2024 Pokémon World Championships held the most popular Pokémon esports event ever

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The Pokémon World Championships are an invite-only esports event officially organised for Pokémon. The annual events feature multiple games from the Pokémon franchise, such as the traditional video games, the trading card games, and spinoffs such as Pokémon GO and Pokémon UNITE, a free-to-play MOBA game. The 2024 Pokémon World Championship events were some of the most-watched Pokémon esports events ever, proving that this legendary franchise still has room to grow in the esports sphere. 

Esports Charts collected the viewership data for all six events which made up this year’s World Championships. The 2024 edition featured three trading card game events, a video game event featuring Scarlet & Violet, and an event for Pokémon GO and Pokémon UNITE. Of these six events, the main video game event was the most popular tournament, reaching 123.9K Peak Viewers. 

2024 Pokémon World Championships - VGC was the most popular event of the series, and the most popular Pokémon esports event ever. Other events such as the Pokemon TwitchCups have received higher viewership in the past, as these community-ran events benefited from broadcasts of the event from highly popular participating streamers. But the 2024 Pokémon World Championship remains the most popular strictly esports-centered Pokémon event. 

In total, all six events of this year’s championship generated 3.41M Hours Watched, roughly 24.5% more watch time than last year’s World Championship tournaments. Interestingly, English-language viewership was by far the majority audience for these Pokémon esports events. Although the Japanese franchise is extremely popular in its home country, there appears to be a lack of interest for Pokémon esports events among Japanese audiences. 

Below, we have calculated the viewership of the 6 events which made up this year’s World Championships, for a better comparison of viewership between these individual events. 

The Video Game Championships events was by far the most-watched tournament of this year’s series, and the 2024 Pokémon World Championships - TCG Masters event was the next-most-popular tournament by peak concurrent viewership. The Trading Card Game events were divided by age group, with competitors up to 12 years of age competing under the Juniors category, those between 13 and 16 years old in the Seniors category, and all other players competing under Masters.

The Juniors and Seniors side of the TCG events received roughly the same viewership, with the Masters event not only receiving far more coverage, but also far more viewers. The Masters event was broadcast for over 25 hours, whereas the other two categories were covered for only just over an hour each. 

The 2024 Pokémon World Championships - Go received 23.5% of total watch time for the World Championship this year, and it also recorded 59.2K Peak Viewers, making it the most popular Pokémon GO event ever. Again, viewership for this event came overwhelmingly from English-speaking audiences, with Japanese fans not interested in this esports event.

The Pokémon UNITE World Championship 2024 was also one of the most popular events for Pokémon Unite ever, although it did fall slightly behind the hololive Pokémon UNITE World Tournament, which, similar to the Pokémon TwitchCups, received significant support from popular streamers who not only competed in the event, but also broadcast their point-of-view. This year’s Pokémon Unite event generated 76.3K Peak Viewers, making it the most popular official Unite esports event ever. 

  The most popular Pokémon game events by peak concurrent viewership   

The Pokémon TwitchCups were highly popular thanks to their support from the large Spanish-speaking side of Twitch, and the hololive event was the most popular Pokémon event among Japanese-speaking fans. Pokémon has seemingly struggled to capture its Japanese audience for its esports events, with the viewership for Pokémon esports events largely coming from English-speaking audiences, with some support from other European languages.

The 2024 Pokémon World Championships was the most popular edition of the esports event series since its inception. The event series celebrated its two decade anniversary this year, and the tournaments have shown that Pokémon is still as popular as ever, with new fans discovering the esports side of the franchise.