Street Fighter generated more than half of Evo 2024’s total watch time
The Evolution Championship Series is one of the most legendary event series in fighting game esports. Evo has been a mainstay in the FGC for decades, and it continues to grow. The 2024 edition saw a record-breaking 10,240 individual players attend and compete across all events, with more than half of these competitors attending for the Street Fighter 6 event.
Evo 2024 took place from July 19 to 21 and was held in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Each of the 8 tournaments had $30,000 available in prize pools, except for Tekken which had $46,510 and Street Fighter 6, which boasted $52,790 in prizes. The Las Vegas event was also home to many community showcases, which are smaller events for esports titles which are not as popular. Esports Charts has collated data on the main 8 tournaments of Evo 2024, to present an overview of the monumental event’s total viewership.
Evo 2024 Viewership
As Evo continues to grow, so does its influence across the globe. Earlier this year, it was announced that the series will come to Europe in 2025, with the first iteration planned for France. In the following year, Evo will also be hosted in Singapore, joining Evo Japan as the event series’ Asian representatives.
In total, all 8 tournaments at Evo 2024 generated 6.88M Hours Watched, and were live for over 154 hours throughout the three-day event. This does mark a 10.5% drop in total viewership for the 2024 iteration compared to 2023’s Evo event, but Evo 2023 was the most-watched iteration of the event series ever, and increased its viewership by 48% compared to 2022.
In terms of watch time, Street Fighter 6 was the most-watched event with 3.66M HW and remained just as integral to the event as last year. SF6 generated 53% of Evo 2024’s total Hours Watched, which is roughly the same as last year’s tournament’s proportion to Evo 2023. Tekken 8 was the only other tournament to generate more than 1M Hours Watched, with Guilty Gear losing significant viewership compared to last year, and only managing 590.3K HW.
The Evolution Championship Series 2024 Street Fighter 6 event also led the pack in peak concurrent viewership. Last year, the SF6 event at Evo became the most popular fighting game esports event ever with 442.3K PV, and this year, the tournament reached 403.7K Peak Viewers. While viewership for the event series has fallen, the peak viewership of Street Fighter 6 at Evo 2024 made the tournament the second-most-popular fighting game event ever and the most popular of 2024.
Most popular fighting game esports events of 2024
As it stands, four of the five most popular fighting game esports events of the year were Street Fighter tournaments. The Evo 2024 edition outperformed other highly popular events, such as Capcom Cup X, and Tekken’s Evo event this year was able to snag fifth place, and deny the Street Fighter franchise a clean sweep.
Moving on from the overview of Evo’s viewership this year, let’s dive deeper into each event, and take a look at their most popular moments, and how they managed to generate the viewership which they did.
Street Fighter 6
At the Street Fighter 6 event, the grand finals match between Punk and BigBird didn’t bring in the most viewers, but was the second-most popular match of event. The final game fell behind Momochi’s match against EndingWalker, which received 403.7K Peak Viewers as the losers round 3 which saw Momochi eliminated from the finals bracket.
Although English was the most popular language of the event, Japanese-language broadcasts were particularly influential to the tournament’s viewership too, and the elimination of Momochi saw Japanese viewership fall for the final few games of the event. Nevertheless, Japanese remained the second-most-popular language for the grand finals, and helped it to achieve its 394.9K PV.
Viewership for the Street Fighter 6 event was particularly boosted by coverage from community casters, such as ren_kisaragi_ from Japan and Maximilian_DOOD for English-speaking audiences. Although these two were the most popular community casters for their respective languages and are both well-established casters for the fighting game esports community, both fps_shaka and EsfandTV also received significant viewership as some of the most popular streamers from their respective regions, Japan and North America.
North American player Punk revelled in his victory at Evo 2024
Punk defeated BigBird, who almost managed to sweep through the grand finals after winning the first set of matches, equalising the position after advancing through the losers bracket. With Punk claiming his first ever Street Fighter 6 Evo championship, he has qualified for the Capcom Cup 11, the final event of the 2024 Capcom Pro Tour.
Tekken 8
Another legendary title of the fighting game community, the Evolution Championship Series 2024 event for Tekken was the second-most popular tournament at Evo 2024, having received 275.6K Peak Viewers for the Pakistani derby grand final between ArslanAsh and ATIF.
Compared to the Tekken 7 tournament at last year’s Evo, this time around the game managed to increase its viewership by over 34K concurrent viewers at peak, although its average concurrent viewership remained roughly stable. The Tekken event also received almost the entirety of its spectators from English-language broadcasts, with Japanese and other fans less interested in the title.
Maximilian_DOOD and EsfandTV once again both were community casters for this event, and the former of these two was busy covering all events going on at Evo 2024 as North America’s premiere community caster for fighting game esports tournaments.
The Awards Ceremony for the top 6 players at the event was also highly-watched; taking place directly after the grand finals, it managed to enjoy the remainder of the high viewership accumulated during the grand finals.
Guilty Gear -STRIVE-
Guilty Gear was the second-most popular tournament at last year’s Evo, but fell behind Tekken at the 2024 iteration. Viewership fell for this year’s event, which generated more than 50K fewer concurrent viewers at peak, but still managed to outperform many of the other events at Evo 2024.
The grand final at the Evolution Championship Series 2024 between American player Nitro and Japanese national tatuma was the most popular match of the tournament, having received 192.6K Peak Viewers. Despite the competitive success of tatuma, Japanese viewership was not particularly influential for this event, with English-language broadcasts again representing the vast majority of viewership for the tournament.
