is this the effect of Riot merging SEA????????
holy fuck APAC is doomed to be the worst region in VCT for many years to come. This is a fate worse than euthanasia.
0
WTF HAPPENED TO SEA VALORANT
posted in
General Discussion
Comments:
Threaded
Linear
Free pass? Japan gets a free pass because we can sustain ourselves. Jp viewership regularly surpasses T1 EMEA while ID and TH struggles to reach 10k except lower finals or grand Finals. Riot isn't stupid enough to punish Japan by adding another region into the scene or merge Japan with the rest of SEA. Doing that is just bad business anyways.
this Astar guy seems to think that JP/KR are getting favourite treatment but was silent when SEA in general was stagnant when it came to growing as a region for 4 years, only starting to type when RIOT does something.
I guess its easy to blame an entirely different region that was just doing well on its own instead of supporting their region from the beginning.
Japan's numerous sponsors come from their massive viewership. If Japan only averages like 10k every match only one or two sponsors would be willing to stay so clearly it's not enough.
Which split? Because even with the help of mall visitors surely you're not seriously thinking that's actually big? You better hope that Masters Bangkok reignites the scene because pretty sure Riot just wants a different location for Masters.
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-ascension-pacific-valorant
the crowd capacity 5K tickets all sold out the event was supposed to take place in Tokyo, jakarta is the replacement btw
you'll be mistaken if you think sea doesn't have viewership. even the sub region alone is MASSIVE. now thanks to riot move the official stream to SOOP we will only watch the highlights most of the time
That stats only proved my point that SEA only becomes big when it's grand finals. Also the views are accumulated, meaning that's not a purely Indonesian viewerships, I think you should be aware of this but I'm saying just in case.
It doesn't help that on " Recent tournament news " section you have " Korean, Japanese viewers remain crucial as Sin Prisa Gaming wins VCT 2024: Ascension Pacific "and your popular Channels by Peak viewers being Valorant Japan
ur delusional
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/valorant-challengers-indonesia-2024-split-1-valorant
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/valorant-challengers-korea-2024-split-1-valorant
sub region vs major region btw
Japan deserves to have a free pass since they're keeping Pacific viewership very much alive but I also think it doesn't warrant a complete combining of SEA with no region-only qualifiers. Sure, have these splits which are mixed teams, but at least have a one nation only qualifier stage so that the local orgs have an incentive to compete with each other to be the few reps of a particular country and build strong domestic fanbases. Even worse, bringing in more sub-regions to compete for such limited spots completely kills any incentive for investment from orgs.
As a Thai, prior to the SOOP merge, we were indeed doing decently well though (especially in regards to Tier 2) I do think the beginning of the fall off started off earlier for a combination of reasons i.e. when top Thai VALORANT streamers all made their switch to SOOP ~ some fans followed but ultimately the top Thai Val streamer SuperBuss stopped averaging 10-20k viewers alone and nowadays only averages a few thousands max. Perhaps people just got tired of VALORANT and got less interested. I think after TALON's disappointing first season and then the emergence of an international roster, that further killed interest in competitive VALORANT for Thais when the sole representative org (whom wasn't even a Thai org in the first place) also didn't commit to a full Thai roster and ditched the whole "Thai" rep mojo after a singular disappointing season.
The peak for Thai VALORANT was definitely pre-franchising, Thai people loved the X10 roster and were supporting dearly. Once franchising rolled around and with disappointing results from the supposed best team in Thailand, people simply lost interest. Do I think Thai VALORANT is dead? Not quite yet, but it is definitely flickering ~ I can only hope TALON qualifies for Masters Bangkok to reignite the passion but it isn't looking all too likely :).
I don't actually know 100% since I've literally never tuned into his SOOP stream but I believe all the streamers originally signed exclusive deals to stream on SOOP and also included several top Thai streamers outside of VALORANT (since I believe SOOP has chosen Thailand to be the main hub for SOOP and I believe a whole lot of backend/production stuff is indeed Thai based though I'm not 100% on that). I do believe his exclusive contract might have ended considering I see him streaming on Twitch nowadays (though far, far from the reach he had in 2022/early 2023). Initially, when he first switched, he did have facecam-only muted streams on Youtube and Twitch redirecting viewers to SOOP so something has definitely changed whether the deal has extended or been re-established with different criteria I do not know. It just shows though, his comeback to Twitch and he's only averaging a few thousand viewers each live ~ smaller VALORANT creators average even less. So even with the supposed top Thai VALORANT streamer returning to Twitch, this is all we can average on PACIFIC Watch Parties so idk where we're supposed to pull the hype back from perhaps only when TALON qualify for a Masters or god forbid, manage to win a major event).
I don't even know exactly when the deals went through though if I remember it was sometime in 2024, though even before this, Thai Challengers 2024 Split 1 was being streamed exclusively on AfreecaTV (the precursor to SOOP) so it was almost inevitable that something was gonna happen and people were already pissed at having to watch on a Korean streaming platform with LITERALLY no Thai users other than those interested in Korean streamers/culture I guess.
THAI people watch streams on Youtube, FB and to a lesser extent Twitch (those with PCs will be familiar but those on mobile/console may be more accustomed to YT and FB but CERTAINLY not AFREECATV/SOOP.
