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Most Popular Competitive MK Videos From the Streaming Era, Separated By Game

CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Did some research this weekend to help some friends, and I thought the results were interesting. To keep things uniform, I'm only listing actual unedited competitive play here; no Youtubers (unless they were streaming a competitive FT-number set), trailers, compilations or hype videos, etc. Just archived raw tournaments, exhibitions, and streamed 1v1 sets.

Obviously we don't have historical data yet for the biggest MK1 events, like Final Kombat and EVO yet — but once we're a few years past them, it'll be interesting to look back and see how they compare. As of now, the top MK1 video is the CEOTaku 2023 MK1 Top 8, which has 1.1 million views in 8 months.

(A quick note: Some of these vids can have tricky titles or be hard to find. So if I missed anything, let me know, and I'll make corrections). Here they are:

MK9
  1. Perfect Legend vs. Tom Brady | Powerup 2011 - 1.6 million views
  2. Perfect Legend vs. CD Jr. | EVO 2012 - 1.2 million views
  3. EVO 2012 Top 8 - 785K views
  4. SonicFox vs. Dab | EVO 2014 Side Tournament - 706k views
  5. REO vs. DJT | EVO 2013 - 528k views
  6. SonicFox vs. Dab | EVO 2014 Side Tournament - 424k views
  7. Perfect Legend vs. REO | EVO 2011 - 304k views

MKX
  1. SonicFox vs. MIT | Fatal 8 Exhibition - 3.3 million views
  2. SonicFox vs. Scar | ESL Pro S2 - 1.6 million views
  3. SonicFox vs. MIT | Fatal 8 Exhibition - 1.6 million views
  4. KillerXinok vs. Scar | Combo Breaker 2018 - 1.4 million views
  5. SonicFox vs. PerfectLegend | 13-0 Exhibition - 906k views
  6. Sonic Fox vs. DJT | TCW 2015 - 851k views
  7. Ninjakilla vs. SonicFox | Online Callout Set - 826k views
(Honorable mention: although it's technically not an unedited tournament video, the "Fatal 8 Best Moments" compilation video has 1.6 million views, which is cool)


MK11
  1. SonicFox vs. aF0xyGrampa | Combo Breaker 2019 - 13 million views *currently the most-viewed competitive MK video
  2. SonicFox vs. Ninjakilla | Final Kombat 2020 - 6.5 million views
  3. SonicFox vs. Dragon | ECT 2019 - 4.5 million views
  4. SonicFox vs. Scar | Combo Breaker 2019 - 3.2 million views
  5. Combo Breaker 2019 Top 8 - 3.0 million views
  6. SonicFox vs. Ninjakilla | ECT 2019 - 1.9 million views
  7. SonicFox vs. Tekken Master | WePlay WUFL S1 - 1.5 million views

Analysis

MK11 Matches Have the Highest Overall Viewship

Among competitive Mortal Kombat games, MK11 is the undisputed top Youtube viewership game. I was actually surprised to find that it was this one-sided, as we all know what the core MK11 community went through. But among the entire community of people who watch compeitive mortal kombat titles, it's not even close. Sonic vs. Foxy at Combo Breaker has as many views as the top 5 MKX and MK9 videos put together, which is interesting.

Sonic Fox's Draw is Undisputed

No surprise here, but it's still pretty amazing to note how many of the most popular competitive Mortal Kombat videos have Sonic Fox's name attached to them. However, the draw is highest when Sonic is paired with a well-known rival. Outside of that, PL's matches are the second-biggest draw in terms of viewership of competitive events, followed by REO.

The Top Competitive MK11 Video Is Popular Enough to Rival Casual Content

This was another interesting revelation. Typically all the videos in double-figures millions of views are casual. For example, the most popular MK9 video, a compilation of fatalities, has 45M views in 13 years. The Top MKX video, the official game trailer, has 26M views in 10 years. The top MK11 video, CoryxKenshin's playthrough of story mode, has 32M views. MK11 is the first game to have actual competitive gameplay cross into the double-digit millions mark, and Sonic/Foxy's match is in the Top 10 MK11 videos overall.

Storylines Matter

A lot of the most-watched videos are based around rivalries. Whether it's Ninja vs. Sonic, PL vs. CD Jr./Tom, REO vs. DJT, or Sonic vs. Dragon/Scar, the numbers show that people love to watch a set with a story behind it. This parallels things we've seen in other communities, like The Smash Bros. documentary reviving the Melee scene. If anything, it suggests that if we want to grow viewership. we should invest more time into building up our players and the storylines behind their matches, because at bigger numbers, it matters far more than the meta at the time.

Exhibitions and Unusual Moments are Popular

Content based around special exhibitions or unusual events ranks fairly well. Fatal 8 accounts for a large number of the views from MKX, and there are 2 beef sets in the Top 6 MKX Youtube videos. A couple of side tournaments have done well in viewership even without being a main game at their events.
 
Jynks

Jynks

some heroes are born, some made, some wondrous
it's strange... I actually prefer pools and top64 than top8. Once you get into top 8 it is only 8 people, 8 characters, often some mirrors... I just find it more fun watching the pools and the top64 where there is more variaty and stuff. Often I don't even watch the end of the events unless I hear there is something super cool that happened.. but I often watch every match of pools.

