Sentinels’ Valorant squad has scored its first Ignition Series tournament win after dominating its fellow NA teams at the PAX Arena Invitational.
Sentinels, led by 2019 Overwatch League MVP Jay ‘Sinatraa’ Won, stomped past the likes of Gen.G, Team SoloMid, and Cloud9 in the final, dropping just two of the seventeen maps it played throughout the event. This is Sentinel’s first notable win at a Valorant tournament since the roster was finalised on June 1.
As well as Sinatraa coming from the world of Overwatch, the roster also includes Jared ‘Zombs’ Gitlin, an ex-Apex Legends pro, and three former Counter-Strike players in Michael ‘Dapr’ Gulino, Shahzeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan, and Hunter ‘SicK’ Mims. Despite the melting pot of players from different esports scenes, the roster looks to be now be really clicking and finding form. The PAX Arena event was the second NA tournament of the Ignition Series, following last month’s T1 Showdown that was won by TSM.
In more good news for the competitive Valorant scene, the PAX Arena event final saw a peak viewership of 78,000 – the highest for an official Ignition Series tournament so far, according to Esports Charts Pro.
THE TRUE KINGS OF NA! pic.twitter.com/D40gRce3Xd
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) July 27, 2020
However, there have been plenty of other Valorant events, such as Twitch Rivals, that have drawn in crowds well into the hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Riot will be hoping that the Ignition Series events can continue to grow and hopefully emulate those kind of viewership figures in the near future.