This year's Pokemon World Championship series in Anaheim, California saw almost 2500 players competing over four matches. According to Chris Brown, Pokemon Company International's Global Esports manager and event producer, this means that Pokemon has the most accessible world championships in the entire game – a superlative Pokemon is proud to claim.
Accessibility is at the heart of the Pokemon brand, and it is no coincidence that the World Cup has grown to be so much more than a tournament. When Pokemon Worlds begins its development into a fank convention with next year's Pokemon XP event and moves championships on Sunday to an 18,000-seat arena, it is worth considering how the level of inclusion has favored competitive Pokemon, and why other esports should consider following the aftermath in the future.
Play Pokemon Restructured 2025 to ensure a stable future for competitive play
During a round table interview during last weekend's worlds, Brown talked about the latest changes in the Play Pokemon program for the 2025 season. Instead of qualifying via point, players instead needed to reach and maintain a certain ranked standing to earn an invitation to worlds. This change ensured that players continued to compete during each season rather than earn all their points at once, but even more important, it created a fixed number of invitations to worlds.
While this reduced the number of qualifiers in total, Brown says it was a necessary change to create consistency in the program. “It was really to help our logistics for this event to be significantly better,” he says. “Today I know how many people we want in worlds next year, and if I wanted, I could say how many would be five years from now on. I couldn't do it in the old system. It was actually very unpredictable and made our business extremely difficult.”
Brown says that the new system is optimized for player experience and that there are no plans to reduce the number of world invitations in the future. In fact, he expects the number of invitations to increase as competitive Pokémon continues to expand around the world.
Competitive Pokemon's success is bound to its availability
“We have no intention to become like any other shows that have very limited World Cup,” says Brown. “We are the most accessible world championship in play.” At 2500 competitors, Pokemon World's more players than other premiere Esports -competitions such as League of Legends World Championships (100 players), Magic The Gathering World Championship (116) or Apex Legends Global Series Championship (127 players).
2025 Pokemon TCG Championship includes 1,726 players. Pokemon VGC Championship included 608. Pokemon Go had 190 and Pokemon Unite had 160.
Pokemon invites almost ten times as many players as all other world championships out there, so when Brown refers to “other shows” he probably does not refer to anyone specific. You have to look at Evo, which is not a world championship that is only inviting, to find a game that supports more players than Pokemon in a large tournament 8,541 total players over 16 games).
Comparing EVO with Pokemon Worlds is useful here, given that they are two of the year's highest profiled events. While other games are leaning to exclusivity to give their championship gravitas, Pokemon and Evo are raised by their inclusion. Either way, you discover who is the best in the world in the end, but Pokemon is more successful in promoting its worlds as a social event as its extent allows it to facilitate so many more fans.
Competitive Pokémon flourishes, and it's time for other games to follow Pokemon's example. With only 26 invitations to get hold of this season, Disney Lorcana has one of, if not the most exclusive world championships. With the same type of wide, intergenerational appeal as Pokémon, Lorcana may not reach its potential until it includes a more accessible World Cup.
It is difficult to think of a game that would not take advantage of a wider playfield. Expansion will always be a logistical problem, but Pokémon has calculated how to facilitate more than 2,000 players in just three days. While all other esports remain in a fraction of that support, it is worth considering what inclusion has done for Pokemon and what it can do for other competition play as well.
- Created by
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Satoshi Tajiri
- First movie
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Pokemon: The first movie
- Last movie
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Pokémon The Movie: Secrets of the Jungle
- First section's air date
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April 1, 1997
- Video game
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Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Pokemon Sun and Moon, Pokemon Black and White, Pokemon Diamond and Pokel, Pokemon Diamond And Peach, Pokemon Diamond And Poke Pokes and Pokemon Diamond And Pokemon Diamond And Pookmon Diamond And Pokemon Diamond And Pokes Pokemon Diamond And Pokes Pokemon Diamond And Pokémon Diamond And Pokémon Diamond And Pokémon Diamond and White Pokemon Diamond And Pokemon Pokemon Diamond And Poke Pokemon Diamond And White. Pokémon Snap, Pokémon Masters Ex, Pokemon TCG Live
