Smash Ultimate Summit 4 — the most popular tournament in the series

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Smash Ultimate Summit 4 ended on March 7 in Los Angeles, California. The top 16 players in the world competed for a $157.7K prize pool (the second largest in the discipline's history). In a new Esports Charts article, we will tell you about one of the biggest SSBU tournaments, what was it remembered for, and how its viewership statistics have changed compared to the previous year.

It was quite difficult to become a participant of the Smash Ultimate Summit 4 tournament, which has the status of Major. Out of 16 participants, Dabuz, France Glutonny, Light and ProtoBanham were invited directly by the organizers, six participants were chosen via Mainstage 2021 Ultimate, and another six were chosen by a vote.

Smash Ultimate Summit 4 kicked off with the group stage, which determined the placing for the main stage of the championship. Surprisingly for the fans, the main favorites of the event, Tweek and MkLeo, took third place in their groups with two losses each. It should be noted that they managed to improve their results and make it into the top 6 of the tournament.

Edgar ‘Sparg0’ Valdes, a 16-year-old Mexican, won the Smash Ultimate Summit 4 singles championship. Despite being considered one of the strongest players in the world for several years, he has never won a Major tournament before. On his way to the coveted title, Sparg0 defeated MkLeo and beat Light twice in the decisive matches, proving his superiority by winning the grand final 3-0. It should be noted that Valdes started the year remarkably well, finishing second in The Box: Lunch Box 18 and then winning four tournaments in a row.

Sparg0 with his trophy

ProtoBanham, who placed third, is remembered for two achievements at the tournament. He became the first player in Smash Summit history to make it from the first round to the final, and he knocked MkLeo out of the tournament, breaking his streak of placing first and second, which lasted almost a year. MkLeo has been consistently in the top 2 for almost three years (not taking into account online events).

Tournament viewership statistics

Viewers watched Smash Ultimate Summit 4 for 2.2 million hours in total, and the Average Viewers number reached 43.6K spectators. The English-language broadcasts had three times as many Peak Viewers as the French-language ones.

The match between MkLeo and ProtoBanham in the semi-finals of the lower bracket was the most popular game of the tournament, attracting 112.4K Peak Viewers. At the same time, the players themselves ranked first and second by Average Viewers, as well as second and third by Hours Watched, respectively. The leader in the second metric is Light, who made it to the grand final.

It should be noted that despite winning the event, Sparg0 did not place in the top 5 of the most popular players in the tournament by Average Viewers, and took only fourth place by Hours Watched. At the time of the article's publication the player had no sponsors, but thanks to the outstanding start of the year this may change, which will also affect the popularity of Sparg0 with viewers. Just a week after Smash Ultimate Summit 4 ended, Valdes won another Major tournament, Collision 2022.

Most popular players

Smash Ultimate Summit 4 is behind the previous year's Smash Ultimate Summit 3 in terms of prize pool, but far ahead of it in terms of viewership. The Hours Watched number increased by 62%, the Average Viewers number grew by 33%, and the Peak Viewers number went up by 30%.

Smash Ultimate Summit 4 happened to become so popular that it ranked second by Hours Watched in the discipline, placing between the two most successful tournaments of 2019, Genesis 6 and EVO 2019. We should remind you that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released in December 2018, so new fighting game installment tournaments were especially popular in 2019.

Conclusion

Singles bracket is a main, but not the only part of what happened at Smash Ultimate Summit 4. The tournament featured many additional events, including Crew Battles, Squad Strike, and even Mafia. The next SSBU Major event is Genesis 8, which will be held in mid-April.