The first major weekend of the Valorant Game Changers series has come to a close, and as we reported upon, Cloud9 White was the winner. However, that’s not the only victory that’s worth celebrating. The Valorant Game Changers tournament has also attracted quite the following on Twitch. While the viewer counts didn’t smash any records that we’re aware of, the tournament has proven that all-women esports events can certainly compete with the male esports tourneys when it comes to viewership.

The Raw Data

The Valorant Game Changers tournament formally started with a panel on Thursday, March 25. That panel alone didn’t attract many viewers. There’s only so much excitement you can cram into a panel discussion no matter who’s on the panel. However, once the games started in earnest, viewership kicked up several notches.

The first day of this tournament earned a peak viewership of over a quarter of a million views, according to Twitch metrics tracking site SullyGnome.com. (Big shout out to SullyGnome.com for providing the data we use for this article.) Don’t believe us? Check the graph yourself below:

Our readers will probably note that viewership has tapered off afterwards. It’s our educated guess that only the hardcore Valorant fans stuck around after the tournament started on Thursday. Still, a single-day peak viewership of over 250,000 is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.

What Does This Mean?

While there have been esports events that have earned higher viewer counts than Valorant Game Changers, a quarter of a million viewers at its peak definitely demonstrates there is a market for these types of tournaments. However, don’t misinterpret this to mean that sexism is over in esports. Far from it – there are still plenty of barriers that need to be dismantled for women to achieve the same level of viewership in esports as men do.

However, it is a good first step, especially coming from Riot Games. They still have lots more to do, but this event is certainly a step in the right direction. It is now up to Riot Games to keep this initial momentum going. We here at Run it Back will of course be watching every step of the way, as well as providing all your other Valorant needs.