Smash World Tour cancelled

[Ojisama]

The 2022 Smash World Tour (SWT) has come to an abrupt halt as Nintendo tell the organisers "You can no longer operate."

The biggest e-sports tour in the world is now in complete disarray. The prize pool for 2022 was estimated to be $250,000, and it was expected to rise to $350,000 for 2023. The events had over 325,000 entrants in 2022 and had already organised over 6,400 live events worldwide.

SWT has ended up in a huge financial hole, since so many bookings and plans for the events had already been made. This was mentioned in the cancellation statement.

"We don’t know where everything will land quite yet with contracts, sponsor obligations, etc — in short, we will be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to Nintendo’s actions. That being said, we are taking steps to remedy many issues that have arisen from cancelling the upcoming Smash World Tour Championships — Especially for the players. Please keep an eye out in the coming days for help with travel arrangements. Given the timeline that we were forced into, we had to publish this statement before we could iron out all of the details. All attendees will be issued full refunds."

In 2021, Nintendo teamed up with Panda to launch a series of competing, officially licensed, events. SWT has been operating without a license in the past, but with approval from Nintendo. Now, that seems to have all gone out of the window. SWT applied for a license in April for the 2022 season, but Nintendo refused to issue one on the grounds that SWT failed to comply with Health & Safety requirements and failed to meet the standards set for being an internal partner with Nintendo.

Some fans have already taken to social media to express their upset, with some saying that they will have nothing to do with the "Official" Panda events.


Source - Kotaku via MSN

[GraceMellody]

I don’t get why nintendo are so against third party smash tournaments when their own are so underwhelming.