That Tekken Master v Sonic fox top 8 is a good example of the top 8 being so much worse to watch than the pools was.
 
Felipe_Gewehr

Felipe_Gewehr

Twinktile
I find this very interesting. MK11 is frequently labeled as the most boring MK (from the NRS era) to watch - a sentiment I share myself. It seems the numbers say otherwise.
 
ReD WolF

ReD WolF

Lord of the Drip
Great videos. I'm surprised that CDjr vs Tyrant Jax mirror (MK9 era) was not on the list. I believe it was at MLG Anaheim the night before the tournament. god tier match
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
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ReD WolF said:
Great videos. I'm surprised that CDjr vs Tyrant Jax mirror (MK9 era) was not on the list. I believe it was at MLG Anaheim the night before the tournament. god tier match
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Yeah. I actually had to look that one up when I made the list, and it was only around 46k views in 12 years.

The DJT/Brady mirror has even less with 36k between the two videos.

It’s interesting how something that’s really important to a select group of people sometimes doesn’t translate to a wider audience. Studying the numbers has made me rethink a lot of assumptions I had about what people tune into.

If a popular channel were to repost the Jax mirror with an explainer about who both players were, and why the set mattered, I bet it’d have far more views than it does now. But the wider public was not introduced to Tyrant even though he was such an exciting player.
 
LEGEND

LEGEND

YES!
COVID heavily Inflated all viewership for years, and for exactly the same timeframe where MK11 was being played. Not really a mystery.
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
LEGEND said:
COVID heavily Inflated all viewership for years, and for exactly the same timeframe where MK11 was being played. Not really a mystery.
Click to expand...
These videos are largely from 2019, and the Covid shutdowns started on March 15th 2020.

Even the Final Kombat video from 2020 is pre-lockdown, on March 8th.

Not to mention that Covid basically killed the offline/major hype altogether for two years, and most people switched to watching online events.
 
LEGEND

LEGEND

YES!
CrimsonShadow said:
These videos are largely from 2019, and the Covid shutdowns started on March 15th 2020.

Even the Final Kombat video from 2020 is pre-lockdown, on March 8th.

Not to mention that Covid basically killed the offline/major hype altogether for two years, and most people switched to watching online events.
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weird post. Do you have special access to see the timeline of when views occurred for a video?

Limited offline events to watch would only further prop up the viewership of the ones that did happen.
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
LEGEND said:
weird post. Do you have special access to see the timeline of when views occurred for a video?

Limited offline events to watch would only further prop up the viewership of the ones that did happen.
Click to expand...
Special access, no. But you can check the youtube metrics on sites like SocialBlade and see that, for example, the views on channels like Spuns (who posted a few of the most-watched videos) have been extremely consistent for multiple years, including after everyone went back to work. So I think it's a stretch to say that the archives had more views just because people were at home.
 
Marlow

Marlow

Premium Supporter
Premium Supporter
I wonder how much of it is just growth of the scene, or growth of people watching/streaming online videogames. How much of the growth from MKX to MK11 is relative to the growth of other online fighting games like Tekken or Street Fighter.

BTW, if anyone is interested in the Economcis of gaming, NPR/Planet Money/The Indicator just finished up a series looking at the economics of gaming. I think Sonic Fox was even quoted/provided audio interview for the story.

 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Marlow said:
I wonder how much of it is just growth of the scene, or growth of people watching/streaming online videogames. How much of the growth from MKX to MK11 is relative to the growth of other online fighting games like Tekken or Street Fighter.

BTW, if anyone is interested in the Economcis of gaming, NPR/Planet Money/The Indicator just finished up a series looking at the economics of gaming. I think Sonic Fox was even quoted/provided audio interview for the story.

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It's a good question. A lot of times the growth of the bigger audience is so different from the growth of the core scene.

For example, the most watched Street Fighter video ever is Justin Wong vs. Daigo at EVO 2004, which has 14 million views in 18 years. That's pretty much the most legendary video in all of FGC history, and it only has a million more views than Sonic and Foxy playing each other in 2019.

Nothing from SF4 or SF5 comes close to that.

The most-popular competitive SFV video seems to be Snake Eyez vs. Justin Wong, which has 1.1 million views in 7 years.

The biggest SF4 video I can find is Momochi vs. Daigo at Stunfest 2015, which has 1.6 million views in 9 years. So it seems like SF actually went backwards (or at best didn't grow much) on Youtube across multiple titles.

The most watched video ever from Capcom Cup (this year's Top16) has 751k views in 3 months. That's good and shows growth, but not mind-blowing, especially since it includes all the live-stream views, since it's Capcom's official Youtube stream archive (which these MK videos are not). The next biggest video from CapCup is a 10-year old video of Chris G vs. Sako with 693k views.

Anyway, this means two things. One, it shows how the order of importance in the FGC is actually backwards from the bigger world outside it. And two, it tells us that the growth potential for our scene is actually huge, if we start reaching out to more of the fans (like Smash Bros did).
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
After taking a look at the data for other games, it's going to be interesting to see what the $2 million Capcom Cup run does for Street Fighter's Youtube numbers.

