The announcement that the Capcom Cup 12 Finals and Street Fighter League (SFL) World Championship would be streamed live via pay-per-view has been met with mostly negative reception by fans. According to Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama, this decision was made by Capcom’s esports division and not the development team, who seem to have been unaware until the public announcement.
Responding to an X post by professional Street Fighter player Brian “Brian_F” Foster (which itself is a response to one of Nakayama’s older posts about Street Fighter’s development team being separate from the esports division), Nakayama explained that revenue targets and tasks differ between Capcom’s departments, which seems to result in decisions not being exchanged between all parties.
As a result, Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto were “shocked” at Capcom’s announcement about the new pay-per-view tickets. The two developers were present at Tokyo Game Show 2025 (where the announcement was made), but they were not part of the company’s on-stage showcase.
While pay-per-view tickets increase profitability and offset the costs of hosting these large events, they also add a barrier to entry for those who want to enjoy watching fighting games live. People who can’t afford tickets or have no access to them are effectively barred from experiencing the excitement of finales alongside the community.
However, there is still hope for those who want to watch these events for free as they happen. According to Nakayama, Capcom is currently conducting an internal discussion (which includes the dev team and esports division) about how to approach Street Fighter tournaments. That said, it seems Nakayama is potentially making a risky move by publicly tweeting about all this, as he comments in a follow-up post that “he knows he might be making ‘some bad moves as an employee,’ but he feels sorry that this whole pay-per-view fiasco had to happen.”
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