Evo 2023 continued trend of record-setting attendance and set new records in Fighting Game viewership with Street Fighter 6
The Evolution Championship Series, known colloquially as Evo, is one of the biggest names in fighting event tournaments worldwide. 2023 marked the second in-person event for the event series since the pandemic and their acquisition by Sony and Endeavour. Since the inaugural Evo event in 1996, the series has grown and grown in size every year and the recent 2023 event recorded the most attendees in the series’ history, with over 9,100 gamers from around the globe flocking to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Post-pandemic times have been tumultuous for Evo, but they’ve managed to come out on top. After being forced to cancel their 2020 event due to the pandemic, Evo’s CEO Joey Cuellar was ousted due to accusations of misconduct and many of their major sponsors pulled out. The acquisition by the joint venture of Sony and Endeavour saved the event series and their two main events since have proved the organisation isn’t slowing down. Just this year, Evo announced they will feature a third yearly location, potentially taking place in Europe to bridge the gap between their American and Japanese events.
With the momentum of their growing community and the support of the esports industry behind them, has viewership grown alongside Evo’s evolving landscape?
Evo 2023 viewership
The 2023 event was held in Las Vegas on August 4-6th, featuring 8 main tournaments. Alongside the eight major tournaments with a prize pool of $25,000 USD each — excluding Street Fighter 6 which featured a prize pool of $70.6K USD, the event features many smaller community-hosted events and side tournaments. For the sake of succinctness, we’ll be focusing on the main eight tournaments, all of which Esports Charts has collected viewership data for.
Watch time and peak viewers for the 8 major events at Evo 2023
All together, the major events for Evo 2023 drew in 7.68M hours of watch time. The Street Fighter 6 event was by far the most popular tournament of the event, and the only tournament with a larger prize pool than $25,000 USD. Clearly a solid investment by Evo, the event not only drew in over 50% of the event’s total watch time but also received almost four times more watch time than the next-best tournament, the Guilty Gear -STRIVE- competition.
With 7.68M Hours Watched, the event series saw a 48% increase in viewership compared to Evo 2022, which received 5.18M Hours Watched throughout all major events. In fact, compared to Evo 2022, the Street Fighter 6 event alone from this year made up almost 80% of the total watch time achieved last year. Evo has continuously grown each year since its inception, but the ridiculous growth in viewership for all events covering Street Fighter 6 has helped give Evo a significant boost forward in viewership.
Street Fighter 6 was not only the most popular event of Evo 2023 with a Peak Viewers of 442.3K, but it also set a new record for peak concurrent viewers and watch time within the Street Fighter discipline. In fact, a Peak Viewers figure of 442.3K makes it the most popular Fighting game tournament in esports history! This momentous achievement was brought on by Street Fighter 6’s huge hype wave that is setting records across the discipline, and the fact that this event was hosted at Evo was the cherry on top to boost viewership even more.
Looking at the most popular esports events for Fighting games, we can see Street Fighter 6 is triumphant above the rest. The EVO 2018 Dragon Ball FighterZ event also featured on this ranking, as the inaugural Evo event for the game which was released in early 2018 benefited from the release excitement for the game. Street Fighter V also featured and less than 200 concurrent viewers behind it was the 2022 Evo Tekken event, which lost a slight amount of Peak Viewers coming into 2023.
Street Fighter 6
In terms of Peak Viewers, the Losers Round 3 match between MenaRD and Tokido was the most popular match of the event, with 442.3K viewers tuning in to watch two competitors battle it out for the Street Fighter 6 Evolution Championship.
Usually at an esports event, we expect to see the Grand Finals of the event as the most popular match, so what happened with Evo’s Street Fighter 6 event? Well, the Losers Round 3 match between MenaRD and Tokido was the final match of the event where a Japanese player took part. Clear to see in the most popular and most-watched streamers of the event, Japanese viewership makes up a large part of the event’s audience.
MenaRD made his way through the Losers Bracket, defeating two Japanese players on his way to the third round against Tokido. The match went the full distance, as MenaRD was finally victorious with a 3-2 victory. The Grand Finals saw MenaRD face off against AngryBird, winner of the Redbull Kumite 2023 South Africa event, and although MenaRD was victorious in the first series, AngryBird closed off the tournament with a clean 3-1 victory.
With AngryBird’s Evo victory secured, he directly qualified for the Capcom Cup X tournament in 2024. The event will see the best Street Fighter 6 players compete against each other for the chance to win a chunk of the $1M USD prize pool, the largest prize pool in fighting game history. The event will surely draw in huge viewership, as Street Fighter 6’s release continues to boost viewership in the fighting game subsection of esports, so keep an eye out for our data on this next year.
