Capcom Cup 11’s grand final made it one of esports’ most popular fighting game events

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The Capcom Cup 11, held from March 5 to 8 in Tokyo, Japan, became the culmination of the Capcom Pro Tour 2024. 48 players qualified for the event through various top-level events, coming together for a chance to win a piece of the $1.28M prize pool. The grand final between Derek “BlaZ” Blaz and ultimate champion Kakeru reached over 350,000 peak concurrent viewers, becoming one of the most popular Street Fighter tournaments ever.

  Most popular Capcom Cup tournaments by Peak Viewers   

The release of Street Fighter 6 in 2023 rejuvenated the fighting game esports title. Its peak viewership record almost doubled the year of its release, and since then, Street Fighter tournaments have continued to dominate viewership of the fighting game community. The recent Capcom Cup 11 was not only the most popular Capcom Cup ever, but also the most popular Street Fighter tournament of 2025. As of March 10, this makes Street Fighter the 10th most popular esports game of the year, see the bottom of this article for an entire ranking of the top 10 games.

Both BlaZ and Kakeru are relatively new additions to the Street Fighter esports scene — Kakeru has been competing since 2015, but the release of SF6 has seen him jump to the top of the scene. On top of receiving $1M in prize money, Kakeru also qualified for the Esports World Cup 2025 along with the other top eight finishers at the Capcom Cup. 

Street Fighter’s franchise, which began in 1987, is still going strong with a supportive esports scene. Fans around the globe follow the fighting game, and the new game release of Street Fighter 6 has only drawn more and more new fans to the title.

  Top 5 most popular Street Fighter esports events by Peak Viewers, from 2016 onwards   

Compared to other Street Fighter events, the Capcom Cup 11 was the third-most-popular esports tournament for Street Fighter in our database. On top of being the most popular Capcom Cup ever, it was also one of the most popular SF events in general. 

Since the 10th iteration of the Capcom Cup, the event series has been getting extra attention from Capcom, expanding the amount of players invited and drastically increasing the prize pools. For the future, Capcom Cups are likely to remain a staple of the Street Fighter scene, and one of its most popular tournaments of each year.

Most popular esports games of 2025, as of March 10