Pokémon VGC Tournament attracts the most viewers at 2023 Pokémon World Championships
From August 11 to 13, the 2023 Pokémon World Championships took place in Yokohama, Japan. This large international event included tournaments for various titles within the Pokémon franchise. The total prize pool for these tournaments amounted to approximately one million dollars.
Pokémon is a globally popular franchise that encompasses movies, games, comics, and other segments of the entertainment industry. Considering the wide variety of titles within the franchise, separate championships are held annually for each of them. For example, the Pokémon GO tournament consists of player duels where Pokémon battle one-on-one and periodically switch out. The Pokémon VGC tournament uses a duel format as well, but Pokémon battle in pairs. Pokémon UNITE is a team-based MOBA game where teams of 5x5 battle, destroy opponents, and take control of points on the map. Finally, Pokémon TCG is a card-based duel IRL game.
At the 2023 Pokémon World Championships, TCG and VGC competitions took place in three categories: Juniors, Seniors, and Masters. The distribution of players in these categories depends on the participants' age and their past achievements. Speaking of the participants, players from all over the world competed at the World Championships. There were many representatives from the USA, Brazil, Europe, Japan, and other countries.
In 2023, the majority of championship titles were claimed by representatives from the USA: Vance Kelley, an American player, became the best in the Masters category at the Pokémon TGC tournament. Another American player, known as ItsAXN, emerged as the champion in the Pokémon GO discipline. In the team-based competition of Pokémon UNITE, no one could stop the American team, Luminosity Gaming. The hosts of the tournament were able to secure a championship only in the Pokémon VGC discipline, thanks to the efforts of Shohei Kimura from Japan. It's worth noting that Japanese players also had success in the TCG and VGC tournaments in the Juniors and Seniors categories.
2023 Pokémon World Championships Viewership Statistics
Among the four tournaments of the 2023 Pokémon World Championships, the VGC tournament emerged as the most popular, reaching 74.3K Peak Viewers, slightly surpassing the Pokémon TCG championship, the card game tournament. The team-based Pokémon UNITE tournament was the leader in terms of Average Viewers and total Hours Watched. As for the Pokémon GO tournament, it had the lowest Peak Viewers number of 42.6K.
English was the main language for all tournament streams. However, during the VGC, TCG, and GO events, English had a significant advantage over other broadcast languages. During the UNITE tournament, the Japanese stream came closest to the English stream, but it still fell behind by 11K PV. As for platforms, the tournaments were primarily streamed on Twitch and YouTube. Most of the time, the streaming service from Amazon gathered more viewers for the streams. The exception was the UNITE tournament, during which YouTube surpassed Twitch in terms of Peak Viewers.
It's worth mentioning the Hololive Pokémon UNITE World Tournament, which was not part of the main program of the 2023 Pokémon World Championships. It was a show tournament among streamers from the Hololive agency (teams from Japan, Indonesia, and the World team, which included English-speaking creators, were represented). The matches of the Hololive Pokémon UNITE World Tournament gathered 99.5K PV, surpassing all official Pokémon championships.
The tournaments of the 2023 Pokémon World Championships showed different dynamics in terms of audience reach compared to the previous year. The Pokémon GO championship essentially repeated its Peak Viewers result. The Pokémon UNITE tournament increased by about 26% in the same metric, while the Pokémon TCG championship more than doubled. The only decline was shown by the VGC tournament, which lost about 25% of its Peak Viewers from the previous year.
In general, the tournament series shows growth in terms of audience reach. The Pokémon World Championships have a wide geographical range of participants and a variety of disciplines. The experience of 2023 also showed that viewers enjoy show matches with popular creators, indicating that organizers should consider similar collaborations in the future.
