Smash World Tour 2023 Cancelled Because Nintendo Told Them To Stop

Sad news for the 2D platform fighter community.

The Smash World Tour Championships along with the entirety of the 2023 Tour has been cancelled. This is after Nintendo told the organization before Thanksgiving night that the group can no longer operate. The company has yet to disclose reasons why the group has to shut down.

The full saga is detailed on the group’s medium post, detailing the fact that the group has lost a lot of money in the first 18 months of the tournament circuit.

“It is with an unbelievably heavy heart that we must announce that both the upcoming Smash World Tour Championships, as well as the 2023 Smash World Tour must be cancelled. 

Without any warning, we received notice the night before Thanksgiving from Nintendo that we could no longer operate. This was especially shocking given our discourse with Nintendo the past twelve months. Since then, we have been working around the clock to take the proper steps logistically, as well as to prepare this statement with proper legal guidance.

We are seriously grateful for all of the support over the years, and we are incredibly proud of what we were able to build as a community. In 2022 alone, we connected over 6,400 live events worldwide, with over 325,000 in-person entrants, making the Smash World Tour (SWT, or the Tour) the largest esports tour in history, for any game title. The Championships would also have had the largest prize pool in Smash history at over $250,000. The 2023 Smash World Tour planned to have a prize pool of over $350,000.“