Guilty Gear -STRIVE-
Guilty Gear -STRIVE- released in 2021 and has built up a considerable audience of fans for the game. The Evo 2023 event for the game saw 245.4K fans concurrently watch the Losers Finals match between Daru_I-No and NBNHMR. NBNHMR moved on to the Grand Finals where he faced off against Smash legend Leffen, who won the tournament with a clean 3-0 victory over the American.
Interestingly, compared to Street Fighter 6 the viewership dynamics are totally different here. In Street Fighter the three days of the tournament saw relatively comparable viewership, with peaks of 100K concurrent viewers reached during the Group Stages before viewership quadrupled for the Playoffs. However, for this tournament which reached 1.05M Hours Watched, only 139.7K hours of watch time were received on the first day. Despite the Playoffs only making up 12.6% of total Airtime, the stage was responsible for over 66% of total watch time. Although we expect viewership to increase during the Playoffs, this event in particular was extremely lop-sided towards the Playoffs stage.
As we mentioned for Street Fighter 6, the match featuring Tokido was the most popular match of the event due to the large Japanese audience. Although you might assume this logic extends to the match featuring a Korean player for Guilty Gear, Korean viewership reached a peak of only 3K during the Playoffs, only 1.3% of the total concurrent viewership peak.
Tekken 7
Moving onto the Tekken 7 event, the discipline received just slightly less watch time than the Guilty Gear event, with 1.02M hours of watch time collected throughout. Viewership reached its peak during the Grand Finals for this event, as Pakistani ArslanAsh took a quick 3-0 victory over the Japanese competitor AO.
Once again, viewership dynamics show that the initial Group Stages of the open event received relatively low viewership, with the audience exponentially growing for the Playoffs stage of the event. Throughout the Playoffs, the audience continued to grow steadily throughout the bracket, with Peak Viewers consistently growing as the stage proceeded before reaching its peak of 241.1K concurrent viewers.
Curiously, despite multiple Japanese players making it through the Group Stage and into the Playoffs, viewership from the Land of the Rising Sun was totally non-existent for the Playoffs stage. Japanese was one of the most popular languages throughout both of the group stages, but this tanked heading into the Playoffs stage of the event. This may have something to do with the early exit of YUYU, a Tekken 7 player signed to Cloud9. YUYU is a Twitch partner with almost 60K Followers on Twitch and was knocked out of the event during the Group Stages. YUYU is the most-watched dedicated Tekken 7 streamer of 2023 so far, and her early exit likely had a large impact on viewership.
Tekken 7 is also the first event we’ve covered so far, where a community caster was one of the most popular and most-watched streamers for the event. Maximillian_Dood was the second-most popular and watched streamer of the event, receiving a peak concurrent viewership of 45K and amassing 135K hours of watch time for the event. He is one of the largest Fighting game-focused content creators on Twitch and he currently boasts 1.21M Followers on Twitch. His stream covering the ultimate day of Evo 2023 covered many of the different main tournaments available for him to watch, and the stream received 535K hours of watch time, making it his most watched stream ever: beating his record set during Evo 2022’s final day.
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Maximillian’s community caster domination continued into Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, where he was not only one of the most popular streamers of the event but also the most-watched streamer of the event, contributing 206.7K hours of watch time to the game’s total 572.3K Hours Watched.
Looking at the viewership dynamics for the event, it's clear to see when Maximillian_dood tuned into the event. The game’s viewership suddenly spikes from 10K~ viewers due to the influx of Maximillian’s 28.5K Average Viewers he maintained throughout his time spent watching the event. English and Twitch were by far the dominating languages and platforms for the event: YouTube only contributed 33.3K hours of watch time to the event’s total and the next-most popular language after English was Portuguese, which received 7K hours of watch time. 
Looking at the most popular matches of the event, the dynamics were relatively typical outside of the large spikes in viewership as Maximillian tuned in and out of the event. Viewership remained steady throughout the Group Stage before quickly exploding continuously throughout the Playoffs. Viewership naturally reached its peak during the Grand Finals between Americans Jibrill and Evasion. Jibrill was able to secure an easy 3-0 victory and take home $10K USD. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 was also one of the most mono-national games of the event, with more than half of the competitors for Playoffs coming from the United States.
The King of Fighters XV
King of Fighters XV was one of the lesser-watched major events which took place at Evo 2023, but the event stands out from its peers in one significant way, Chinese viewership. The game series from Japan is mainly popular within the Asian region and was the sole event of Evo 2023 to receive significant Chinese viewership.
The discipline received support from Maximillian_dood, as most events did due to the American community casters' thorough coverage of the Evo event. However, firemanruby2 on Twitch was also one of the most popular streamers of the event, and he reached a peak of 4.4K concurrent viewers during the Playoffs stage of the event.
Another one of the most popular streams for this event was the DBJ ET YouTube Live channel. Similar to Magnus Carlsen in chess, E.T. streamed coverage of the event on his YouTube Live channel, whilst also competing at Evo. E.T. is considered one of the all-time greats for King of Fighters and he previously was the champion for the discipline at Evo 2017. Chinese rival Xiao Hai is usually the main obstacle for him on his way to winning any event, and Evo 2023 was no different.