Congratulations to @NitroNY_ for winning Guilty Gear -Strive- at #Evo2024. pic.twitter.com/eJhXHYAl5H
— Evo (@Evo) July 21, 2024
The moment Nitro took first place at the Evo 2024 Guilty Gear event
With Nitro’s championship secured in a tight 3-2 victory against tatuma after being defeated by him in the winners final, he not only received $12,000 in prize money, but also qualified for the ARC World Tour 2024 Finals - GGST: the year-end event for the Guilty Gear esports scene.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
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The Evolution Championship Series 2024 Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike event was the second tournament representing the Street Fighter franchise at Evo 2024, with the retro arcade game still managing to draw in a massive crowd.
The 25-year-old fighting game arcade title managed to reach 137.9K Peak Viewers for its grand final Japanese derby, and generate 423.3K Hours Watched throughout the weekend. Despite the playoffs bracket of the event being dominated by Japanese players, local viewership for the event was not particularly high.
ハイタニ (haitani0904) on Twitch was the most popular Japanese broadcast for the event, but only received 16.2K PV, far less than the event’s total and far less than Maximilian_DOOD, who again received 30.5K PV for his coverage of the tournament. In the end, Japanese player MOV managed to take home the championship and $12,000 in prize money, with this event marking his best-ever finish in an official Evolution Championship Series event across all Street Fighter titles.
Mortal Kombat 1
The Evolution Championship Series 2024 event for Mortal Kombat was the most popular Mortal Kombat esports event of the year, although it fell slightly short of the viewership achieved by last year’s iteration. Viewership came to a peak for the grand final between SonicFox and Nicolas, where over 83.9K concurrent viewers watched SonicFox take a tight 3-2 victory against his Chilean competitor.
The Mortal Kombat event was one of the rare tournaments at Evo which received no Japanese-language viewership, with French and Portuguese-language broadcasts instead taking up the spot of secondary language behind English. The event was covered by some Brazilian YouTube streamers throughout the event, bolstered by the competitive performance of Brazilian players at the event. Ultimately, Zeeus had to settle for third-place, making him the highest-finishing Brazilian player of the tournament.
Whereas Tekken enjoyed a boost in viewership after moving to the new Tekken 8 title, Mortal Kombat saw a slight decrease in viewership after moving from Mortal Kombat 11 to Mortal Kombat 1. Viewership statistics, such as most popular languages and the coverage of community broadcasters, remained roughly static compared to last year, meaning viewership is simply falling for the title, rather than it suffering from the disappearance of a community broadcaster or a fan-favourite player.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
The Evolution Championship Series 2024 event for Granblue Fantasy Versus was the odd-one-out compared to other Evo 2024 events for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was the only event to record a higher peak viewership than an event with more total watch time, compared to Mortal Kombat, and it was the only event which recorded its most popular moment when no match was even taking place.
The grand final of the event featuring Japanese player Tororo and North American Aarondamac was the most popular match of the event, having received 106K Peak Viewers. However, the Season 2 Reveal Trailers event, which was hosted after the grand finals, achieved even more viewership than the grand final match itself.
Details to the new Season 2 update coming for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
The 2D fighting game is receiving a massive version 1.5 update on Aug 20, which will bring an entirely new DLC character to the title, new content for both single-player and multi-player modes, and even balance adjustments for the entire title. As the update was the most popular moment of the game’s tenure at Evo 2024, fans are clearly highly excited for this upcoming update. If the update is a success, this may manage to increase viewership for Granblue esports events at future tournaments, both inside of and outside the Evo franchise.
The King of Fighters XV
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The Evolution Championship Series 2024 event for The King of Fighters was not as popular as other tournaments which took place at Evo 2024, but it was one of the most popular events for Chinese-speaking fans. The grand final between Taiwan’s E.T. and China’s Xiaohai was the most popular match of the tournament, generating 63K Peak Viewers.
Since 2022, the most popular event of the year for King of Fighters has consistently been Evo events. However, viewership has been progressively falling since the 146.4K PV the esports title managed to received in 2022. This year’s Evo 2024 was even less popular than the slightly smaller Evo Japan 2024, which hosted the EVO Japan 2024 King of Fighters XV Finals, which received 74.6K Peak Viewers for the exact same match-up grand finals.
The King of Fighters XV seems to be struggling to find its place in the esports scene, and something must be done to stop the title from consistently losing viewership for its esports events.
Under Night In-Birth II
Finally, the Under Night In-Birth event at Evo 2024, Evolution Championship Series 2024, received 36.6K Peak Viewers, making it the least popular event of this year’s Evo circuit. Although all the event’s most popular matches feature Japanese players, Japanese viewership was effectively non-existent for this event, failing to even reach 1K PV.
Nonetheless, Japanese player Senaru managed to defeat British representative Mo.Sin in the grand final, winning $12,000 in prize money and advancing to the ARC World Tour 2024 Finals - UNI2 event later this year. The peak viewership for the event was reached during Defiant’s match against Notes for the losers round 3, and once Defiant was eliminated for the event, viewership dropped by about 6K concurrent viewers.
This event was the only tournament at Evo 2024 not covered by Maximilian_DOOD, and in general, the event suffered from a lack of coverage from community casters. Although the tournament was not as popular as other Evo 2024 events, this was the most popular tournament for Under Night In-Birth since 2019, when the fighting game set a viewership record of 37.5K PV. If this year’s Evo 2024 was just broadcast by a couple more community casters, it would have likely set a viewership record for the fighting game.
In summary, Evo 2024 did indeed mark a slight downturn in viewership for the event series compared to last year. However, compared to the past years of Evo events, viewership is still generally on the rise, as Evo’s viewership continues to grow as the Sony-owned company expands its operations to a larger and more global scale.
Esports Charts will supply viewership for Evo France and Evo Singapore once these events come to fruition in the coming years, but in the meantime, you can explore viewership for all Evo events through our tournaments database. Browse viewership for Evo 2024, look through the overall historical statistics for Street Fighter, and much more with Esports Charts.
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