What’s going on with Brawlhalla? The game's biggest tournament just hit its lowest viewership in four years

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The recently held Brawlhalla World Championship 2024 saw the lowest viewership numbers in the past four years. It looks like things aren’t going too well for the fighting game, and there are plenty of reasons behind the decline.

Brawlhalla reached its peak popularity in 2020, when the main tournament of the season racked up 4.3 million Hours Watched and drew 165.6K Peak Viewers. Since then, viewership has dropped by 5-7 times — with the latest World Championship in 2024 only attracting 32K Peak Viewers, which is relatively low for a tournament of its status.

Kyna Saryn, Brawlhalla World Championship 2024 Champion (1x1)

The decline in popularity of the Brawlhalla World Championship tournament series reflects the overall state of the game. Over the past four years, the average monthly player count for Brawlhalla has dropped by 43.5%, and this steady decline in players has been consistent. If Brawlhalla is losing players, it’s no surprise that its tournaments are losing viewers as well.

From a livestreaming perspective, the primary audience for the Brawlhalla World Championship is English-speaking Twitch viewers. And this segment has seen the largest drop in viewership: for example, the average number of viewers on the official Brawlhalla channel during the four tournaments fell from 87K to 18.3K — a nearly fivefold decrease. Interestingly, the audience for the tournament on YouTube and the Portuguese-speaking segment (the second largest group in the game) have maintained their usual numbers.

The most popular tournaments of the Brawlhalla World Championship Series

The Brawlhalla World Championship regularly uses a viewership rewards system to encourage people to watch the streams. However, over the years, this system has become less effective at boosting the online audience. Even with the gradual increase in community casters, the trend hasn’t been reversed.

The structure of Brawlhalla’s professional scene also plays a role in its declining popularity. Major tournaments are held very rarely, which makes esports organizations less interested in maintaining current squads and signing new players. In the past, teams like Luminosity Gaming, Spacestation Gaming, Wildcard Gaming, and Moist Esports were common sights at tournaments, but most of them have now completely dropped out of the scene. The only major organization still active in Brawlhalla is Kingdom Allegiance, which now dominates the competitive scene. Kingdom Allegiance players are frequently found in the finals of both singles and doubles at the Brawlhalla World Championship, which has hurt the excitement and viewer interest.

Brawlhalla isn’t new to the gaming world — the game celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024, and over the years, it’s built a small but very dedicated community. Brawlhalla has a high skill ceiling, and succeeding in the game requires a lot of time and effort. At the same time, players have increasingly been calling for the developers to release more global updates. The lack of major updates is another reason for Brawlhalla’s decline in popularity in recent years, both in the game itself and in its tournaments. That said, things aren’t entirely hopeless for the game. In 2024, we saw games like Fortnite, Pokemon, and Brawl Stars make comebacks, breaking viewership records after long and quite ordinary periods.