The viewing figures for the finals at Evo are in, and they are huge. Dragon Ball FighterZ performed particularly well, however, becoming the most watched Evo main event in history. Over 250,000 of you tuned in to watch SonicFox beat Go1 in what was quite the dramatic final. Evo 2018 turned out to be an electric event, with several shocks reverberating throughout the fighting game community. Several announcements of new characters and the like have been made too, in what probably feels like Christmas for fighting game fans.
SonicFox was quite happy about his turnaround win, and so, too, were a lot of watching fans. Just how many fans were watching the Dragon Ball FighterZ final? 257,805 of you. That’s an amazing amount of people, and it actually broke records. The peak of around 258,000 viewers wasn’t only the highest number to watch anything at Evo 2018. It is the highest concurrent viewer count of all time for any Evo main event on Twitch. Dragon Ball FighterZ is a big deal (via githyp).
FighterZ outperformed Street Fighter 5 in its debut year at Evo. Indeed, Street Fighter 5 only saw a peak concurrent number of 215,532 viewers. Around 60,000 of these viewers only came to watch from Fortnite streamer Ninja giving a link out to the stream. Without this extra 60,000, Street Fighter 5 would have fallen below the likes of Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros. Indeed, Ninja’s fans were quick to drop off the Street Fighter 5 final stream, too.
While the headline event of Street Fighter 5 struggled a little, the huge success of Dragon Ball FighterZ has got to be more than a crumb of comfort for the Evo organizers. Indeed, it was a strong year all round for Evo. Smash Bros Melee, Tekken 7 and Guilty Gear all increased in viewership compared to 2017. Evo 2018 was a resounding success no matter how you look at it.
It’s official: the DragonBall FighterZ Grand Finals reached a peak of 258.000 concurrent viewers, making it the most watched EVO main event in EVO history https://t.co/UWQ2C3ky0x
(Melee, Tekken 7, and Guilty Gear were able to increase their viewership as well compared to 2017) pic.twitter.com/fKQpMvcOGI
— Nibel (@Nibellion) August 6, 2018
Bandai Namco will be hoping that the announcement of Cooler and the upcoming Nintendo Switch edition of Dragon Ball FighterZ will be able to maintain the game’s momentum.
