The title by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd. was released by the end of 2018 on Nintendo Switch with the goal of including every single character from previous Smash Bros games, despite any technical or licensing difficulties this might have presented.
Recently, the game developer finally completed SSBU’s character list, which now consists of 89 characters, representing not only Nintendo’s properties but also other games such as Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Tekken or Minecraft.
As a part of the Fighting Game Community (FGC), SSBU was too affected by the community’s struggles in 2020. This includes cancellation of the biggest festival in the genre — EVO 2020, the issues related to COVID-19 and a series of sexual misconduct allegations, both in the FGC and Super Smash Bros communities. Naturally, all this negatively affected the popularity of fighting game titles on streaming services.
In 2021, the viewership of competitive Super Smash Bros Ultimate reached its levels from 2019, with the best-performing events accumulating noteworthy numbers. To take a closer look at the current competitive SSBU scene, Esports Charts together with DashFight compiled a list of the Top 10 Smash Ultimate tournaments in 2021 by Hours Watched.
10. Smash World Tour - Northeast America Ultimate Regional Finals
The Top 10 is opened by the Northeast American Ultimate Final of the Smash World Tour, the Melee and Ultimate tournament circuit hosted by Beardog Events. The event has accumulated 401.4K Hours Watched with a peak of 40.9K concurrent viewers.
Announced in February 2021, the Smash World Tour featured a multitude of regional tournaments held around the world throughout 2021. The regions designated by the circuit are North America East, North America West, Central America, South America, Europe, East Asia and Oceania. Each regional final was preceded by one or two qualifiers and every qualifier had a last-chance bracket for those players who failed to qualify in regular qualifications.
The NA East Regional Finals featured the best players from USA and Canada who fought for the slots in the Ultimate Championship and shared a prize pool of $5,000. Kola from Moist Esports outplayed Riddles (Even Matchup Gaming) in the decisive match with a score of 3:2.
9. Super Smash Con Fall Fest Ultimate
In ninth place is the Super Smash Con Fall Fest Ultimate with 467.4K Hours Watched and 83.4K Peak Viewers.
The event was a part of the Super Smash Con Fall Fest, the sixth and alternative edition of the Super Smash Con series, which was cancelled two years in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The series, which is a convention dedicated to all things Smash Bros related, hosts tournaments for every official Smash Bros game released to date.
The event was hosted in Herndon, Virginia; a total of 769 players took part in the event; four players from Mexico and the US reached the Final Singles Bracket. Light from Moist Esports came out on top as he beat Sparg0 in the grand final with a 6:2 score.
7-8. Kagaribi events
Having garnered 528.5K Hours Watched and 66.2K Peak Viewers, the national Japanese SSBU tournament Kagaribi#4 placed seventh in the Top 10. Held in late June in Tokyo, Japan, the event marked the third edition of the series, as Kagaribi#1.5 and Kagaribi#2 were cancelled due to the declaration of a state of emergency in the Tokyo area (the third iteration of the series was held in March, but it was of a lesser scale compared to #4). It became the first major Smash event in Japan since the start of the COVID pandemic, featuring 386 players (+66% compared to tournament #3).
Note one more Kagaribi events made it to the top 10. Kagaribi#5 was notable for its results: zackray won it only using Sora, which was released less than two weeks before the start of the championship. This event attracted 62.4K Peak Viewers and collected over 525K Hours Watched.
6. Riptide 2021: Ultimate
Another event in top 10 is Riptide 2021, which was held in Sandusky, Ohio back in September. It featured tournaments in singles and doubles and prominent NA players, including representatives from Team Liquid, TSM, T1, Spacestation Gaming.
Leonardo MkLeo Lopez Perez and Edgar Sparg0 Valdez made it to the top 4 in both events. MkLeo mained Byleth throughout the playoffs and beat Tweek in the final (3:1) and his duet with naitosharp took 4th place in doubles; Sparg0 finished 3rd and #2 (w/ Epic_Gabriel) respectively.
Matches of the event were watched for over 529.7K hours; broadcasts peaked at 59.7K viewers.
