Street Fighter makes global viewership gains at the Esports World Cup 2025
Our final championship report for the Esports World Cup 2025 comes from Street Fighter. This event, held from August 20 to 23, saw 48 of the top players in the world battle it out for a prize pool of a million dollars, one of the highest in the legendary fighting game's history.
Street Fighter 6 at the Esports World Cup 2025 proved crucial to the Club Championship aspirations of many participating esports organizations. With the stakes set high and the winner creating a bit of series history by claiming consecutive titles, it ended among the game's ten most-watched and ten most popular competitions of all time.
In the Grand Final, Zeng "Xiaohai" Zhuojun sneaked past Derek "Blaz" Blaz 5:4 in a battle of generations that pitted a fighting game legend against one of the genre's fastest-rising prodigies. However, it did not even make the top ten most popular matches list, with a majority of these entries coming from early in the lengthy Third Phase.
That was because the first round of matches in this final stage was where fans go to see some of the globe's top players. Names like Goichi "GO1" Kishida, Masato "Bonchan" Takahashi, and Kuang "Zhen" Zhen were in action in Round 1, although only GO1 of them made it to the next round of games.
At the top of the list of most popular games was the meeting between Xiaohai and Torimeshi, which pitted two heavyweight regions of China and Japan against each other. It attracted 258,794 Peak Viewers (PV), with the other four most popular matches also close behind, having crossed the 250,000 peak concurrent viewers mark.
It is also worth mentioning that Xiaohai's victory was a special one in Esports World Cup history. Having also won the EWC 2024 x SF6, he became just the third competitor in series history to win back-to-back championship titles.
Moreover, he alone contributed a mind-boggling 1,750 Club Championship points to his club, KuaiShou Gaming. Aside from claiming 1,000 points for his SF6 triumph, he also finished as the runner-up in the Fatal Fury event, giving him 750 points in total. Crucially, his contributions helped his org secure the ninth place in the standings, taking home $700,000.
With the Third Phase seeing as many as nine participants out of 16 from Japan, viewers from the nation showed a lot of interest in the phase. That is why Japanese accounted for over two-thirds of this Street Fighter 6 event's overall watch time.
The Land of the Rising Sun is the game's most crucial market, so having this many players was crucial to the 2025 edition, almost doubling the audience reach from last year. The nearly 259,000 PV that it reached was around 68% more than the Esports World Cup 2024 for Street Fighter.
The increase in the number of participants to 48 this time around also helped more than double the watch time compared to 2024. This was because the format got an extension, with the Third Phase witnessing a new round of matches before the Quarterfinals, ensuring there was more watch time potential. The 5.1 million Hours Watched (HW) that this year's iteration hit was about 130% more than the inaugural edition.
Another reason for the massive increases in the audience reach in 2025 was the number of channels covering the event. It shot up from 82 to 207, with a lot more community casters tuning in to catch the action.
This meant that Twitch and YouTube saw big spikes in their viewership figures compared to 2024, with CHZZK and Kick also contributing healthily. The big two also enjoyed jumps in their audience reach, with the red platform especially seeing its watch time numbers jump by 253%.
When comparing Street Fighter tournaments over the years, the EWC x SF6 fares pretty well by watch time. It comes in third place on the overall table, beaten only by the Street Fighter League Pro-JP 2024 and the Capcom Cup 11, the only other entries to cross the 5 million HW mark.
It also sits in ninth place among the most popular Street Fighter competitions of all time. When narrowing this list down to only competitive events (i.e., ignoring influencer-led tournaments), it finishes in the top six.
Looking at the EWC 2025 Club Championship, the overall winner was Team Falcons, which retained the trophy it had won the previous year. The Saudi Arabian esports organization accumulated 5,200 points overall, taking home a lucrative prize of $7 million.
| # | Club | Points
|
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team Falcons
|
5,200
|
| 2 | Team Liquid
|
4,200
|
| 3 | Team Vitality
|
4,050
|
| 4 | Twisted Minds
|
3,200
|
| 5 | Virtus.pro
|
3,200
|
| 6 | AG.AL International
|
3,050
|
| 7 | Gen.G Esports
|
2,850
|
| 8 | Weibo Gaming
|
1,950
|
| 9 | KuaiShow Gaming
|
1,750
|
| 10 | DRX
|
1,550
|
Team Liquid finished second on the Club Championship leaderboard for a second straight year, becoming richer by $4 million in the process. The Dutch esports organization had three championship victories to Team Falcons' one, but the latter's consistency helped it pull through.
Another Saudi-based esports organization, Twisted Minds, and China's AG.AL International clinched more trophies than Team Falcons. They finished fourth and sixth, with Team Vitality completing the podium.
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