Red Bull Kumite 2023 breaks records of series with Street Fighter 6

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Red Bull Kumite, a series of fighting game invitationals, hosted its yearly event in South Africa. The Red Bull Kumite 2023 saw 16 players go head-to-head in a Single-Elimination bracket, all fighting for a chance at the $50K USD prize pool. Big Bird from the UAE took home first place, managing to beat out Akainu, who finished second. 

This event marks the first Red Bull Kumite event featuring Street Fighter 6. The game was released early last month to huge success, especially in live streaming. Since launching at the start of last month, Street Fighter 6 has amassed 44M Hours Watched, the most out of any Fighting game on Twitch this year.

With the hype of Street Fighter 6 behind it, how did the Red Bull Kumite 2023 South Africa perform?

RB Kumite 2023 viewership statistics

The Red Bull event collected 1.7M Hours Watched with almost 22 hours of Airtime. The viewership reached its peak during Tokido vs JabhiM, the South African local, when 181K Peak Viewers tuned in. gachikun vs Oil King was the second-most-popular game, the battle of the East Asians drawing in huge viewership from Street Fighter’s native region.

BigBird vs AngryBird was also wildly popular. Not only an interesting match-up in name alone, but both are also old friends and rivals who grew up together. Nowadays, they compete in events together, and both signed with the same organisation: NASR eSports. Both players put on a great show for their fans, Big Bird barely clutching a 5:4 victory away from his rival. 

Interestingly, all of the top five most-popular matches took place during the first two stages of the playoff stage: Round of 16 and Quarterfinals. Not a single match from the Semifinals or Grand Finals was as watched as these matches. Japanese viewership makes up a large part of this.

RB Kumite 2023 channel statistics

Kumite 2023 South Africa was not only streamed on the official RedBull Twitch channel but also featured by community casters. Watch parties continue to be a popular option for international fans, with a large chunk of Japanese fans preferring to watch Japanese streams of the event, compared to the main channel. The official Red Bull channel was dethroned in both Peak Viewers and Hours Watched, by two separate Japanese streamers. 

RB Kumite 2023 language statistics

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Japanese fans were a huge part of this event. But how huge exactly? Japanese fans made up a majority of the Hours Watched for the event, with over half of the Hours Watched coming out of the Land of the Rising Sun. As mentioned previously, a Japanese channel also contributed towards Peak Viewers more heavily than the official Red Bull channel.

English was of course popular but other languages also saw significant popularity. Both Asian and European languages were relevant in the data, with Italian viewership reaching an all-time record for Peak Viewers.

Comparison of Kumite 2023 events

Red Bull Kumite 2023 South Africa was by far the most successful event of the year. Only the LCQ Japan Qualifier received enough viewership to compare the two, with the qualifier reaching 25K Peak Viewers. This event functioned as a qualifier for an offline qualifier at the South African event. Japanese viewership made up almost the entire audience for the LCQ Japan Qualifier, with the event being streamed on Red Bull Japan’s Twitch and co-streamed by other Japanese creators. 

The other two events are too different in scale to really compare, with both events only having one singular stream covering the event and not pulling in much viewership.

Comparison of most-popular Kumite events

The South African Kumite event was the most-popular Kumite event ever, per Peak Viewers. 180K fans concurrently viewed the live streams of the event, compared to the second-best 55K Peak Viewers of the Kumite 2019 event. Kumite 2019 reached its peak during the Grand Finals when Japanese player Fujimura won the event with a 3-2 victory. 

Red Bull Kumite 2023 is most comparable to the 2018 Kumite event, where Fujimura was also victorious. The Red Bull Kumite 2018 received just under 50K Peak Viewers, however, this figure was reached during the early stages of the playoff bracket. Viewership peaked early during the playoffs bracket and slowly levelled off for the rest of the event, similar to the Kumite 2023 event. 

In any case, Red Bull Kumite 2023 was a huge success not only for the Kumite series but also for Street Fighter as a franchise. The Japanese gaming franchise is still hugely popular both with fans and audiences worldwide. Street Fighter 6 continues to be one of the best-performing Fighting games on Twitch and future esports events featuring the game will possibly continue to reach new and new heights.