Despite all odds, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sets viewership record at EVO 2019

If you watched the EVO 2019 tournament over the weekend, then be assured there were thousands more watching the event that time. In fact, the number of viewership at the time was the highest ever in EVO history. And, the game that set the new record was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate set the record for the highest peak viewership at the EVO event, which is the world’s biggest fighting game tournament. Twitter user Rod Breslau was among the first to notice the record. The users even shared a screenshot showing 279,000 concurrent viewers.

Smash Bros Ultimate has set the record for the highest peak viewership in EVO history for any game at over 279,000 Smash 4 lyfe #EVO19 pic.twitter.com/yTdc3PyrLu — Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 5, 2019

A point to note is that the record set by Ultimate is not for the most single-stream viewers. This record is still with Dragon Ball FighterZ, which pulled over 257,000 concurrent viewers last year. As per Breslau noted, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate got 279,000 viewers across EVO’s main stream and various re-streams.

note that DBFZ from last year still has the peak for EVO's main stream at 258,000, but Smash Ultimate at this EVO has the overall game peak with all streams combined — Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 5, 2019

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate remained top of Twitch for most of the finals, beating even super games like Fortnite and League of Legends. What makes this accomplishment even more impressive is that several members of the fighting game community were not in favour of scheduling Smash Ultimate for the closeout weekend. They believed that the game could lower the viewership numbers. Moreover, replacing fan favourite Melee with Ultimate also attracted wide criticism from the gaming community.

Smash Bros has been a popular series since 2007, the same time when Melee was added to the game. While others like Brawl and Smash 4 have come and gone, Melee has been a regular at EVO. This year, however, Ultimate was the only Smash Bros. entry in the EVO as Melee got its own side-tournament.

Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in December last year. The game recently got 4.0 update, which brought several fighter changes along with adding a new Dragon Quest Hero character.

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