Esports Charts tracks all kinds of esports events: from shooters and MOBAs, to fighting games and simracing. With the help of our extensive database, we combed the first three months of 2024 for fighting game esports events, and collated the most popular of these events. Hype is still high for Street Fighter 6, the new entry to the series released last year, and this esports title dominated most of the rankings.
Capcom’s official events stood at the top of the esports industry for fighting games. The Japanese video game company develops many of the world’s favourite games series: Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and more. With the release of Street Fighter 6 in 2023, Capcom has been pushing and growing the esports scene for the Street Fighter franchise. Their recent Capcom Cup X featured the largest prize pool in the series’ history: $1,000,000 for first place and over $1,700,000 overall.
The Capcom Cup X the culmination of the 2023 Capcom Pro Tour. Directly organised by Capcom themselves, this Street Fighter 6 event received 3.91M Hours Watched, making it the most-watched fighting game esports tournament of 2024 so far.
The event welcomed 48 players, one of which was the lucky winner of the Capcom Cup X Last Chance Qualifier. Problem X, the winner of the event, advanced to the Capcom Cup X, where he finished 25th-32nd. The LCQ event generated 1.89M Hours Watched, cementing Capcom’s domination of the first quarter of the year.
Following Capcom’s events was the GENESIX X Ultimate in third place. Featured in the tenth edition of the long-time Super Smash Bros event series GENESIS, the Ultimate event earned the most watch time. It received 1.22M Hours Watched, considerably more than the Brawl event, although the Ultimate tournament had a slightly smaller prize pool.
On the other side of the globe, the Umebura SP10 was hosted by Japanese pro player Umeki. Despite offering no prize for first place, the tournament found over 1.2K participants in Tokyo, Japan. Many of these participants were established international players, and the event featured both strong international and national competition. The event fell just short of million hours of watch time, having received 989.6K Hours Watched, making it the second-most-watched Smash Ultimate event of the quarter.
In 5th place in our rankings was Red Bull Kumite 2024 New York. Returning to Street Fighter, the tournament was the first Red Bull Kumite event of 2024, and the biggest one yet. The event offered $50,000 in prizes and attracted some of the world’s top players. Chris Wong, who finished 2nd at the Capcom Cup X, finished only 5th-8th at the recent Red Bull Kumite. Powered by the fierce competition, the 2024 New York edition became the second-most-watched Red Bull Kumite ever with 840.2K Hours Watched.
Turning to Peak Viewers, Street Fighter’s domination is only strengthened. The game has one of the biggest audiences in fighting game esports at the moment, and this translates directly to high peak viewership. Capcom Cup X was the most popular event of the quarter with 311.6K Peak Viewers.
The two new events here, Street Fighter League World Championship 2023 and CPT 2023 Online Event: Japan, both highlight the power of the Japanese audience for Street Fighter. The League World Championship 2023 was the final tournament of the 2023 Street Fighter League season. The tournament invited the best teams from the three major regions which host teams from various countries: United States, Europe, and Japan. FAV gaming was Japan’s representative for the event, and the Japanese audience contributed heavily to the event’s 179.6K Peak Viewers.
CPT 2023 Online was the final official regional tournament for Japan in 2023: or so it was planned, until network issues disrupted the event. The tournament eventually took place in early January and generated 124.6K Peak Viewers for its final match between Kawano and Otaini. This tournament actually took place during the same weekend as the Umebura SP10. With split attention, the fighting game community in Japan delivered two of Q1’s top fighting game events in only one weekend.
The first quarter of 2024 highlighted two key trends in the fighting game esports community: the overwhelming popularity of Street Fighter 6, and the influence of Japan’s large fighting game community. The industry is sizeably smaller than other esports genres like shooters or MOBAS, but at its centre is a loyal and interested audience.
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