DSG vs. Moist Moguls: Which Team Had Top Viewership in VALORANT Challengers 2023?
While esports fans mistakenly believe all of the best VALORANT action is found in the VALORANT Champions Tour, there are also a lot of intense matches, extreme talent, and spicy rivalries in VALORANT Challengers, the tier two league for up-and-coming top talent. Most recently, there was a viewership rivalry between two influencer-owned teams: Moist Moguls and DSG.
But who came out on top?
There are multiple regions competing in the 2023 Challengers season, much like the VCT. One of those regions is the Americas, which is home to both influencer-owned teams.
The Americas includes both North and South America, with North America being the most-viewed of the two. The three teams with the most hours watched were The Guard, M80, and TSM. But Charlie “MoistCr1TiKaL” White’s Moist Moguls and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang’s DSG had their own rivalry going on.
According to Esports Charts, Moist Moguls had an average of 68,952 viewers throughout their Challengers run. This was the most average viewers of all teams, including the three mentioned above. DSG wasn’t far behind, however, with 68,293. This close average is interesting when you recall that DSG had a very, very poor performance — proving people were most likely watching due to Disguised Toast’s passion and involvement.
While Moist Mogul’s average sounds crazy good, it should be noted that they had an even higher average viewership in Split 1, boasting over 96,000 viewers. That was more than 15,000 more average viewers than DSG, most likely because Moist Co-Owners Ludwig and Critical had watch parties. This helped it become the most average viewers of any team during any stage of the NA Challengers this year.
Split 2 actually saw the viewership sway in favor of DSG. The underdogs averaged about 75,000 viewers during the first few matches probably because of the addition of FPS veteran Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker. He was unfortunately not enough to carry DSG out of their slump, however, and viewership dwindled as the team suffered.
Due to a poor performance of 0-5, Disguised went into the relegation bracket with a huge viewership drop-off. DSG had an average of 48,700 viewers, which was pretty low compared to Moist Moguls. The successful team took over once again when they averaged well over 69,000 viewers in the playoffs.
Interestingly enough, the two teams never played each other. And now they never will. DSG has parted ways with his roster once again and is now focused on Game Changers and LCS Academy. The cruddy performance may have been too low of a blow for Disguised Toast, who was already losing millions having the team.
On the other side, Moist Moguls didn’t make it to the next stage but are most definitely a promising Challengers team to watch. Does that mean Ludwig and Moist are not losing tons of money as well? That is yet to be seen.
