With the group stages of VALORANT Champions 2025 begun, the hype for the game has been relatively high. While this is the biggest tournament within VALORANT Esports, the most talked-about aspect is the skin bundle. The VALORANT Champions 2025 skin collection was released worldwide on August 30th. Recently, it has been reported that the VALORANT Champions 2025 skin collection in China has achieved sales of over $40 million. Let us take a look at this report and its impact on the VALORANT Esports circuit!
Within China, there is an app called Douyin. Within this app, players can purchase VALORANT skins. Additionally, the number of skins bought is shown in the app. In a screenshot by the X user @VALO2ASIA, they report that as of September 10th, Riot Games made sales of over $40 million through that app from the VALORANT Champions 2025 skin collection. These are some of the highest numbers we have ever seen concerning VALORANT skin purchases. In 2024, Riot Games announced that it had shared over $44 million to teams through in-game VCT Cosmetics. This included the VCT Melee, the 2025 VCT Team Capsule, and the VALORANT Champions 2024 skin bundle.
Image: Reddit
While VALORANT was available to play worldwide in 2020, the game was launched in China towards the end of 2023. Following the announcement of the game in China, Riot Games went on to make an Arena in China for the VALORANT Champions Tour China League. The VCT CN Arena was first showcased during the VCT CN 2024 Kickoff. Since then, the game has gained considerable popularity in the country.
Following EDward Gaming becoming the winners of VALORANT Champions 2024, the game had quite a boost. According to reports, VALORANT reached a peak of 1 million active users daily on the game. Alongside that, the EDward Gaming skin capsule became the most sold VCT team capsule that season. Since then, Riot Games has made quite a push in the Chinese Market. VALORANT Mobile is now available within China as well.
Interestingly, we have seen a lot of discourse on this topic. Recently, when the VALORANT Champions 2025 bundle was announced, many compared it to the EXO skin bundle. The funny thing is that one of the most loved skins within VALORANT in China is EXO. Thus, there is a slight belief that VALORANT made the champions’ skins features similar to the EX.O skin collection for this reason.
Image: Reddit
It won’t be wont to assume that sales of over $50 million in a span of two weeks are a significant win for Riot Games. This shows why the company was quite eager to tap into that region, both in PC and mobile. Similar to previous years, VALORANT would give 50% proceeds from the sale of the skins to all 48 teams in the VCT Leagues. Taking the $40 million number, if we split it in half, we get $20 million. In the past, the revenue was divided into 60 parts, with all VCT teams receiving one part. Teams that qualified for VALORANT Champions 2024 received an additional part of the revenue.
If we do the same here $10 million will be split among 48 VCT teams, which equates to $208,333 per team. Additionally, each team that qualified for VALORANT Champions 2025 would receive $625,000. Thus, in total, a team like Paper Rex and EDward Gaming would earn around $833,333 through the $40 million of skin sales. The team that wins VALORANT Champions 2025 will receive a prize of $1 million.
Thus, it would not be incorrect to assume that for the 2026 season, we will see more VCT-centric cosmetic releases within VALORANT. Recently VALORANT announced a new feature called Shotcall that allows fans to make real time predictions during matches.
Featured image credits: Riot Games
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