JP has amazing scene in general and can easily sustain ourselves like what #15 said. viewership and income. neighbouring region KR is also self-sustainable and both teams show good promise in ascension. a lot of investment into their tier 2.
most sub-regions of SEA weren't self-sustainable after did not reach the competitive level.
add on: look at JP tier 2. constant investment for years and great players coming in and out. great infrastructure too.
nah thailand viewership alone beat the korean viewership why u pulling statement out of yo ass. its not about viewership its about the ad revenues. SOOP gives them more revenue and its killing SEA scene despite SEA have consistent high viewership. why u gotta gatekeeping the privileges? just accept it
Thai viewership and kr viewership were toe to toe, and it isn't only about viewership (why leave out JP when talking about views?)
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/valorant-challengers-thailand-2024-split-1-valorant
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/valorant-challengers-korea-2024-split-1-valorant
seems like you just ignored the "self-sustainability" and "most sub-regions". VN, MY/SG, PH, and HK compared to JP/KR's sustainability through commercial and investment is hard to compare. in fact, JP has the best out of any Pacific team. KR on the other hand has giant orgs like T1/GENG/DRX investing in tier 2 as well as Dplus and Nongshim. They have long history of esports orgs so it attracts fans + sponsors.
2021,2022,2023, and 2024 until stage 2 and the sustainability was sub-par in RIOT's pov and realistically, the competitive level of the sub-regions as mentioned earlier was also below others. SOOP gatekeeping is awful but other points need to be looked at objectively.
"self sustainability" as if riot gives a chance to SEA to make them money? LAN always been in Seoul despite KR relatively online lower viewership compared to SEA sub region. Japan okay they get a pass cus riot gave them a chance and made them money their sub region LAN is massive. VCL in Jakarta sub-region btw had huge audience and its profitable but riot still consider SEA as one region, watch how masters bangkok will do the same next. At the end of the day its about the sponsorship a.k.a ADS money, online ads in korea/japan gives 2-3x times the money to riot, and that's what matter to them they probably don't care if japan orgs don't deliver results.
riot gives a chance to SEA to make them money
had the same chance to do so along with other regions.
JP - had a pretty good start with Absolute Jupiter/Crazy Raccoon and had positive growth in terms of viewership and support, saw a great increase in orgs joining.
KR - almost ended up like CS but with NU placing 3rd in Masters & OW digging its own grave, they saw a great increase in investment from late 2022. (barely had 500 viewers to 20k in NS v RRQ). Like I said, the big orgs were vital.
Indonesia probably gained enough revenue tho.
Seoul has one of the best infrastructures in esports and it's pretty easy to get VISA for import players too. Hosting 10+ teams and their staff members while already being a pretty hot tourist city is a major pull, just like Tokyo.
Indonesia made good revenue but we are talking about SEA and other regions didn't see great improvement.
masters bangkok will do the same next
Masters Tokyo/Champs Seoul happened too so its not very nice comparison because its an international event.
acting like singapore cant afford a good infrastructure to do all that. the big question is japan is a sole region to qualify for apac ascension while SEA has to combine 6 regions (more with mongols and taiwanese, soon aussies too) just
to qualify for ascension. Indonesia and Thailand alone can compare the revenues to Japan. If you're talking about orgs, japanese orgs are still new to the scene compared to SEA orgs. (Talon, Boom, GAM, Team Secret are all established in other esports) But riot is chinese/korean company so they want something practical and nearby for sponsorships thats the reality.
RIOT is NOT a Korean company but mostly owned by TENCENT.
so you have KR, who has hosted a PUBG global championship, 2 MSI, 3 World Championships (another coming in 2027), and multiple esports leagues (OW, Starcraft, PUBG) since the early 2000s but RIOT playing favouritism is the reason why KR was picked?
"Infrastructure"
Indonesia and Thailand "alone" cannot compare the revenues with Japan. Hell even Korea lacks in some areas of Japan.
I get your frustration but you really need to research more before writing all these because it just looks like you are venting
I dont think the problem is SEA, i think the problem is that KR just step up (And DFM this year is good), KR have more premier team than NA, and is not far from the 5 T2 region of Europe cumulated and only 4 team, they may saturate in talents in near future and just stomp the region if they dont have more team to dillute the talent
they combined all sea to 1 region, each of the 6 region having only 1-2 rep a total of 12 teams while Korea has 8 and JP has 12. While other countries can grow their talent since there are enough spots and teams can gamble on upcoming rookies. Sea teams have only 2 representatives and even when they combine the region into 1 most sea orgs leave the scene and the one that stays can't gamble on raising a rookie because of the ascension model. What's worse is that Sea is forced to watch their vods on soop, what's funny is that rrq.a coach once commented that the first time he's able to see the team's vods is through a highlight reel from valorant mundi. Because Soop won't upload them until the broadcast has ended which is different from YouTube and twitch which both KR and jp have access to for their own regional matches. What's crazy is that Thailand and Indonesia alone has more views than Korea but because they changed the streaming platform it went from 30-50k combined to only 5k.
We're just hot ass rn ~ the power of friendship ig.
- TALON, PRX making no changes yet still making the same mistakes (PRX Jinggg flexibility issues and TALON language barrier issues and the seriously inconsistent Crws (and to a lesser extent ban and governor)
- Secret changes coaches last minute expecting miracles.
- BOOM still lack experience but don't excel at any particular playstyle or gimmick unlike NS so it's hard to see them beat the top teams.
- Global (Are we counting them as SEA since they're like 60% SEA players) - Brand new team without pre-existing synergy and a sub, I think they need more time before I can accurately gauge.
Discord