Capcom's Decision To Host Street Fighter League And Capcom Cup Finals Via Pay-Per-View Catches Development Team By Surprise

Street Fighter 6 has been a hit for Capcom, generating sales (5 million copies sold, as of June 2025) and engaging a new generation of fighting game fans in Japan. For western audiences, the game is popular, but the term "eSports" has always been a controversial one in regards to fighting games. In a surprise, two of Capcom's major tournament streaming events, Capcom Cup 12 and Street Fighter League (March 11th through the 15th) will pay for live venue sitting, but also charge a paywall for the ability to watch the finals via streaming. Capcom Cup 12 will be ¥4000 ($26USD), and ¥6000 ($40USD) for the bundle.

While PPV streaming has been commonplace for Japan's Street Fighter tournaments, this move is seen as widely controversial among western fighting game fans. The decision even caught Street Fighter 6's director Takayuki Nakayama by surprise. Taking over the series' production towards the final season of Street Fighter V's tenure, Nakayama and Shuhei Matsumoto spearheaded the direction of SFV into a successful Capcom Pro Tour, riding that momentum into SF6. The director took to social media and spoke about how their eSports division and the game production division did not correlate on this decision.

I'm really torn over this rejected concept #5—the "whole gang assembled" vibe (with last time's winner JP leading the pack) is great, huh? The dev team is a completely separate unit from the eSports division, so we're only handling the main art and merch illustrations

Prominent fighting game player and content creator Brian_F replied, leading to a rather informative discussion regarding the disconnect between monetization ideas Capcom presented during Street Fighter V compared to how Street Fighter 6 has been governed:

Doesn't it seem strange that the esports division and dev team seem so entirely disconnected? Perhaps different monetization strategies could have resulted with collaboration, rather than just charging such a high price for streaming Capcom Cup

Nakayama responds:

It may sound strange, but it's true. Revenue targets and assigned tasks differ fundamentally by department. Even the development team was surprised by this announcement（At least Matsumoto and I were shocked at the venue）That said, since this matter occurred within the same company, we are currently discussing it. We apologize for any concern this may have caused.

For example, the initiatives we implemented in the previous title. That was a proposal from the development team—it was tough but fun. Since then, the organization has grown significantly, and various departments have been established. My main responsibilities now are improving the game content, enhancing the quality of merchandise and collaborations, and working on movies and video projects. I'll keep discussing ways to improve things, even just a little, with other departments.

And we developers truly cherish every single person who plays our games. Thank you always

Nakayama indicated that if these statements get him into any kind of trouble, he'll delete the comments.

Further speculation indicates that Capcom has evaluated the decision to branch the eSports market beyond Japan, and based on this endeavor, perhaps they don't see the other markets as fiscally viable enough to invest those resources. The fighting game community has commonly been a grassroots movement, starting at locals before venues like Wednesday Night Fights (founded by American Street Fighter competitive legend Alex Valle and Daniel Tan in 2009), which led to the creation of and CEO (Community Effort Orlando) in 2010, during the popularity of Street Fighter 4 and Combo Breaker in 2015, a period that is commonly revered as breathing new life into fighting games.

With recent Capcom Pro Tour Champions being from various regions (Taiwanese player UMA winning Capcom Cup X, Dominican player MenarD winning EVO 2025), along with top North American players like Punk, iDom, and Dual Kevin regularly placing in runnings, this move to make Street fighter 6 more insular to Japan and alienating the rest of the world may be disastrous.

For a broader look from Brian_F into this exchange, here's a prominent breakdown, as well as some further insight into Street Fighter 6's current state, he goes into better detail:

Credit: Brian_F Clips