Seoul, South Korea, will be the location for Valorant Champions 2024 and will be the first Champions event to be held in the APAC region.
The VCT 2024 season has begun with the commencement of the Kickoff event across all regions, and Jake Sin, Head of Valorant Esports in APAC, has already given us the most exciting news of the year. Jake has officially announced during the VCT Pacific Kickoff press conference that Valorant Champions 2024 will be coming to Seoul, South Korea from August 1 to 24.
"In the past 3 years of VCT history, we've never had Champions in APAC, so we wanted to bring the experience here for our APAC fans and Korean fans. They deserve to witness the pinnacle of VCT spectacle in their hometown, and it's finally going to be their turn. And when you also look at other factors like cost accessibility, visa infrastructure, etc., Korea just, you know, made perfect sense," said Jake.
Following this announcement, I asked Jake about the effect that Twitch closing its business in South Korea will have on streams, viewership, watch parties, etc.
Jake responded, "Twitch leaving Korea; we're still figuring out what exactly that means and what kind of technical limitations or accessibility issues we might run into with Twitch for the fans in Korea. But to answer your question directly, there's not been a material impact on our partnerships or sponsorships. Our business has remained intact. It's not been affected drastically. We're pretty confident in our ability to retain the viewership via other platforms without Twitch."
He continued further, "You know, there are newer competitors arising in the absence of Twitch, and I think we will always find a way to mitigate any issues. What we really care about is making our product accessible to our fans. So it's not great news that one of our fans' preferred platforms is not going to be as available. But I think that just means we're going to work harder to make sure that our fans don't have a barrier, they don't have any issues locating where to watch VCT Pacific or Champions, and we make the stream available and make it very clear where they can come and watch."
Riot will soon announce more details about Valorant Champions 2024. To ensure you don't miss any updates, be sure to keep an eye on our Valorant section.