Combo Breaker 2022 — what are the reasons behind disappointing stats of SSBU event?

Loading

One of the largest fighting game conventions, Combo Breaker 2022 took place at the end of May. As usual, it featured the genre’s 20 the most popular titles. In addition to the world-famous titles, the genre’s newcomers also enjoyed some success at the convention. The number of participants was record-breaking. Esports Charts sums up the results of Combo Breaker 2022 and compares the viewership statistics of different competitions of this year's convention.

The traditional Combo Breaker convention was held on May 28-30, featuring tournaments in 20 disciplines. Among them were: Tekken 7, Guilty Gear, King of Fighters, Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11, and Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

Combo Breaker has been held since 2015 on Memorial Day weekend. The creator and organizer is Richard “TheHadou” Thiher (General Manager of EVO) and Gaming Generations company. After a year-long hiatus due to the pandemic, the organizers have decided to move the venue to the Schaumburg Convention Center.

We will not be able to cover each and every tournament, so Esports Charts will sum up only the most popular competitions. This year, more than 3K participants have registered for the tournaments of the convention.

More than a thousand participants have registered for the Guilty Gear STRIVE competition. It was dominated by players from the United States, as players from Japan and Korea were absent from the tournament. The victory went to TempestNYC.

The list of participants in the King of Fighters tournament included six hundred players. This fighting game is rather popular in Latin America. Therefore, it is not surprising that all the prizes except one were taken by representatives of Mexico. The only exception was the Tekken 7 champion, Arslan Ash, who took the third spot in this contest. The first place was taken by Tamago.

Four hundred participants registered for the Super Smash Bros championship, but there were no well-known players like MkLeo or Light among them – as most of the top esports athletes chose to attend MomoCon 2022 in Atlanta, which fell on the same dates. The American player Onin became the winner of the Combo Breaker 2022 in this discipline.

Viewership statistics

Popular disciplines of Combo Breaker 2022 by HW & PV

While the most popular titles of Combo Breaker 2022 were the old-school ones, some new disciplines also caught the interest of the viewers.

The coverage received by such a large-scale tournament was equally worthy, with Twitch featuring a whole slew of well-known community channels. These included 10/0 Media, BTS Smash, DataFGC, Tampa Never Sleeps, Low Kick Esports, Callisto Media, Team Spooky, FunkyP, Vampire Arcadia, and Mad City.

Tekken 7 was the most watched tournament by a huge margin, with 603K Hours Watched – almost double that of any other tournament in the convention. The Peak Viewers mark of 73K was reached in the match of the third round of the lower bracket between the two strongest players in their regions: the German Sephiblack and the Japanese Gen. The tournament became the most watched Tekken 7 event of the past year and the fourth of all time.

The Guilty Gear Strive tournament was significantly behind the Tekken tournament in terms of Hours Watched, but when compared with other competitions in this discipline, Combo Breaker 2022 left the events of such global franchises as EVO and ECO far behind. The Japanese fighting game collected 353K Hours Watched and became the title’s most watched tournament of all time. The mark of 58K Peak Viewers was reached at the match of the veteran of the game’s scene Hotashi against his fellow countryman LostSoul in the third round of the lower bracket.

New to the fighting game market was the 15th installment of the legendary SNK title: The King of Fighters, which was warmly welcomed by the fans. The event’s matches generated 127K Hours Watched, while the final confrontation between PAKO and Tamago attracted 31K Peak Viewers.

Of the Capcom titles, not only Street Fighter was popular, but also the Capcom Fighting Collection, which is a collection of ten old fighting games released between 1994 and 2003. The global audience is yet to access the game, since the release is scheduled for June 24 this year. Hence, it was interesting for the audience to watch the performance of pro players in this new-but-nostalgic title. The broadcast gathered 16K Peak Viewers.

The return of the Combo Breaker convention after a long break turned out to be more than successful. The record-breaking number of participants and the high viewership statistics confirm this once again. Moreover, the first tournaments for recently released titles took place at the convention. This can give a strong start to new esports disciplines.