Capcoms

The Capcom Cup started in 2013 with Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition as the Japanese publisher sought to professionalize and take more direct ownership of its hit fighting franchise’s competitive scene. It expanded into multi-month tours leading up to the big finals, with all of the biggest matches streamed for free online. And it’s continued that way, until now. Capcom announced this week that the 2026 finals for Street Fighter 6 will be a pay-per-view event, and fans are not happy. “No one should be deprived of the opportunity to enjoy the pinnacle of Street Fighter,” Evo 2025 winner Saul Leonardo “MenaRD” Mena II wrote on X in response to the news.

The two-time Capcom Cup champion hails from the Dominican Republic and noted, as many pros have, that locking esports behind a paywall particularly impacts fans from regions where the financial barriers are already higher. “I find it hard to accept,” he wrote. “I understand that in Japan, this is considered normal, and fortunately, the community is still able to support each other in this way. However, in many regions, including my own, there is hardly even the leeway to play this game.”

納得しがたいです

日本ではこれが普通だと理解していますし、ありがたいことにコミュニティはまだこの方法で支え合えています。

しかし、私の地域を含む多くの地域では、このゲームをプレイする余裕すらほとんどない。ストリートファイターの頂点を楽しむ機会を阻まれるべきではない。… https://t.co/DAVzvxvUWu

— WBG MenaRD🇩🇴 (@_MenaRD__) September 28, 2025

The Capcom Cup 12 Finals will take place on March 14, followed by the Street Fighter League World Championship on March 15. Both will take place live at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan Sumo Arena in Tokyo, Japan, where front row seats will cost roughly $135. In a major break with the past, however, even virtual viewership will be ticketed this time around. The pay-per-view ticket price will be roughly $40 for both days. Anyone who doesn’t want to pay will have to wait until a week later to stream the matches online for free.

The move caught many competitive Street Fighter pros by surprise. Next year’s Capcom Cup sports a $1,282,000 prize pool, unchanged from the prior year, despite the new income stream. “If this decision is final, then I hope at the very least a % of the PPV earnings be used to support the prize pool to improve the payout distribution for the players,” Arman “Phenom” Hanjani wrote on X.

The issue is that while Capcom funds the CC Finals, they absolutely do not pay to run all of the tournaments where people qualify for Capcom Cup. Individual TOs and communities in countries around the world operate those events. Capcom benefits from the hardwork of those TOs and…

— 女 Molly_Bee (@MollyAmberBee) September 29, 2025

It’s also unclear how the PPV requirement will impact the rest of the competitive scene’s content creators who traditionally co-stream events. Others have wondered why Capcom doesn’t just try to extract more money through Capcom Cup-specific in-game outfits and other cosmetics. “I don’t know why they’re not doing this anymore. I used to buy the CPT costume pack every year, everyone wins and everyone is happy,” wrote Adel “Big Bird” Anouche.

Fans are equally bewildered, pointing to all of the local events that feed into the Capcom Pro Tour but aren’t directly financed by the publisher. “I thought Capcom organized this circuit as a marketing tool for the game,” one wrote on Reddit. “Makes no sense to charge viewers to watch it. And esports is, unfortunately, still way too niche for that to be profitable.”

While Street Fighter is massive in Japan, many are worried the move to PPV for such a big event will just end up excluding people in other parts of the world. Does Capcom care? Apparently not.

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