Masters Santiago Swiss stage draws 8.53 million hours watched

The opening stage of Masters Santiago, the first global Valorant event of 2026, produced more than 8.53 million hours watched, according to figures Esports Charts published on Thursday, March 5. The audience analytics firm released its count on the rest day between the Swiss stage, which ended on March 4, and the playoffs, which open on Friday, March 6.

Hours watched is the total time all viewers spent on the broadcasts, added together. The firm also tracks peak viewers, the highest number of people watching at the same moment, and average viewers across the airtime. On both, the five days in Chile left a clear pattern: one match far above the rest, a French audience that grew day by day, and a broadcast spread across far more channels than a comparable Counter-Strike event a few weeks earlier.

Esports Charts, Swiss stage release of March 5, 2026. Peaks are given as more than 582,000 and almost 75,000.

What was on air

Masters is the name of the two international tournaments that sit in the middle of the season of the VCT, the Valorant Champions Tour run by Riot Games. Santiago brings together twelve teams, three from each of the tour's four leagues: Americas, Pacific, EMEA and China, the last listed by the publisher as VCT CN. Riot's guide to the event, published on February 20, sends the four winners of the leagues' opening tournaments straight to the playoffs. The other eight played the Swiss stage from February 28 to March 4.

A Swiss stage has no fixed groups. After each round, teams with the same record meet each other. In Santiago, two wins sent a team through and two defeats sent it home, and every match was a best-of-three, a series won by the first team to take two maps. That makes ten series over five days, a short window that shapes every figure below.

Esports Charts gave the outcome with its numbers. Gentle Mates and Paper Rex went through with a clean 2-0 record. G2 Esports and NRG finished 2-1, beating T1 and Team Liquid respectively in their last elimination matches. Those four join the Kickoff winners in a double-elimination bracket that runs until the grand final on Sunday, March 15.

The official broadcast is carried on the VALORANT Esports channels, including Twitch and YouTube, according to Riot's guide. The publisher also rewards viewers who stay. A page it published on February 23 lists in-game rewards, called Drops, for the whole event from February 28 to March 15: a title called Bakán simply for tuning in to a live match, and another title and a spray for placing predictions through Shotcall, an extension that runs beside the broadcast on Twitch on desktop. Pick'Ems, the publisher's bracket prediction game, adds its own rewards, from a buddy for the top half of eligible players to a title for a perfect set of picks.

One match above the rest

The most watched series of the stage was NRG against Paper Rex, a meeting of two teams that both went on to reach the playoffs. Paper Rex won it, and Esports Charts recorded more than 582,000 peak viewers. By the firm's records, that match made Santiago's Swiss stage the second most popular group stage in the history of VCT Masters, behind only Masters Madrid in 2024.

Paper Rex, one of the three teams from the Pacific league, were the common thread. The firm's headline figure is that both of their games in the stage drew more than 500,000 viewers. Their win over G2 Esports ranked second among the stage's matches.

Third came a match with a different audience behind it: Gentle Mates against EDward Gaming. The Chinese team are former world champions, and for Gentle Mates it was the first match of their history on the international stage of the VCT. Esports Charts tied the size of that audience to French viewers who tuned in for their team's debut.

The ranking carries one limit worth keeping in mind. Three of the twelve teams in Santiago come from the Chinese league, and EDward Gaming played in the third most watched match. Chinese viewers of that match are not in the count.

The French wave behind Gentle Mates

The language split of the audience is where the stage stands out. Esports Charts described French-language viewing as strong from the opening days, and rising further for Gentle Mates' second match. The firm links it directly to the team's first appearance at an international VCT event.

Much of that audience gathered on one channel. Squeezie, a co-founder of Gentle Mates, was the stage's most watched co-streamer. A co-streamer is a creator authorized to show the official broadcast live on their own channel, adding their own commentary. Squeezie reached almost 75,000 peak viewers for Gentle Mates' second match, against Team Liquid. With the team through to the playoffs, Esports Charts wrote that he would be expected to lead a wave of French viewers in the next stage.

English-language viewing held its level. Esports Charts found the English peak stable compared with Masters Toronto, the previous Masters event, while the English average dipped slightly.

Co-streams carry their own audiences

The firm ranked the co-streamers of the stage by peak viewers, and the top three each brought a different kind of audience.

After Squeezie came FNS, a former professional player turned streamer, well known in the North American community. He passed 60,000 peak viewers across Paper Rex's two group-stage games, the same two games that topped the stage's audience. Esports Charts credited his reading of the game for the appeal of his watch party.

Third was tarik, one of the most followed personalities in Valorant. The firm recalled that his co-streams draw their biggest numbers when his own organization, Sentinels, is playing, and that his audience falls at international events where Sentinels are absent, as in Santiago. It gave no figure for him.

Riot builds co-streamers into the event itself. Its guide says the Masters Santiago MVP, the single most valuable player award, is chosen by a panel of broadcast talent, co-streamers and media, and revealed after the grand final.

Shorter airtime, a stronger peak

Set against Masters Toronto, Santiago's opening stage traded volume for intensity. Esports Charts noted that Toronto broadcast its group stage for almost three hours longer, which widened the gap in hours watched. Average viewership in Santiago fell slightly, but the stage achieved what the firm called a strong peak, and it held just under 350,000 concurrent viewers across its airtime.

The firm also compared the stage with PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026, the Counter-Strike 2 tournament that ended in Romania on February 22. That event used a much longer format, with sixteen teams in its group stage against eight in Santiago, so it produced far more hours watched. Masters Santiago kept a far higher average concurrent audience, which Esports Charts put down to its shorter Swiss format and its weight in the VCT calendar.

Distribution moved in the other direction. Masters Santiago was broadcast by almost 100 more channels during its group stage than Cluj-Napoca, the firm wrote.

The firm also noted a continuing shift in how viewers split between Twitch and YouTube worldwide, without publishing a platform breakdown for the stage.

What the count leaves out

Every figure in the release comes with the same boundary. Esports Charts states that it cannot track viewership on Chinese livestreaming sites, because of the way those platforms present their statistics.

The limit matters more at an event like this one than at most. All Gamers, XLG Esports and EDward Gaming are in the field, and any Chinese audience for their matches stays out of the 8.53 million hours.

Riot's own viewer programs draw a similar line. The publisher's page on Drops and Pick'Ems lists the regions where the prediction game is not offered, and China is one of them, alongside countries such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea. It adds that eligibility for rewards may vary by region because of local regulations.

The playoffs from March 6

The next figures will come from a larger stage. The playoffs begin on Friday, March 6, with FURIA against Paper Rex at 19:00 Central European Time, 15:00 in Santiago, according to Esports Charts. Riot's calendar runs the bracket through March 10, pauses on March 11 and 12, then holds the semifinals on March 13, the lower bracket final on March 14 and the grand final on March 15.

Paper Rex, the stage's biggest draw, therefore open the bracket. Gentle Mates, the team behind its French surge, are also in the eight. Esports Charts has said it will follow the playoffs with its own results and audience coverage, and Riot's Drops for live viewing stay open until the final day.

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