Red Bull Kumite celebrates tenth anniversary with one of series' highest viewership numbers
The Red Bull Kumite 2025, one of the most prestigious annual fighting game tournaments, concluded on April 6 in Paris with just its second-ever two-time winner. The event's tenth anniversary was marked by a special "Legends versus Underdogs" concept that helped it end as one of the Red Bull Kumite series' most popular showings in terms of viewership.
The Red Bull Kumite 2025 featured clashes between eight of the world's greatest Street Fighter legends and eight underdogs within the iconic Red Bull Kumite cage. Each player was determined to claim victory and lift the ultimate fighting game trophy alongside a majority of the prize pool of €55,000.
This SF6 competition was ultimately won by United Arab Emirates' Adel "BigBird" Anouche, who beat the United Kingdom's Samuel "EndingWalker" Arm 5:3 in the Grand Final. The event peaked at 176,026 Peak Viewers (PV) at the start of Day 2 during the Main Event's Bracket Stage first-round meeting between Japan's Daigo "Daigo" Umehara and America's Noah "NoahTheProdigy" Solis .
"I hope you all enjoyed the show, it's one of my favourite events. I'm happy to have won it – again," BigBird told Red Bull after his historic win.
This put the 2025 edition only behind the Red Bull Kumite 2023 - South Africa in terms of the most popular tournaments in the series. The latter had the advantage of being the series' first event to feature Street Fighter 6, which was released around a month earlier and enjoyed massive success among players and livestreamers.
This year's iteration also set a series record for watch time, becoming Red Bull Kumite's first offering to cross the two million Hours Watched (HW) mark. It also entered the game's all-time top ten table for the same metric, with all these entries coming over the past three years (2023-2025).
As mentioned earlier, the Red Bull Kumite 2025 saw established legends and rapidly rising young players duke it out. This was a major reason for it doing so well in terms of audience reach, with Japanese viewers especially showing interest.
The East Asian nation is known for its love of fighting games and remains perhaps the biggest hub for Street Fighter esports. In fact, of the five most popular matches at the Red Bull Kumite 202, four had at least one player from Japan involved.
As a result, Japanese streamers were highly active, led by Chikara "fps_shaka" Kawakami, who ended as the number one channel by watch time and peak concurrent viewers. In fact, the top three on both these tables were Japanese-speaking, reiterating the language's role in Street Fighter tournaments doing well in terms of livestreaming numbers.
In fact, it was a record outing for the language, as fans had six players to cheer in France. Hence, the cumulative Japanese watch time and peak concurrent viewership figures were higher than what we ever saw at previous events in the series.
Home fans, too, played their part, as French audiences showed higher interest this time around for an event happening at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris. That BigBird became just the second player after Atsushi "Fujimura" Fujimura to win multiple titles in the Red Bull Kumite series was the icing on the cake for fans watching in the arena and from home.
It's been a good start to the year for Street Fighter esports, with the Red Bull Kumite 2025's good showing following the success of the Capcom Cup 11, which became one of the most popular fighting game esports events ever. The focus will now move to two of the game's biggest tournaments, the Esports World Cup and the Evo 2025, where the top players will once again gather to battle it out for the tag of the world's best.
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