The whole point of running an event like this in the first place is that's an enormous ad for the video game that they sell. Putting up a paywall in front of it just seems counter productive.

This isn‘t some huge event with mainstream appeal.

It is in Japan, but the whole idea is archaic anyway. Reeks of old, greedy executive BS. So short-sighted in terms of both profitability and goodwill.

I watch a lot of fgc creators and the general consensus is the game is simply so much bigger in Japan then the rest of the world and the Japanese will pay to watch it. Japanese SF6 content creators have better viewership numbers than the biggest fgc content creators like Max and Sajam. Japanese only tournaments are almost as big viewership wise as some worldwide tournaments like evo. So essentially it comes down to the majority of the audience is in Japan and because of that they can actually expect to convert a lot of that audience to pay per view because of japanese consumers habits. They already did it for street fighter league japan as well. I would assume to test the waters for this. It doesn't bode well for them internationally but a lot of Japanese companies dont really care about international audiences. Unless the international audience is too big to ignore which for street fighter 6 doesnt appear to be the case.