2018 was the debut year for the popular Arc System Works and Bandai Namco fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ at the Evolution Championship Series.
However, the new game was able to make history in its very first appearance at EVO, as the viewership for EVO 2018 was able to push Dragon Ball FighterZ during its grand finals that saw Echo Fox player Dominique "SonicFox" McClean defeat his rival of Goichi "GO1" Kishida in front of a packed crowd.
According to a report from streaming analytics platform GitHyp, Dragon Ball FighterZ hit a peak EVO 2018 viewership of 257,805 concurrent viewers. These extraordinary Sunday Championship viewing numbers not only made Dragon Ball FighterZ the most watched game at the fighting game event 2018, but also allowed the Dragon Ball game to claim the title of most watched main event in the history of the event on Twitch in its very first appearance at the prestigious fighting game event.
It was an impressive comeback story for the newcomer to the popular fighting game event to claim the EVO 2018 viewership crown, as Street Fighter V collected more than double the viewing numbers than the Dragon Ball based fighting game throughout the first two days of EVO 2018.
Unfortunately for Street Fighter V, its much later start time on Sunday compared to the prime time slot of DragonBall FighterZ, which included the superstar grand finals matchup of SonicFox and GO1, was not able to overtake the new title on the block when it came to viewership for this year's Evolution Championship Series.
Delivering an adrenaline pumping grand finals match between two of the fighting game community's very best players in SonicFox and GO1 and claiming the record for highest viewership for an EVO main event on Twitch, Dragon Ball FighterZ had an extremely impressive debut at the highly regarded fighting game event in EVO 2018.
(cover photo courtesy of ESPN)
