Popular Canadian Twitch streamer Michael shroud Grzesiek has joined the Sentinels roster in Valorant. It was announced on the club's social media channels. He will compete in the Last Chance Qualifier stage of the Valorant Champions American division in August.
Shroud is a former professional CS:GO player who performed actively until 2019. After retirement, he took up regular streaming on Twitch and became one of the most popular streamers on Apex Legends. Shroud later switched to other games and also played Valorant extensively.
Shroud broadcasts almost every day. In June 2022, his channel accumulated over 3.7 million Hours Watched. Average Viewers on the Canadian's broadcasts was 16.5K, while Peak Viewers was 49.7K. Speaking of personal records, shroud streams generated 487.7K Peak Viewers. This happened on August 12th, 2020, when Grzhesik hosted his first broadcast on Twitch since his return from the Mixer platform. By the way, it was Valorant he was playing at the time.
In 2022 shroud actively broadcasted Valorant tournaments as a community caster. He streamed world championship matches of VALORANT Champions 2021, and this season he has streamed VCT 2022 North America Stage 1 Challengers and other tournaments. By the end of the first half of 2022, shroud channel became the 34th most-watched channel on Twitch. During that time the channel accumulated 21.3 million Hours Watched and Average Viewers of the channel's broadcasts was 17K.
It is interesting that shroud has no experience playing on the Valorant's professional scene as he only took part in several show tournaments during the beta test of the game. Shroud joining Sentinels is a controversial issue among the fans. The team performed excellently in tournaments in the 2020/2021 season, but the team's results dropped drastically by 2022. The Sentinels management made several replacements, hired a new coach, but it did not improve the situation drastically. Many analysts believe that the signing of Shroud is primarily aimed at increasing the team's media profile, rather than enhancing its competitive potential.
Sentinels is the most popular Valorant team in North America. It was made up of former professional players who had played Overwatch and CS:GO. This helps Sentinels to attract viewers from other disciplines, and the top community streamers like to watch the team's matches.
The strength of the Sentinels brand in North America can easily be seen in VCT 2022: North America Stage 2 Challengers. The team performed terribly in the group, losing all five matches, and was one of the first to leave the tournament. Despite this, it was the Sentinels games that became the most popular during the stage and attracted up to 200K Peak Viewers.
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