In a move that will disappoint many fans, it was announced that the Smash World Tour Championships and the 2023 Smash World Tour have officially been cancelled.
Since the pandemic, a lot of Smash World Events have been moved online. In 2022 alone, there were up to 6,400 live events worldwide, with up to 325,000 people entering. This many people made Smash World Tour (SWT) the largest esports tour in history for any game ever.
The championships that were meant to happen soon would have had the largest prize pool of over $350,000, and people are truly devastated over the cancellations. There has been some speculation about why the cancellation occurred, but any firm reasoning has yet to be confirmed. The sudden cancellation will make the SWT lose up to thousands of dollars.
The Championships in 2023 were projected to break records and introduce many more people to this beloved game and community. The official statement that SWT has released talks about how they got to this current position. It all started with the joining and aiding with Panda Cup, and this all led us to the shutdown of the beloved tours.
While Nintendo was a great supporter of SWT, the last few months had the organizers of SWT in a tailspin. The people over at Panda Cup were attempting to undermine SWT’s efforts and steal any sort of customer base they could. Now the problems with licensing and collaboration with Panda Cup had Nintendo in an awkward position considering they were paired with both events.
By the time the Panda Cup was done, Nintendo decided to stop helping and responding to SWT. Nintendo expected SWT to only operate with a commercial license, and then SWT would not be granted one for the upcoming Championships or any activity in 2023.
Smash World Tours was given zero reasoning behind why their licensing was changed and put a stop to any events for 2023.
Smash World Tours wanted to clarify what exactly happened and was not trying to give Nintendo a bad name. Hopefully, the two can come together and bring the SWT championships back one day. SWT is currently looking for solutions, but for right now, it looks like the cancellation is a sure thing.
