EVO USA has for 2025, bringing together the Fighting Game Community Community (FGC) for the most popular event on the calendar. While sports pros are fighting in their respective disciplines, publishers like Capcom, Bandai Namco, SNK and Sega will try to make a sensation with enormous announcements.

FGC’s fierce loyalty is a double -edged sword: they are engaged, yes, but they are also a united community that it is difficult for newcomers to penetrate. How can brands connect with these audiences and how can publishers convince the pure and hard fans of certain franchises to try their titles? In this article, we will examine the performance of live streaming combat games.

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The kind of combat comes thanks to Street Fighter 6

The popularity of fighting games in recent years can be divided into two separate periods: before and after the release of Street Fighter 6 June 2^ND 2023. The OG fighter of Capcom has brought an additional 40 million hours to monitor when he made his debut and has always brought this amount (or more) since. Before that, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was usually the best fighting game with around 10 million hours watched per quarter. Fighters of the platform have always performed well due to their more occasional gameplay and their atmosphere based on the party, including Brawlhall And Multi -waxing (which increased the combat combat television when it was released in the third quarter of 2022 by ~ 30m hours watched).

Street Fighter 6 Calls for both hardcore pros and occasional audiences, especially among the Japanese community. It is therefore not surprising that YouTube Gaming has increased its share of the audience of combat game over time, since the platform hosts some of the most popular Japanese banners and vtubers. In the second quarter of 2025, YouTube Games represented a little more than ¼ of all combat game viewers, against less than 20% during the quarter before the release of Street Fighter 6. It’s huge: combat games are connected to the Esports scene which generally prosper on Twitch. The movement to YouTube Gaming could mean that more esports fans found content on the Google platform.

Arcade fighters have the strength to wear the kind of fight

Evo is all about Arcade fighters, we therefore wanted to explore this sub-genre of combat games in particular. We have limited the field of titles fighting games with more than 100,000 hours from July 2024 to June 2025, then specified a subset of these games which are generally considered as arcade fighters. This includes 2D examples (Street Fighter 6) and 3D examples (Tekken 8), but not platform fighters or anime arena fighters.

Among this sample, it is clear that arcade fighters transport most of the fight against the online game public. In a sample of 77 games, 40 of them were Arcade fighters, but they represented 71% of all the viewers of combat games. These figures are however a little misleading: Street Fighter 6 is mainly the reason for this overwhelming preference for arcade fighters. Street Fighter 6 Taken into account ¾ of all spectators of Arcade hunters, with the next most popular title, Tekken 8Accounting another ⅛ of this audience. Younger franchises have generally drawn less than 5 meters in surveillance throughout the year.

The best ESPORT events in the fighting game are multi-game tournaments

Fighting Game Pros is seriously dedicated to their profession: the FGC has a large number of events sprinkled throughout the year to bring players and their fans together. Evo and Evo Japan hold 1^st3^RDand 4^th Positions among the best combat game events by a Peak viewer, with the Street Fighter 6 tournament of EVO 2024 welcoming 377,000 simultaneous viewers. Street Fighter 6 Once again, Reigns supreme here, being the game played in 9 of the 10 best combat combat events by a cutting -edge viewer. Other games generally bring less than 100,000 simultaneous viewers to their peak.

This is why multi-game tournaments are so important: hosting several games both brings together curious fans of different franchises. Although a spectator can connect to Street Fighter 6They stay to discover other titles and have a chance to convert to this series. It is a highly social community with a great appreciation of detail, which means more likely for new fighting games to obtain recognition of word of mouth. Guilty Gear – Effective can be the best example of this, reviving the Guilty equipment Franchise with small adjustments to its original formula, then raising a growing fans base on several multi-game tournaments.

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However, just appearing in the same place as the other established combat games is not enough for a new title to stand out. You must find the right streamers with which you associate: banners who are fans not only of a fighting game, but of the whole kind of combat game. Discover some of the best streamers of the kind of fighting game, with whom you need to associate yourself with, and some key tips to get the most out of your influence marketing budget.

For all this information of combat game streamer, plus details on Evo Japan 2025, download our free fighting game report: