Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada recently took to social media to clear up some confusion surrounding a recent interview with The Game Business. While some media outlets and social media accounts interpreted his interest in the workings of pay-per-view fighting game event livestreams as confirmation that the Tekken World Tour (TWT) might follow the same business model in the future, Harada debunked these claims, explicitly saying the event is unlikely to ever monetize streaming.
I never said a single word about wanting to turn it into paid content (I only said, “I wonder or interest how that could be achieved?”). In the first place, I am not even positive about monetization. The context and interpretation may have been created by the article, but judging from the flow of the conversation, you would have to interpret it extremely negatively to think that I was trying to make streaming paid.
In any case, it is unlikely that it will be monetized, and in fact, the operation of streaming and TWT has never fallen within the scope of our business since the very beginning (because prize money is involved, these activities have been excluded from the scope of our Japanese corporate entity).
Katsuhiro Harada, via X
Though he didn’t mention it outright, Harada’s expression of interest in paid live streaming content in the original interview likely had to do with Capcom’s decision to make its upcoming Capcom Cup 12 Finals and Street Fighter League World Championship 2025 livestream events pay-per-view. According to Capcom, the shift to pay-per-view livestreams from a once-free service was made to promote the company’s esports business “in a sustainable manner over the medium-to-long term.”
To clarify, Harada’s interest in paid streaming content only goes so far as wondering how it will be achieved. He doesn’t think TWT livestreams will ever be monetized, as they have never been a part of Bandai Namco’s business model since the beginning. Harada adds that since prize money is involved in the tournament, activities such as livestreams “have been excluded from the scope of our Japanese corporate entity.”
Longtime Tekken Marketing Producer Naoya Yasuda reiterated on Harada’s statement, commenting that the goal of TWT is to make the Tekken community (which includes the devs, fans, and players) sustainable and not to commercialize the event itself. He firmly says that the TWT Finals will never adopt a pay-per-view business model, nor was the topic ever considered or discussed within Bandai Namco.
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