Evo is trying to kick off some world warrior ambitions” General manager Rick Thiher speaks on the biggest video game tournament going global
Earlier this year, we saw the biggest open bracket video game tournament conclude – Evo 2024. With over 16,000 tournament entrants and many spectators alongside them, Evo made clear to the Las Vegas crowd that it’s not going away any time soon. Or, well, you could argue it said the opposite! Not in terms of a permanent goodbye, but more of a holiday abroad, as Evo international events in France and Signapore were announced live during the Sunday finals.
I wanted to learn more about this planned escapade beyond the shores of the USA and Japan, about how the countries were picked and how this’ll change the event for better or worse. To do so, I sat down with Rick “The Hadou” Thiher to chat about the announcement, and what this means for the Evo brand.
VG247: How long has Evo International been in the works?
Thiher: We started talking about international expansion right around Evo Japan 2023, when that looked like it was going to be the right thing to do.
VG247: How long did you come to that conclusion, that it was the right thing to do?
Thiher: One of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve got over the years is how difficult it is to get to one of the existing Evo events, and how difficult it is to go to an event outside of your region in general. While we want to keep making destination events, they need to be accessible in order to maintain this idea that Evo is for a global community.
VG247: You noted during Evo that the tease was put out there a bit too early, it was announced at Evo 2023, then a bit later you popped up on camera to say you were a bit too enthusiastic. So what’s the story there? Any bumps in the road?
Thiher: It wasn’t really delayed or [hit] bumps. I’ll be honest, I was on stage, and in a moment of excitement about that stage and overcoming some stage fright, went for a crowd pop. So, I teased that we were going somewhere new, knew that would be well received, and then had to step back and think about how we weren’t all the way down the path of preparation for announcing the locations is a way that we wanted to. We were working on a multi-year road map where we could announce dates and locations in a kind of Marvel in Hall H moment. Instead, I put out a tease that became an announcement of an announcement, until we finally got here where we executed it in the way it should have been executed. I think that moment was worth waiting for, and a great reminder about working for a very large brand that’s important to a lot of people, rather than just me on stage with a microphone.
VG247: How did you end up landing on France and Singapore? Obviously those countries have a legacy in terms of fighting games – especially France!
Thiher: So with France, we wanted to follow up on the successful relationship in the United States and Japan with a tourist travel location, and a well-established regional FGC. Something that would combine with us to create a scaled-up, new rally-sized event. Thanks to the efforts of UFA, The Mix Up, XSB, Red Bull Kumite, alongside all the other events in France and Europe as a whole, we know there’s an established community to build with. Add that with critical local partners like Webedia and France became a location that we were confident the kind of experience Evo is known for can be delivered. Add in Evo champions, production teams, ambassadors, publishers, Damascus, and all the people calling France home, it just felt like the right place at the right time.
For Singapore, the different approach. We want Evo to open up its expectations. We want to still work on destination events, but we want to start putting together things at different scales, that are slightly different experiences that have a creative prioritisation on spotlighting and growing FGC just from an awareness standpoint. When we were looking at the map, you could see Capcom was in Singapore with the recent super-premiere events, you’ve got the legacy of SEAM before the pandemic (a popular event that sadly shuttered as a result of the COVID pandemic), there’s an excited tourism board in Singapore. There are also former Evo champions there, like Xian who’s currently running the Versus Vortex channel with Mike Ross, all highlighting Singapore. So if Evo can add to those efforts, maybe we can establish a new international hotspot for the FGC, that expands on its history and what Evo can be in the market. That feels important to me, as Evo is trying to kick off some world warrior ambitions.
VG247: For both countries it certainly appears from what you’ve said to be a collaborative effort. Will these events be run by mostly a roaming Evo team, or will it rely heavily on local teams and infrastructure?
Thiher: Local execution partners – like Webedia for Evo France – and the local FGC is integral to being able to execute an Evo event. The Evo team is not large enough to run all these shows on its own, across the globe. I definitely don’t speak all the languages needed to do that effectively (laugh)!
VG247: There’s been some discussion as to whether expanding towards more Evo tournaments will devalue Evo Vegas as a crowning event across the world. What are your thoughts on that? Is there merit to those concerns?
Thiher: There’s always merit to concern, but I think Evo Japan has shown to be additive to the prestige of Evo in Las Vegas. When I look at sports and sports entertainment events that have ecosystems sustaining them, I see parallels to Evo Las Vegas with Wimbledon or WrestleMania. I don’t think tennis having a circuit of prestigious events has devalued its most historic one! Instead, I think it created a variety of individual and collective achievements to be excited for, that actually support Wimbledon’s prestige. On a sports entertainment side – particularly as a wrestling fan – Summer Slam and the Royal Rumble don’t hamper my enthusiasm for WrestleMania.They drive it up!
It’s the road to WrestleMania. So I’m excited to bring that to Evo, because seeing someone like Arslan Ash win multiple Evo events in a single year was this dramatic achievement that everyone was excited for. That was already very difficult with just Las Vegas and Tokyo on the map. So going to another location in 2025, and a step beyond that in 2026… I’m really excited to see if any player can achieve that, and have what I think would be an incredible celebration around them for the scale of that achievement.
VG247: You’ve expressed the merits of picking France and Singapore. Were there any countries that didn’t make the cut this time around, that we might see in the future?
Thiher: I think there is a wealth of really exciting places in the world, and there’s an incredible amount of super, super engaged fighting game communities worldwide. I would love Evo to be in a position where we could visit all of them at once. I don’t have the bandwidth and resources to do that – I’m a little worried about my bandwidth trying to handle four of these at one time! Yes, there are places that didn’t make the cut this go around, but the cool thing about Evo having this world warrior ambition is that they might be able to come around in the future.