i was thinking about this for the past month. whenever i watch cs games so much of the chat is filled with gamblers. i talked to some guy in chat who said it might be annoying but gamblers keep the viewers high. i saw a video about cs gambling too which made the same points that tournaments bend the knee to gambling sites for their viewers which seems true since they always have ads for gambling/trading sites on them.
valorant gets laughed at a lot for not having higher peaks than cs but isnt cs being inflated a lot by this gambling culture? im not rly impressed by a game having more viewers if a lot of them are only watching for their bets. for valorant to get even close to cs numbers just from pure entertainment is pretty good.
valorant apparently also stomps cs in just general streaming watchtime which would imply people are less interested in casually watching cs.