5. CEO 2021
Entering the top 5 is CEO 2021, one of the major events of 2021. The series faced COVID-related issues back in December 2020; subsequently CEO 2020, which was supposed to be held in Orlando, was cancelled. And the comeback was quite special this time.
The Ultimate event was the most signed-up by discipline in the list, followed by Guilty Gear Strive, Tekken 7, Street Fighter 5. Classic singles event had over 770 entrants and Kolawole Kola Aideyan was the winner; it’s his first major title in his career. Moist Esports player Roy’ed out Gluttony in the final (3:2; 3:1).
CEO 2021 final was watched by up to 92.4K viewers which is the 2nd result among the events in the top 10. Overall the tournament has collected over 717.3K Hours Watched.
4. Mainstage 2021 Ultimate
Held in November in Ontario, California by tournament organiser Beyond the Summit, the Mainstage 2021 Ultimate featured competitions in both, Super Smash Melee and Ultimate. This marked the organiser’s second Smash tournament outside of its Smash Summit tournament series. The event saw a particularly high attendance, with over 1,700 players signed up to compete.
MkLeo came out on top in the Mexican derby vs Sparg0 in singles; ESAM x MVD won the doubles event over Light x Marss. Importantly, the top 6 finished in the singles bracket got invites to Smash Ultimate Summit 4, which is to be held early March in Los Angeles.
Mainstage 2021 Ultimate has garnered 842K Hours Watched, with the highest peak of 80K concurrent viewers during the singles final.
3. Glitch 8.5
The North American premier offline tournament, which was held by VGBootCamp at the end of September in Laurel, Maryland, was themed around characters from Konami franchises Metal Gear and Castlevania. Moreover, the event was named after the Konami Code, a well-known cheat code that is programmed into many Konami games.
ESAM on Pikachu claimed the victory in the singles bracket over MkLeo; Marss and Light were crowned winners in duets. With 889.8K Hours Watched and 84.7K Peak Viewers, Glitch 8.5 was the 3rd most-watched SSBU tournament of 2021.
2. Smash Ultimate Summit 3
Third iteration in Ultimate Summit series featured the largest prize pool (within a single event) in Smash Ultimate esports history as the final sum reached $159K. The event is remarkable for not only high-tier competitions, but also classic, hilarious Summit stuff as players participated in different challenges throughout the event. Smash Ultimate Summit 3 was supposed to be held back in June 2020, but was postponed due to COVID outbreak.
Some of the best talents from the USA, Mexico and Japan took part in the singles event. Gavin Tweek Dempsey gave no chance to MkLeo in the final (3:0) and took home over $47K; this made TSM’s player the 2nd highest-earning esports athlete in Smash Ultimate history following MkLeo.
Final of the event was watched by 86.2K Peak Viewers. All the matches garnered 1.3M Hours Watched in four days of broadcasts.
1. Smash World Tour Ultimate Championship
SWT 2021 Ultimate Championship held by Beardog Events became the final event of the series, which ran from March to December. It featured the all-star participants from all over the world, who competed for the share of $75,000 in Orlando, Florida.
One of the most thrilling storylines of the event was Cosmos’ way to the final. He paved his way to the decisive match through the Last Chance Qualifier and finished higher than the likes of Sparg0, Gluttony, Dabuz and Kola. But still the 23-year-old player was stopped by the GOAT MkLeo in a tense 3:2 battle.
Interestingly, the final was the most watched game of the tournament. The event peaked at 131.4K viewers during the Dabuz (US) vs ProtoBanham (JP) game in the playoffs. Overall the tournament reached 1.6M Hours Watched in 32 hours of airtime, which is one of the best results for Ultimate tournaments ever.
What’s next for competitive Super Smash Bros Ultimate?
Although the Super Smash Bros community has seemingly recovered from the ill-fated 2020, there’s still a long way to overcome the discipline's record of over 3.5M Hours Watched. However, that might change soon, as the recent news from Nintendo of America indicates.
With the help of its new partner — esports organization Panda, the publisher plans to operate the first official competitive circuit for both Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Super Smash Bros Melee in North America. With Nintendo’s newfound interest in Super Smash Bros esports, the scene could potentially grow bigger in 2022.
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