They beat Gambit Esports in a nail-biting Bo5 grand finale match.
It is all over. We have the first-ever VCT World Champion after the end of the Champions Berlin grand final match. Acend walked away hoisting the Champions trophy, along with a slice of the $1,000,000 prize money. The team played in a record-setting grand final round for VALORANT where over 1 million viewers watched concurrently to see the European team besting Gambit Esports.
The match started with Breeze, where Acend started strong, leading the map by 6 points at the end of the first half. However, Gambit rose and managed to claw back and grabbed the victory from the jaws of defeat to win the map 13-11, thanks to the 10 points they managed to grab in the second half.
In the second map, Ascent, Acend managed to turn the table around and grabbed the win for themselves, leading Gambit in both halves comfortably. At the end of the map, Acend won 13-7 without too much trouble.
The winds of change blew through the teams in the third map, Fracture. This time it is back to Gambit to gain the upper hand as they demolished Acend in both halves of the map – especially in the first half where they scored 11 wins versus Acend’s single win. It only took the boys from Russia two more wins in the second half for them to win the map 13-3.
In Icebox, the fourth map of the match, both teams traded blows equally in both halves that the map was played to a tie, requiring the map to be played in extended time. In both extra rounds, Acend won, and this means Acend was the overall winner for this map with a score of 14-12.
In the final map, Split, it was Acend once again that gained the upper hand as Gambit seems to lose some steam after playing for the past four maps. Acend led in both halves comfortably, and the team led by BONECOLD won the last map 13-8.
Acend won the VCT Champions Berlin 3-2, without dropping a single map through their journey to the grand finals.
Sixteen teams from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia qualified for the event and competed for the title of the first-ever VALORANT World Champion. More than eighty players descended on Berlin to compete during the past two weeks across the group and knockout stages. While Acend won the finals, the underdogs from Latin America, KRÜ Esports, stole the hearts of fans around the world with their Cinderella run into the semifinals.
“We were thrilled with the success of Champions! This tournament demonstrated the global resonance of VALORANT as a sport and that any team, from any region, can step up to be a contender for the Champions Trophy. Seeing the level of competition rise around the world is an incredible sign of the continued growth of our game as we head into our next season in February.” - Kasra Jafroodi, Global Strategy Lead for VALORANT Esports
More than one million concurrent viewers tuned in around the world to watch the Finals on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Afreeca, and Trovo which was broadcast in more than twenty different languages. Additionally, for Champions, Riot Games expanded the Watch Party program to include more than 150 content creators around the world.
