Point 3 also ties in with anohter aspect. Women are an extremely small portion of the general tac shooter playerbase. For example This study from 2016 puts them at 4%, although I'm sure we are sitting at higher numbers in 2024. Valorant has somehow managed to tap into the female market a lot more (e.g. this article says 35% of Valorant players are women). Valorant does appeal to a more casual audience a lot more and I would wager that the average woman in Valorant is probably approaching the game from a more casual standpoint than the average man (e.g. the first link above also shows that women generally tend to play games that are less competitive, like simulation games, whereas men tend to prefer genres with more competition). I'd also wager that casual players spend less money on the game.
A successful women's esports scene, no matter how they compare to the open circuits, can help the game to market itself to a demographic that was previously completely inaccessible, which makes up half the population. Let's take the 65-35 split mentioned above. If Valorant has a steady male playerbase and just increases the number of women playing the game to equal the number of men playing the game, this would be a 30% increase in players. Also, again this is just speculation on my end, but I'm sure Riot has numbers on this internally, I'd wager that esports watchers are probably more likely to be less casual and potentially buy more skins, which is the highest priority for Riot as it's the main source of income related to Valorant.
In terms of competitive shooters, getting women to play your game would be huge, and I feel like Valorant in its early days, like no other comp shooter, managed to actually do that, so of course they are investing heavily to expand on that market. Just a handful of female pros in the open circuit would be huge.
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