Pokémon World Champion hosts first creator-driven tournament

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While the Pokémon Company has been hosting esports events consistently since 2008, the game’s competitive side has not attracted the same attention as other titles. Wolfe Glick, the 2016 World Champion, wants to change this. In partnership with esports team Beastcoast, Glick is leading the charge to build creator-driven events that engage casual Pokémon fans.

Glick is highly ambitious — his desire to raise the bar has made him a critical figure in the Pokémon community. He began competing in Pokémon’s Video Game Championship series (VGC) in 2011. By 2016, he started a YouTube channel creating content about himself and this competitive format. The timing couldn’t have been better — that summer was the debut of Pokémon Go reigniting interest in the franchise and by August, he was crowned the World Champion.

However, Glick treated Pokémon as a hobby, not a full-time career until February 2020. 2019’s Pokémon Sword and Shield helped double his subscribers, which gave him the confidence to take the next step to further his goals. “It’s risky to be a YouTuber. The future is uncertain and the path forward would be less clear than my previous government consulting job,” Glick explained.

And then the world shut down. Glick’s timing was, once again, perfect. In March 2020, Glick had 174,000 subscribers. Since then, his channel has grown exponentially. He credits his success to experimentation with different formats (particularly a focus on video essays that made the VGC format accessible to a broad audience), a consistent upload schedule, a growing team to support him. Today, Glick is closing in on 1 million subscribers, making