Earlier this year, we saw the curtains fall on the largest open video game tournament, Evo 2024. With over 16,000 tournament participants and a huge audience, Evo made it clear to the Las Vegas crowd that it wasn’t going away anytime soon. Or, well, you could say it said the opposite! It wasn’t a permanent farewell, but more like an overseas vacation, as international Evo events in France and Singapore were announced live during Sunday’s finals.
I wanted to learn more about this planned trip to the United States and Japan, how these countries were chosen, and how this would change the event, for better or worse. To that end, I sat down with Rick “The Hadou” Thiher to chat about the announcement and what it means for the Evo brand.
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iGamesNews: How long have you been planning Evo International?
Thiher: We started talking about international expansion around Evo Japan 2023, when it seemed like the right thing to do.
iGamesNews: How long did it take you to come to the conclusion that this was the right thing to do?
Thiher: One of the most common pieces of feedb ack we’ve received over the years is that it’s difficult to attend existing Evo events, and it’s often difficult to attend events outside of your region. While we want to continue hosting destination events, they need to be accessible to keep Evo’s ethos of being open to a global community.
iGamesNews: You pointed out during Evo that this trailer was released a little too early, that it was announced at Evo 2023, and then a little later you popped up on camera and said that you were a little too enthusiastic. So what happened there? Any difficulties?
Thiher: It hasn’t really been delayed or [hit] Bump. To be honest, I was on stage and in the heat of the moment, I got over my stage fright and went for the crowd pop show. So, I revealed that we were going to a new place, knew it would be well-received, and then had to step back and think we weren’t quite ready to announce the location yet, which is what we wanted. We were working on a multi-year roadmap where we could announce a date and a location, like Marvel did with Hall H. Instead, I gave a teaser that turned into an announcement until we were finally here and we executed it the way it should be executed. I think that moment was worth the wait and a great reminder that we get to work for a big brand that’s important to a lot of people, and it’s not just me on stage with a mic.
iGamesNews: Why did you end up choosing France and Singapore? Obviously these countries have a long history in fighting games – especially France!
Thiher: So in France we want to continue the successful partnerships we have with the US and Japan, building tourist destinations and established regional FGCs. These events will combine with ours to create an event of scale, new scale of rallying. Thanks to the efforts of UFA, The Mix Up, XSB, Red Bull Kumite and all the other events in France and across Europe, we know there is a mature community to build with. Add to that key local partners like Webedia and France, and we believe France can deliver the kind of experience that Evo is known for. Add to that the Evo champions, production teams, ambassadors, publishers, Damascus and all those who call France home, and it feels like this is the right place at the right time.
For Singapore, we’re taking a different approach. We want Evo to push the boundaries of what people expect. We want to continue to do destination events, but we want to start putting together a mix of things on different scales that are slightly different experiences that creatively prioritize and grow the FGC from a visibility perspective. When we look at the map, you can see that Capcom hosted the recent Super Premiere event in Singapore, you can see the legacy of pre-pandemic SEAM (a popular event that was sadly shut down due to COVID-19), and there’s an excited tourism board in Singapore. There are also former Evo champions there, like Xian, who currently runs the Versus Vortex channel with Mike Ross, and they’re all highlighting Singapore. So if Evo can add to those efforts, maybe we can build a new international hotspot for the FGC, expanding on its history and Evo’s place in the market. That’s important to me because Evo is trying to kick off some of the world warrior ambitions.
iGamesNews: From what you’ve said, it’s clearly a collaboration for both countries. Will the events be primarily run by mobile Evo teams, or will it rely heavily on local teams and infrastructure?
Thiher: Local execution partners (like Webedia for Evo France) and local FGCs are integral to executing Evo events. The Evo team is not big enough to run all these events around the world on our own. I certainly don’t speak all the languages needed to do that effectively (laughs)!
iGamesNews: There has been some discussion about whether expanding the size of the Evo tournament would diminish the value of Evo Vegas as a top global event. What is your take on this? Are these concerns justified?
To that: There’s always cause for concern, but I think Evo Japan has proven to be an improvement on the prestige of Evo Las Vegas. When I look at sports and sports entertainment events that have an ecosystem to support them, I see similarities between Evo Las Vegas and Wimbledon or WrestleMania. I don’t think tennis’s having a series of prestigious events detracts from its most historic event! On the contrary, I think it creates a variety of exciting individual and collective achievements that actually support the prestige of Wimbledon. In sports entertainment – especially as a wrestling fan – SummerSlam and the Royal Rumble don’t hinder my passion for WrestleMania. They drive it!
This is the Road to WrestleMania. So I’m really excited to bring it to Evo because seeing someone like Arslan Ash win multiple Evo events in one year is an exciting accomplishment that everyone is excited about. It’s already very difficult when there’s only Las Vegas and Tokyo on the map. So to go to another place in 2025 and take it a step further in 2026… I’m really excited to see if there are any athletes who can do that, and I think they’re going to be celebrated a lot because of the scale of that accomplishment.
iGamesNews: You’ve expressed the merits of choosing France and Singapore. Are there any countries that didn’t make the cut this time that we might see in the future?
Thiher: I think there are a lot of exciting places in the world, and there are a lot of super, super active fighting game communities around the world. I hope that Evo will give us access to all of those places at once. I don’t have the bandwidth and resources to do that – I’m a little worried that my bandwidth would handle four of them at once! Yeah, there are some places that didn’t make the cut this time, but the cool thing about Evo having this kind of world fighter ambition is that they may be in the future.