Theoretically handing someone a $1 million grand prize should make for massive social media attention. But it seems clear that they really need to do something to reconnect with their fanbase, as even Tekken is doing better than SF on Youtube (there are more TTT2/T7 videos in the 1-2M range)

Tekken's biggest is the 1-minute clip of Super Akouma vs. Chukirin at TheMixup 2019. While it's technically not a full set or tournament, this is kind of Tekken's "Daigo parry" video, the most popular moment for the game overall with 8.3 million views.

The biggest full competitive play videos I could find:
Tekken viewership definitely grew from TTT2 to T7, moreso than SF in the same time period.

But it also just reinforces how big the explosion of competitive MK was for the global audience with MK11. The leap in viewership from MKX to MK11 dominates every other franchise.
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Krasiox said:
Would be hype if you inclued Injustice as well, great post rgardless!
Click to expand...
No problem.

For the Injustice series, the most-watched video of all time is HoneyBee's comeback against Raptor in Injustice 2, with 1.9 million views. It's one full game, but I'll list it separately, since it's not really a full set. There's also Super's compilation of Injustice 2 matches from EVO 2017, with 1.1 million views.

Other than that, here's what I could find:

Injustice: Gods Among Us
  1. EVO 2014 Top 8 - 446k views
  2. Sonic Fox vs. Pig of the Hut | EVO 2014 - 434k views
  3. DJT vs. KDZ | EVO 2013 - 376k views
  4. EVO 2018 Top 8 - 298k views
  5. REO vs. Tom Brady | Civil War 2013 - 250k views
  6. SonicFox vs. Honeybee | Winter Brawl 2015 - 181k views
  7. SonicFox vs. MIT | EVO 2014 - 152k views
  8. Slayer vs. Chris G | EVO 2013 - 152k views
Injustice 2
  1. SonicFox vs. Rewind | INJ2 Pro Series Finals 2018 - 1 million views
  2. SonicFox vs. Honeybee | War of the Gods 2017 - 876k views
  3. Gross vs. Tweedy | Combo Breaker 2018 - 541k views
  4. SonicFox vs. Scar | CEO 2017 - 531k views
  5. INJ2 Pro Series Finals 2018 Winners Top 16 - 389k views
  6. INJ2 Pro Series Finals 2018 Top 8 - 368k views
  7. SonicFox vs. Slayer FT10 - 354k views
 
SaltShaker

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
CrimsonShadow said:
After taking a look at the data for other games, it's going to be interesting to see what the $2 million Capcom Cup run does for Street Fighter's Youtube numbers.

Theoretically handing someone a $1 million grand prize should make for massive social media attention. But it seems clear that they really need to do something to reconnect with their fanbase, as even Tekken is doing better than SF on Youtube (there are more TTT2/T7 videos in the 1-2M range)

Tekken's biggest is the 1-minute clip of Super Akouma vs. Chukirin at TheMixup 2019. While it's technically not a full set or tournament, this is kind of Tekken's "Daigo parry" video, the most popular moment for the game overall with 8.3 million views.

The biggest full competitive play videos I could find:
Tekken viewership definitely grew from TTT2 to T7, moreso than SF in the same time period.

But it also just reinforces how big the explosion of competitive MK was for the global audience with MK11. The leap in viewership from MKX to MK11 dominates every other franchise.
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It also seems like, as you'd probably expect anyway, that the highest numbers most of the time come in the first year of the game vs the last or later years. So a good push in the effort feels like it should be on overdrive in that first year to try to maximize expanding the scene and potential players who might wanna try to bridge from casual to competitive.
 
SaltShaker

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
Arqwart said:
Watching MK11 stuff back and BOY am I glad we're free of Joker, Cetrion, and Jacqui. As much as I complain about Johnny in MK1, I'll take him a thousand times over that trio.
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Screw that. Certrion and Jacqui (and Cassie) were the best things about MK11. I'd rebuy the game in full to have them back and strong lol.
 
Kiss the Missile

Kiss the Missile

Red Messiah
Watching competitive MK11 again, there isn't a single shade of rose that could tint these glasses. Watching stagger throw stagger throw, finally get a launch then lolbreakaway.

I despise MK11's meta. Watching Fujin do that same fucking string into that same combo, into the same wind push, wind push, ex wind push.

Fuck dude, I hated that game with a passion. Genuinely makes me appreciate MK1 so much more
 
kabelfritz

kabelfritz

Noob
Jynks said:
it's strange... I actually prefer pools and top64 than top8. Once you get into top 8 it is only 8 people, 8 characters, often some mirrors... I just find it more fun watching the pools and the top64 where there is more variaty and stuff. Often I don't even watch the end of the events unless I hear there is something super cool that happened.. but I often watch every match of pools.

That Tekken Master v Sonic fox top 8 is a good example of the top 8 being so much worse to watch than the pools was.
Click to expand...
yes, top 64 to top 8 is often full of great players maining chars outside of the top tiers
 
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