The Evolution Fighting Game Championship staff sent over a press release announcing that they broke viewership records on their stream. Here's the rundown.
Evo Championship Series 2011 Smashes Online Viewership Records
SAN JOSE—August 4, 2011 – The Evo Championship Series (www.evo2k.com), the largest fighting game tournament in the world, has beaten all previous reported records for unique online viewers of a competitive gaming event. This year’s Evo World Finals, held in Las Vegas on July 29-31 and hosted on Ustream.tv, had over 2 million unique viewers who tuned in to the live stream to watch thousands of the best players from 44 countries compete in the championships.
Viewers consumed over 1.9 million hours of video content, and tuned in for an average of 55 minutes each. As the tournament unfolded, Evo also exploded on social media, with top players becoming global trending topics on Twitter and many others trending locally. During the electrifying finals on July 31, the fate of the finalists was so popular that four of them were trending simultaneously; making Evo players four of the world's top 10 trending topics on Twitter. Evo viewers also consumed over 1.9 million hours of content during this year’s event and watched an average of 55 minutes per person.
With over 2,400 competitors and thousands of fans in attendance, Evo 2011 was the best-attended fighting game tournament in history, as competitors battled through the double-elimination brackets for championship titles in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue Continuum Shift 2.
ABOUT EVO CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Beginning in 1998 as a small gathering of friends in an arcade, the Evo Championship Series ("Evo") has grown to become the largest and longest-running fighting game event in the world. Evo was founded with a focus on community, competition and providing an authentic representation of the best in the diverse and dynamic global fighting game scene.
For additional inquiries, please contact event@evo2k.com
2 million viewers out of 44 countries? Kinda weak but its a start
@#6
what exactly are you asking? Short version of EVOlution, or was there something else you was looking for(overthinking ftl)
"Viewers consumed over 1.9 million hours of video content, and tuned in for an average of 55 minutes each."
Whoa!
"Evo viewers also consumed over 1.9 million hours of content during this year’s event and watched an average of 55 minutes per person."
WHOA!!
Yeah ... I'm glad but how does this not count Dreamhack? Because that was televised in some countries or ... what? What's the dilemma here?
Was Ricky Ortiz in attendance? I didn't hear anything about him.
Keep in mind the count considers all global viewers. If you put it in that sense than 2 million is really not all that impressive. But it's definitely great news nonetheless. I hope this means that next year would be even bigger and better. Capcom was a bit cheap though lol. I mean, EVO basically caters around there games and yet they offer nothing to the champions. Perfect Legend got a freakin World Champion belt; how cool is that! Capcom, step up your game because MK is making you look bad. It's one thing if Capcom didn't have a booth or the producers of these games weren't there but they were so...lol.
I wish there was an edit <.<; but the stream didn't auto start on the client so I dont think it counted you as a viewer for the client embed but I could be very wrong on that, I also remember them saying that they were 200k Unique IP's watching or something like that since they made a large deal about it on stream too.
@#14
totally agree with you.
obviously capcom don't gives a jack about the FGC. they only cares about milking us slowly with theirs half finished games. with all the moneys they been making, and still they could not hire a freaking translator for ono; since every times he speaks, i don't understand a freaking things.
@#17 "I don't understand freaking things."
I could say the exact same thing for you. Are you Japanese by any chance? Because that isn't good English that you're displaying.
On a positive not, well done to the organisers of EVO 2011 and all the people who worked hard behind the scenes making it a success. The event itself was fantastic, and I enjoyed watching it from home. The quality of the stream was also fantastic, so props to Spooky, as he's always doing everything right. I loved the idea of having multiple streams going, as I could tune in to whatever I wanted to watch.
The FGC community and the scene in general, needs to go from strength to strength, and hopefully, with the help and assistance from the developers behind these games, they'll continue to do so. The fighting game scene needs constant innovation, new things, updates, to keep it fresh. It has to be looked upon like an MMO like World of Warcraft. The players need something to look forward to, with regards to patches, new characters, new moves, new games, etcetera.
Fighting games are extremely exciting to watch, as well as to play. I can't help but feel that for the majority, fighting games are hard to pick up. This will affect the overall growth of fighting games in general. There needs to be more emphasis for tutorials in fighting games. Blazblue went some way to dealing with this. Tutorials are an integral part of a game and having the user feel more comfortable and au fait with the controls and the mechanics of the game makes for happier people.
Fighting games are complex at an intermediate or high level of play. Developers need to go some way in explaining and teaching by the way of in game tutorials, things like option selects, safe jumps and other things to their targeted audience. Giving the user insight encourages them to look and enquire themselves. Create fighting games that give knowledge, but incite creativity for the user. Do that, and fighting games will dominate.
