On Sunday February 3rd, 2019 one of the biggest events of the year happened, the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is one of the largest television events. Every year millions turn on their T.V to watch it. However on Twitch.tv while millions were watching the Super Bowl around over 150,000 spectators were viewing Genesis 6, one of the biggest Fighting game tournaments only second to events like EVO.

Genesis 6 consisted of three games that were streamed throughout Sunday. One of which was Smash Bros Melee which was streamed during the Super Bowl, starting the first match of top 8 at 6:30 and ending at 10:30. Now most would wonder why host such a big tournament during the Super Bowl? Now of course the target demographic of the Super Bowl is vastly different than that of Genesis 6 but often times the Super Bowl is treated as an event the whole family can watch together. Some people even host Super Bowl parties, especially if the team they support year round is competing.

Now of course there is the fact that Genesis 6 is on Twitch, a popular free streaming platform, which makes it accessible to anyone interested. While this makes Genesis easier to access, the Super Bowl is a sort of American tradition within media and our culture. The Super Bowl is heavily advertised and even ran ads on Twitch prior to the actual game. However while many within the U.S may tune into the Super Bowl, Genesis 6 is streamed worldwide. This is most likely why the audience stayed so large.

Most streams average around 5,000 concurrent viewers, larger streamers can break to around 60,000 viewers, but the largest streamers can go beyond 100,000 viewers. While Genesis 6 didn’t make it past 200,000 viewers and certainly didn’t beat Major E-leagues record high 1.1 million concurrent viewers, it’s still surprising that on Super Bowl Sunday around 150,000 people sat around and watched fighting games instead of Tom Brady.