Kagaribi’s latest edition was Japan’s most popular Smash tournament of 2024, and its international audience is growing
Kagaribi is a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate event series held several times a year in Japan. It is one of Japan’s premiere fighting game event series, and the 12th edition of the event was watched by over 100,000 Japanese fans concurrently. The popularity of the event series has been compounding overtime with each new edition, although the latest tournament showed a slight downward trend compared to previous iterations.
Kagaribi#12 is the 11th event in the series, as #1.5 and #2 were canceled due to the pandemic, and the first tournament of 2024. The event series has no prize pool for participants, as Kagaribi is a proudly community-ran event and they do not have the resources to negotiate with sponsors. Despite nothing except bragging rights up for grabs, the Kagaribi series continues to hold the interest of thousands of Japanese attendees, as well as tens of thousands of Japanese viewers.
The event series was watched by over 60K Average Viewers throughout the weekend of May 5th. The audience for Kagaribi events are vastly Japanese-speaking, however, the English-speaking viewership for the event series has been growing across recent events. In total, the combined power of Kagaribi’s online audience was able to generate 1.18M Hours Watched.
Viewership for the event reached its peak during one of the loser’s finals between TamaPDaifuku and Zackray. The match reached 108.9K Peak Viewers, outperforming the grand final of the event, Miya vs Hurt. Although this was where overall viewership peaked, Japanese viewership peaked at 91K PV for Acola’s elimination of Zackray. The latter is currently signed to DetonatioN Gaming, one of Japan’s most popular esports organizations.
Most popular match of the Kagaribi#12
Zackray’s organization is one aspect of the high viewership, but the event also was not held at a friendly time for Western audiences. TamaPDaifuku’s match against Zackray finished at roughly 9AM UTC/GMT, and the final playoffs matches of the event continued for even longer. English-language viewership for the event slowly tapered off throughout the playoffs, as more and more fans went to bed, and even Japanese-language viewership was dwindling as the event reached its final matches.
Regardless of the factors holding the event’s viewership back, 108.9K PV is one of the largest Japanese esports audiences of 2024. The event received similar Japanese peak viewership to the VCT 2024: Masters Madrid, one of the largest Valorant events of the year with $500K USD on the line. This community Japanese event is able to rival the viewership of one of Asia’s most popular esports: a testament to the love and passion the country has for fighting games.
The game still cannot match the viewership of the Street Fighter series in Japan, but this is Japan’s most beloved esports title and holds the current Japanese viewership record for 2024. Despite this, Kagaribi has been expanding its viewership over the past couple of years, so it can match the viewership of Street Fighter in the future.
Compared to previous iterations, the #12 event was left with big shoes to fill. The #10 event garnered extremely high viewership, setting a series record with 135.5K PV and another record with 73.2K AV. This event also set a channel record for East Geek Smash, the YouTube channel which officially broadcasts Kagaribi events. During #10, the YouTube Live stream reached over 103K viewers, smashing the previous record by over 31.5K viewers.
Japanese viewership for Kagaribi events has been yet unable to reach the same height, but it still remains sizable. While Japanese audiences are not necessarily growing for Kagaribi at the moment, the same cannot be said for English-speaking audiences. Kagaribi #12 received 4.5K more English-language Average Viewers than the #10 tournament, highlighting a growing international interest in the event series.
Kagaribi#12 was also attended by many of the best players from around the world, and more than 2K individual participants signed up for the event; this made #12 the second-largest Japanese Super Smash Bros. tournament ever, behind EVO Japan 2020. The event series clearly is not losing popularity, but will have to keep hosting events and trying to beat its current viewership record.
Although the #12 event received a lower peak and average viewership than the current record-holding events in the series, viewership is strong and evolving for the Japanese tournament. English-language international viewership is showing positive dynamics for the recent tournament, and it received its highest number of sign-ups ever. 2024 is bringing good tidings for Smash in Japan, one of esports most passionate audiences.
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