Why does there always have to be negative people always trying to find a reason to bring things down? So WHAT if it is only 2 million out of 44 countries. 2 million is still ALOT of people. And they broke THEIR record, they aren't going around saying they broke everybody else record. Something like this is good news, and it shows that the fighting game community is still growing and going strong. I'm glad that EVO was a great success, this was my first EVO, and I'm glad I didn't miss it. I only wish I could get that far and well known by the fighting game community as some of the people who was there.
Love hearing things like this, I swear I'm gonna make it to EVO 2012 no matter where it is. After this years event and how hype it was I really want to be there in person. And they're trying to pass a law to make streaming of our fighting games among other things illegal! Bull crap! This does nothing but generate buzz for the community! Glad to be a part of it even if I am an almost scrub LOL
Sorry EVO
http://esfiworld.com/sc2/news/mlg-ana...
:(
@14 2 million is freaking huge for a stream! Sure Capcom could give something to the Top 8, but what ever. They got the trophy, they got the money... What more could they ask for?
I really want to go to EVO 2014, would be the best time for me to go there :) I feel like the attenders and viewers are gonna double every year. That's what I wanna see at least! And I also hope that Daigo wins next year :)
last year was over 30,000 in finals, this yr, 80,000.
"hattas gonna hate." lol
Fighting games aren't exactly Call of Duty though, they just aren't easy to pick up. For example, top CoD commentators on youtube, have 400k subscribers.
I've yet to see a SF channel with half of that. ShinAkuma has an amazing channel and puts in extraordinary effort to keep it going. He's got 17k subs.
Well, that's just what I notice anyway.
This achievement is very good for the community and glad that more people are getting into the fighting game scene. I got two friends of mine who watched EVO for the first time and watching the tournament got them to train even more. Even though it's my second year watching EVO, 2 million is a huge accomplishment. G4 didn't even commentate in the championships. Great tournament and more memories and more exciting hype. Congrats to the players for playing their best. It was one exciting weekend to forget.
@18 TonyCorleone
"Are you Japanese by any chance? Because that isn't good English that you're displaying".
Totally disrespectful I hope youre not american because thats the reason stereotypes exist for. You say all that BS about the community and how it needs to get strength, and youre not even able to accept people with other native tongues commenting in here. Me and so many others are on top of you speakin multiple languages and planning international trips to reach EVO, and thats your way of welcome us??? Thats how you help the community?? Japanese are so dumb to speak in English??
Dont look me as a troll, but if this kind of attitudes are not corrected, how do you expect the FGC to grow??? This is not a national sport and the community possibly will never be bigger than games like Halo or COD, but at least lets represent this minority with the best competitive and friendly people.
@31 SrAbuguet
Totally disrespectful? What on Earth are you on about?! The guy I replied to couldn't write English properly, yet he was going on about how he couldn't understand someone who was Japanese and as a result wasn't satisfied that they didn't provide a translator when he spoke in broken English.
I'm happy for anything that the community provides, even if it is a guy standing up on stage speaking in broken English. Everything that is laid out for people who love fighting games in terms of streams, interviews, tutorials, are done at no cost to you or I. How can someone complain about anything at all when everything they get is free. I believe that people should be charged for watching streams, I believe that's the way forward. EVO was professionally done and at no cost to you or that other idiot. It's about time people started paying for it, maybe then they'd appreciate the effort a bit more and at least appreciate the content.
What are you talking about when you stated - "Japanese are so dumb to speak in English??" What the hell are you on about? You're as bad as that other fool! Don't come on to me trying to be clever and then fail miserably at it. Maybe you should get together with that other imbecile and try and post something that makes some sense. It's got to be better than you both doing it alone, as you're making me angry just reading it.
"Posted by darkhearted on August 5, 2011 at 7:21 a.m. #25
Sorry EVO
http://esfiworld.com/sc2/news/mlg-ana...
:("
im not sure what you mean. they just used the term "35 million streams" as a scam, and didnt actually tell the amount of viewers. thier total viewers at one time was only 10 percent higher than evos which gives you a good idea of what theyre real numbers.
even better, they had less attendees than EVO!
I found MLGs figures pretty lackluster considering they only go for EZ mode games.
@ #4
This is what happens when you have no reading skills.
It is "2 million unique viewers who tuned in to the live stream to watch thousands of the best players FROM 44 countries compete in the championships."
It is Not 2M unique viewers from 44 countries who watched the show.
Get it right.
To put it into perspective, a cable network show in the U.S. would be considered a record breaking success if it could garner 2M viewers on an episode. Even for the cable titan like HBO, a 2M would be considered decent.
I seriously hope I can attend next year. This EVO was so hype from home, but I imagine nothing compares to the experience of being right there.