Capcom announced that Capcom Cup 12 and the Street Fighter League: World Championship 2025 are moving forward with a pay-per-view Finals broadcast, with strict limits on co-streaming and clipping during the decisive weekend.
The Finals for Capcom Cup 12 on March 14 and SFL World Championship 2025 on March 15 will be streamed exclusively as paid content, and the Finals footage will remain behind the paywall through March 23.
The policy states that Finals footage can’t be publicly shared on streaming platforms, social media, or elsewhere without permission. Enforcement includes takedown requests for uploads and posts that violate the rules.
However, the early stages of the competition remain open for community coverage, as the Capcom Cup 12 Group Qualifier on March 11-13 can be co-streamed and clipped without any separate permissions. The SFL World Championship 2025 Qualifier on March 13 also fits these guidelines.
Anything outside these days will require special permissions and, as Capcom stated, will be upheld with prejudice. By the looks of it, any new announcements will also be barred from sharing and will only come in the form of posts on Capcom’s own social media.
The decision to go forward with a pay-per-view format has baffled the entire community ever since it was announced. Many thought that Capcom would relent if faced with low sales, but considering that the company is moving forward with this format, it’s safe to say that whether the ticket sales were satisfactory (the entire Japan adores Street Fighter and it would be entirely unsurprising if the Japanese sales alone made up for any losses), or the company is trying to make a point that this is how the Street Fighter esports is going to be moving forward.
I find Capcom’s decision to move forward with the format surprising. It’s clear what the company tries to do with this, but the approach is completely misguided. Esports has always been one of the ways to promote the game to the casual masses, and Capcom generally succeeded in this: every new Street Fighter sees widespread adoption, a massive prize pool attracts even the mainstream news outlets, and boggles the minds of those who are still in disbelief that you can make money by playing games.
Locking the most important event of the Pro Tour behind the PPV format signals that Capcom feels that it got what it could from mainstream marketing and will only face diminishing returns in the future; therefore, the company decided to monetize those who are already invested. However, I don’t see how this move doesn’t backfire: there won’t be any kind of hype for the event, and people simply won’t care about it 10 days after it ended—they will read the results and move on.
I consider this approach to be highly shortsighted, and unless Capcom reconsiders it for the next season of Capcom Pro Tour, it can severely harm the entire scene in the West. Japan will always be fine.
Capcom Cup 12 will be held at the Ryogoku Kokugikan venue in Tokyo from March 11 to March 14, with 48 Street Fighter players fighting for $1,282,000 prize pool.
Last year’s champion, Kakeru “Kakeru” Watanabe, won’t be defending his title, as he retired due to a neurological dysfunction that makes it impossible to remain a professional player. One of the favorites to win it all, Victor “Punk” Woodley, won’t participate either due to issues with his passport.
