EVO 2013 has turned out to be the most popular year of the fighting video game tournament, as the tournament overall and several individual game tournaments broke several records for the amount of people watching the events through live streams. The tournament, which was held last weekend and streamed through Twitch TV, managed to rope in 1.7 million unique viewers, according to Matthew DiPietro, the vice president of marketing for Twitch. Three games in particular shattered previous concurrent viewer totals during the live streams, with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 hitting 144,848 concurrent viewers, Super Smash Bros. Melee reaching an estimated 134,000, and Super Street Fighter 4 obtaining 125,000 viewers. DiPietro had this to say about the high numbers to IGN:
"They were record breaking numbers for each of those fighting games with Evo smashing all records for fighting game tournaments...It was nearly fifty percent higher than last year's Evo which was the previous record holder with more than fifty percent more unique viewers."
This is fantastic news for eSports, which includes fighting tournaments such as EVO, as well as tournaments for other genres such as MOBA, team shooters, and real-time strategy. EVO is one largest fighting game tournaments of the year, with King of Fighters XIII, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Persona 4 Arena, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments also being held during the event.
Several developers also took time during the event to announce some breaking news about their games. For example NetherRealm revealed that Martian Manhunter was being put into Injustice: Gods Among Us as a DLC character. Capcom also revealed new DLC plans for Street Fighter IV as well.
It seems as though 2013 may be a benchmark year for eSports in general. DICE has shown interest in adding Battlefield 4 to the regular eSports lineup when it is released. 343 Industries is holding the Halo 4 World Championships over the summer, with half a million dollars in prize money up for grabs. Even the United States government has gotten into the action, declaring League of Legends players athletes and able to obtain working visas to enter tournaments in the USA.
With the continued rise of pro video game competitions and leagues in the United States and elsewhere, and the prize money involved in the tournaments rising higher and higher, expect to hear more about eSports as time goes on.