The BLAST.tv Austin Major (Counter-Strike 2) and Masters Toronto (VALORANT) overlapped for the first time in June 2025, making a first-person shooter fan’s competitive life a little more difficult. The 22 June Grand Finals of both events provided a chance to directly compare these heavyweight titles.
Because of this timing and the similar prize pools, the debate has become more intense. Which FPS esport is dominating in 2025? The Counter-Strike franchise or Riot’s newer VALORANT ecosystem?
Two Distinct Competitive Frameworks
The basic structures of these esports scenes are different due to developers. Valve keeps the ecosystem for CS2 open so that organizations of all sizes can qualify for elite tournaments operated by third-party tournament organizations like BLAST, PGL and ESL.
On the other hand, VALORANT follows Riot Games’ franchising structure, which was established in 2023. Only partner teams are qualified to partake in VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) regional leagues for which Riot directly runs those tournaments.
The 2025 VALORANT calendar includes three flagship international events, Masters Bangkok, Masters Toronto and the championship Champions. CS2 has multiple smaller tournaments happening throughout the year while VALORANT has a more restrained league-based approach with international events.
Viewership Battle: CS2 Maintains Its Audience Advantage
Insight and Preferences Are Pop Up From The Parallel Tournaments. The Austin Major was a definitive success with peak viewership of nearly 1.8 million compared to Masters Toronto’s 1.12 million. Austin held the record as CS2’s most-watched event ever, with 76.1 million hours watched over 135 broadcast hours.
During its 73-hour broadcast, Masters Toronto was watched for 34.8 million hours – impressive but below the amount for Austin. One reason for this disparity is the different number of teams we had (32 for Austin; 12 for Toronto) resulting in fewer matches and lesser airtime.
Looking at the top three tournaments of both games in 2025, an interesting trend occurs. CS2 has been seeing increasing viewership throughout the year while the opposite can be said for VALORANT. Masters Toronto had fewer peak viewers than Masters Bangkok (1.3 million).
At the regional level, Kickoff events surpassed VCT Stage 1 in terms of viewer engagement following Masters Bangkok, with the Pacific region the only one to grow between splits.
| Tournament | Peak Viewers |
| BLAST.tv Austin Major | 1.8m |
| IEM Katowice 2025 | 1.3m |
| Masters Bangkok | 1.3m |
| Masters Toronto | 1.1m |
| BLAST Rivals Spring 2025 | 1.03m |
| VCT Americas Kickoff | 554,000 |
There are still important games in 2025 for both titles. VALORANT Champions and IEM Cologne are among CS2’s Thunderpick World Championship and StarLadder Budapest Major. Though CS2 leads presently the race is still close.
Prize Money Distribution Reflects Structural Differences
The different approach in prize money of the games clearly indicates. There will be different competitions during the year 2025 with varying prize pools of R3,8 million and R25 million. The first half of 2025 had already seen three tournaments boasting prize pools of over R20 million, with three more planned.
Riot Games has pooled together VALORANT most of its esports prize money in Champions 2025. CS2 currently leads in the distributed prize pool, with this major cash injection still to come.
| Tournament | Prize Pool |
| BLAST.tv Austin Major | $25m |
| PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025 | $25m |
| EWC VALORANT 2025 | R25m |
| IEM Katowice 2025 | R20m |
| Masters Toronto | R20m |
| Masters Bangkok | R10m |
Through in-game cosmetics, both games have established revenue-sharing mechanisms whereby teams receive income beyond tournament, winnings. The logo capsules in CS2 are a core part of the ecosystem while the revenue share for VALORANT mostly benefits the VCT Partner & Ascension Teams.
Game Updates: Evolution vs. Stability
The creators of the games think differently, and this can be seen in the way that they think about updates and content. Riot modifies VALORANT’s competitive environment to change the meta with consistent updates while Valve’s CS2 competitive environment develops more organically.
After taking out CS: GO in 2023, Valve has been focused on CS2’s gameplay experience. The most recent map rotations in casual play won’t impact the esports map pool, which currently utilizes Ancient, Anubis, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke and Train.
Riot uses the hero shooter mechanics of VALORANT to create a competitive environment. In the first half of 2025, newly introduced agent Tejo in January and Waylay in March entered the game and Tejo’s presence primarily influenced pro play until the agent received balance changes. The competitive map pool of VALORANT has seen four updates in 2025. The latest round features maps such as Ascent, Bind, Corrode, Haven, Icebox, Lotus, and Sunset.
On the one side, VALORANT has proven to be great at delivering new content and evolving metas. CS2, on the other hand, has a stronger viewership, despite not changing much. This shows that perhaps CS2’s core gameplay appeal is stronger than VALORANT’s.
The Current State of Play
As things stand in 2025 Counter-Strike 2 has an edge because of audience engagement, tournament frequency, and prize pools. While VALORANT may break viewership records with its Champions tournament, CS2’s ecosystem and popularity show that the most established competitive FPS won’t be going anywhere.