Ulsan's big win makes EWC x Tekken 8 one of game's most-watched events in 2024

Loading

One of the last events of the recent Esports World Cup 2024 was held in Tekken over three days at the Boulevard Riyadh City near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It ended as one of the most-watched competitions of the game in 2024, led by English-speaking viewers and a healthy portion of Asian audience from Japan and South Korea.

The EWC x Tekken 8 was contested among the 32 best players in the world over three phases. It carried a total prize purse of $1 million, the joint-highest in the game's history, with first place taking home at least $300,000.

South Korea's Ulsan emerged as the victor, beating Pakistan's Atif Butt 5:0 in the Grand Final of the Third Phase. The former, a KWANGDONG FREECS player, also took home $50K as the MVP award, with the runner-up, who represented Team Falcons, becoming richer by $140,000.

  EWC x Tekken 8 – basic stats and most popular matches   

This Tekken 8 tournament hit 60.5K Peak Viewers during the summit clash between Ulsan and Atif Butt. In fact, the latter was part of the three most popular matches, with the other two entries being his Playofs Quarterfinals and Semifinals against CBM and Double, respectively.

It also managed 741K Hours Watched and 33.5K Average Viewers over 22 hours of airtime. Intriguingly, Twitch and YouTube had similar shares of overall watch time, with the former only edging ahead thanks to the availability of community casting, which meant many popular names covered the matches.

  Ulsan emerged as quite the unlikely tournament winner (Image via EWC on X)   

The Pakistani influence on Tekken's modern competitive scene could also be seen in the fact that all five entries on the most popular games list had at least one representative from the country. However, the languages spoken in this West Asian nation — Urdu and Hindi — do not tend to figure high on any event's overall watch time charts, which was the case at this EWC tournament.

Instead, English was by far the most preferred language among viewers to catch the live action at this Tekken 8 event. Korean and Japanese, too, scored high as their players managed to take up half of the eight playoff spots, including three for South Korea.

Twitch stars like themainmanswe and forsen were crucial to the platform emerging as the top choice, helping the competition reach a wider audience. However, special mention should go to AfreecaTV's atl, whose content on the fighting games genre remains popular among Korean audiences.

  Most-watched Tekken 8 competitions so far this year   

The EWC x Tekken 8 ended as the third-most watched tournament in the discipline in 2024, behind the Evolution Championship Series 2024 and the Combo Breaker 2024 T8. It was also the seventh-most popular event by peak concurrent viewership, with this table also led by the EVO 2024 tournament.

Most popular Tekken 8 events this year

Nevertheless, it was another positive step forward in establishing the game — in its first full season — as one of the frontrunners in the FCG when it comes to fan following and audience reach. Viewership numbers remain stable, and the upcoming Tekken World Tour Finals 2024 could put a seal on a great 2024 if things go to plan.