Viewership reached a peak of 72.5K concurrent viewers during the Grand Finals between E.T. and Xiao Hai, but the Chinese competitor came out on top with a 3-2 victory. Chinese-speaking viewership came to support both the Taiwanese and Chinese competitors on Twitch and YouTube Live, which are platforms traditionally not popular among this demographic. Xiao Hai is even directly sponsored by Douyu, one of the most popular Chinese streaming platforms.
Ultimately King of Fighters received 190.8K hours of watch time, mainly due to the Playoffs of the event. Although not the most popular or most-watched event of Evo 2023, the surge in Chinese viewership shows the popularity of these players that they can even bring Chinese audiences to Twitch and YouTube Live.
DBZ FighterZ, Mortal Kombat 11, & Melty Blood: Type Lumina
Of the remaining major events which we have not yet touched upon, Dragon Ball FighterZ was the most popular. Surprisingly, although such a famous Japanese brand and recognisable name, not many Japanese competitors travelled to the United States for this event. The majority of competitors were from either North America or the EMEA region, and this was reflected in the viewership for the event.
Ultimately, DBZ FighterZ received 348.3K hours of watch time and reached a viewership peak of 97K concurrent viewers during the Winners Finals between Americans HIKARI and Nitro. In the end, HIKARI was victorious in the event, defeating French rival Yasha 3-2 in the Grand Finals. An overwhelming amount of the viewership was due to English-speaking audiences, coming from English-speaking community casters and the official Evo Twitch channels.
Spanish player Gropis made an attempt to climb to the Grand Finals through the Losers Bracket, but ultimately fell against Yasha in Losers Round 3. National pride for the Iberian region was at a high, as many Spanish community casters streamed the event covering his matches, making the language the second-most popular language of the event.
Staying within the Iberian region, Portuguese was the second-most popular language for the Mortal Kombat 11 coverage of Evo 2023. Interestingly, the Portuguese-speaking community managed this achievement without a single Portuguese-speaking player making it into the Playoffs stage of the event.
Two prominent Brazillian players did feature in the event, Konqueror249 and KillerXinok, the latter of which has roughly 25K Followers on Twitch. Portuguese viewership spiked during the Group Stage as these players made their appearance, but it did remain one of the more popular languages during the Playoffs as well.
Ultimately, the event garnered 321K hours of watch time and the event reached a peak concurrent viewership of 87K spectators during the Grand Finals between NinjaKilla and Nicolas. NinjaKilla managed to win the event overall, despite making his way through the Losers Bracket after being knocked out of the Winners Semifinals by Nicolas earlier in the event. NinjaKilla managed to 3-0 Nicolas in the Grand Finals, resetting the bracket, before claiming the championship for Evo 2023 with a 3-2 victory over the Chilean. Despite two Chileans facing off against each other during the Winners Finals, Spanish viewership was low for the event, even though various Spanish-speaking community casters were indeed covering the tournament.
Last but not least, Melty Blood: Type Lumina. MB:TL is a game developed by French-Bread, a Japanese developer despite the name, and is one of the more popular fighting games in the Japanese region. Due to its smaller fanbase and lack of representation in the West, the event was totally dominated by the Japanese Players.
The discipline did feature many more American players than any other region, but their Japanese peers totally outclassed them and dominated the Playoffs stage of the event. Viewership reached its peak during the Losers Finals between Jimmyjtran and DAI, with 25K viewers tuning in. The Grand Finals for the event were slightly less popular, as the match between Moai and DAI received 24.4K Peak Viewers. Ultimately, Moai came out on top after a 3-1 victory against DAI in the Winners Finals and a 3-0 victory in the Grand Finals.
Although Japanese players and culture dominated the event, viewership was nearly entirely from English-speaking audiences. This was due to the fact that the official English-speaking Evo Twitch channels were the largest for the event, with community casters struggling to gain much viewership for the event. The event’s 74.2K Hours Watched isn’t much more than the 46.3K hours of watch time at the Evo Japan 2023 event for MB:TL, which also featured a 6-hour shorter run time.
It's a shame for the smaller discipline, as Evo 2023 could have been a breakthrough event for the new and up-and-coming esports title, but the lack of Japanese streaming options for fans left the discipline neglected. 
Overall, Evo 2023 was a major success. Not only did the event experience a record-breaking amount of attendees, but the viewership for the event was also record-setting. Partially assisted by the hype for the Street Fighter 6 discipline at the moment, the event also simply continues to grow and build its brand worldwide. Evo 2024 is on its way, and with a secret third location being hinted at by Evo staff, the event’s first potential European event could be the key for the event series to totally take over fighting game broadcasting.
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