EVO 2024 welcomes top streamers after co-owner Pokimane leads the way YouTube: Pokimane TooEVO 2024 is welcoming major streamers to the world\u2019s biggest fighting game tournament after Pokimane and Esfand showed up to the event last year. The Evolution Championship Series is the world\u2019s largest fighting game tournament, sending thousands of fighting game fans flocking to Las Vegas every summer since 1996. In 2023, the tournament reported a record-breaking number of registered players, racking up over 9,000 competitors in a record-breaking turnout for the already massive event. That\u2019s not all; last year\u2019s EVO also saw the appearances of a few major streamers, including Esfand and Pokimane, the latter of whom is actually a co-owner of EVO due to her position as CEO at RTS, which purchased EVO in March 2021 and runs the tournament with Sony. After her cameo at last year\u2019s event, EVO is hoping more large streamers will attend this year\u2019s tournament as it spreads its wings with a new home at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Streamers welcome at EVO 2024 as fighting game fever takes over We got the chance to speak with EVO\u2019s General Manager, Rick Thiher, who says having streamers like Esfand and Pokimane put a spotlight on the event offers a \u201cvaluable\u201d megaphone to advertise the fighting game community to the world. \u201cI think EVO over the last couple of years has gotten really focused on, \u2018How do we create and renew fighting game fandom? How do we take the community that birthed the event and really appreciate that it\u2019s grown into a literal culture?\u2019 Having someone like Poki or Esfand show up is cool because of the megaphone that they can use to say that these games, these people, this community, this room that I\u2019m in is worth your time, worth your interest,\u201d he told us. \u201cI think that\u2019s valuable. And because we\u2019ve achieved that without having to build the show around their attendance, they\u2019re coming of their own accord. Esfand was sitting in the arena last year, doing his livestream, just excited about fighting games.\u201d \u201cAnd when that\u2019s not a paid activation, when you\u2019ve created an experience where that enthusiasm is natural? That\u2019s an incredible thing. To be able to say, we came together not as an achievement, or not as a big plus up, but as a validation that fighting games are worth time. Fighting games are worth passion. Fighting games are of value. So, that\u2019s how I look at that. That\u2019s why I\u2019m really excited they came last year.\u201d Fighting game viewership has grown massively on live streaming platforms as of late, with Tekken 8\u2019s release seeing a huge boom in audiences for both endemic fighting game creators and mainstream broadcasters alike. For example, Maximilian Dood racked up nearly 450K total viewers on Twitch over the weekend of Tekken 8\u2019s launch, with Aris (Avoiding the Puddle) also garnering 140K viewers. Not only are fighting games growing in popularity on Twitch, but the people who have built their careers around the FGC are heading right to the top alongside the genre. For Thiher, big creators attending fighting game tournaments like EVO is another welcome addition to the culture as fighting game fever rises ever higher. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m really hoping that they\u2019re gonna come again this year,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna see what happens.\u201d EVO 2024 is set to take place from July 19-21 in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and will feature a total of eight fighting games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EVO 2024 welcomes top streamers after co-owner Pokimane leads the way YouTube: Pokimane TooEVO 2024 is welcoming major streamers to the world\u2019s biggest fighting game tournament after Pokimane and Esfand showed up to the event last year. The Evolution Championship Series is the world\u2019s largest fighting game tournament, sending thousands of fighting game fans flocking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}