esports have come from older events that would peak and a few thousand viewers to what we have now – online streaming is proving to be the future of entertainment and the ability to deliver the tournaments for free has certainly helped, and may even provide an opportunity for other forms of entertainment in traditional sporting or similar to follow along with too. Whether or not other forms of online entertainment will follow along is yet to be seen given the huge amount of money involved in online broadcasting, but esports continues to show just how important the shift is becoming.
