2011 Evo Fighting Tournament Attracts Record 2M+ Video Streamers

The organizers of the Evo Championship Series fighting game tournament report over 2 million unique viewers streamed live video of matches from the event last weekend, a record for the tournament. A total of 1.9 million man-hours of live video from the event were streamed through Ustream.tv, with top matches attracting tens of thousands of simultaneous viewers. Overall, streaming viewers watched an average of 55 minutes of footage throughout the weekend, organizers said. Twitter was key to the tournament's online popularity, with the names of the four finalists in Sunday's Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition tournament all becoming worldwide trending topics simultaneously. 2,400 competitors and thousands of fans attended the tournament in person at Las Vegas' Rio Hotel and Casino, playing and watching matches in titles including Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue Continuum Shift 2. Sponsors for the tournament, who were promoted heavily during the streaming coverage, included Capcom, THQ, Namco Bandai, Atlus, MadCatz and PlayStation Home. Gamasutra sister site GameSetWatch highlighted some memorable moments from the weekend's competition, including an unexpected Street Fighter IV run by American Latif and an eight-year-old Marvel vs. Capcom 3 prodigy.