It’s officially summer, and it seems like an exciting time to be following Melee tournaments. We’re two weekends fresh from Tipped Off, SSBMRank has confirmed that it’s returning for another summer, and we have CEO coming up, right around the corner. Besides, Mango won a tournament, which, to most people in the scene, is a sign that something’s going right.
I’m not going to talk about Mango’s win though – nor am I going to speculate on people’s rankings. Instead, I’ll be zooming out a bit to talk about a topic I often like bringing up in this column: major attendance. Earlier this year, I wrote about promising attendance trends at majors, so I want to reexamine the numbers as they appear right now, and I also want to see if they could hold up by the end of the year.
In today’s Monday Morning Marth, I’ll first, I’ll examine what major attendance has looked like in other Summer SSBMRank periods, as well as what it looks like right now. Following that, I’ll explain how this has shifted in the second half of each ranking period’s year (which I will roughly dub “winter” seasons; I know this is not the most precise terminology – bear with me here). Afterwards, I’ll look at 2024 and make predictions for how the year’s attendance trends could shape up by the end of December.
What have the first halves of each SSBMRank season looked like?
I’ve mentioned my gripes with Liquipedia before, but keep in mind that this isn’t a categorical opposition to Liquipedia – I’m friends with many people on the volunteer team; they’re more like comradely disagreements. In fact, I happen to believe Liquipedia still offers the best publicly available definition for major, and I’ve used this website’s definition accordingly to track down major attendance for previous “summer” ranking periods of Melee.
NOTE: For 2016, we technically did not have summer rank; we instead had Tafokints’ Summer Top 30. However, it is close enough to a summer ranking period that I wanted to count it. ADDITIONALLY, because “open major” attendance is the thing I’m interested in here, I have excluded Summits and other exclusive invitationals. Also, keep in mind that my numbers do not account for repeat attendance. This is because the number of people who attend multiple majors in a season of Melee is typically pretty small; mainly players with nonzero or outright guaranteed chances of being ranked. One final note: I kept majors strictly tied to their SSBMRank ranking period; not necessarily where they were in the calendar year. For example, Don’t Park On The Grass was counted for the 2017 “summer” season in line with when SSBMRank considered it part of a ranking period.
2024’s in a pretty interesting spot. Although our total major attendance isn’t better than last year’s summer, it’s still in the same area code. What’s particularly surprising, however, is that it’s better than any year from 2018 to 2022. This comes, mind you, despite the fact that we have one fewer summer major than 2023. In terms of average major attendance, we’re drawing out as many people as you could reasonably wish for.
Obviously though, the summer is only one period. Does attendance typically increase in the second half of most years, or does it go down? Based on how this typically shapes up, we’ll have a better idea for what the second half of 2024 could look like.
What have the second halves of each SSBMRank year looked like?
We don’t have the data on 2024 yet, but roughly speaking, most seasonal second halves tend to match or exceed their first halves. Interestingly enough, 2023 was a rare instance of a year’s total winter major attendance taking a noticeable step backwards from the prior half of the year (in part because the only classified majors after the summer rank period were Super Smash Con, Shine, Riptide, and The Big House). Per my dataset, the only other year in SSBMRank history in which this has happened is 2015, which had ten open majors in the summer period and only five in the winter period.
What Does This Mean For 2024?
With a general idea of how most Melee years work, I’m going to be making predictions on the ranges of potential outcomes for 2024. Following my initial work, I tracked the typical shifts in attendance in all the seasons. Using that as a source, I created five potential outcomes for major attendance in the second half of 2024.
In the worst possible scenario, we take a large step backward in major attendance – not too dissimilar from last year. I imagine that in this scenario, Big House doesn’t come back, Riptide fails to step up to the plate in its absence, Don’t Park On The Grass flops, and Supernova totally tanks as a byproduct of its brand switch. The same could be said, though to a much more mild degree, in the 25th percentile outcome.
Thankfully, the median outcome is more hopeful. In this scenario, we bring Melee its best winter season since 2017. All three of our aforementioned tournaments are home runs and we witness the rise of unannounced tournaments that everybody wants to go to. Maybe even some of the larger regional tournament become surprise majors. As examples, would it be so crazy to see the European SAPF, or Mexican S Factor taking another leap forward?
When we get into the best case scenarios, where everything goes right, we’re jumping into the unknown and accounting for unforeseen events of consequence. What could that be, you ask? Really, anything. The announcement of a new Smash game comes to mind as an obvious surprise that could spur greater attendance – or Melee suddenly returning to Evo. Perhaps dear friend Aiden Calvin announces “National Star League,” and unifies all the big tournaments into a surprise winter league or circuit. It’s hard to say. The current Smash calendar only has three tournaments I’d confidently say will be majors (Supernova, Riptide, Don’t Park on the Grass), and yet a lot can change. However, putting it all together, and assuming the median outcome is the one we feel most confident in, here’s what 2024 will look like in comparison to other years.
Far from the doom and gloom that we may be tempted to believe in, the truth is that Melee’s doing quite well for itself. Two years after the collapse of multiple circuits, against all the naysayers, we’re on pace to have our best year for major attendance since 2017. With a little bit of luck, we could very well enter a new renaissance period for attendance.
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