Gamers lost their minds for the Evo fighting-game tournament on Twitter

Gaming has a few huge competitive events every year, and the biggest fighting-game tournament sent gamers into a tizzy over the weekend.

More than 250,000 people tuned in to watch the finals of the Ultra Street Fighter IV event yesterday evening at the Evo fighting game tournament. That is a huge crowd, and they were buzzing on social media. Yesterday alone, fans tweeted about Evo more than 70,000 times, according to social media data website Topsy. Street Fighter and Super Smash Bros. racked up around 20,000 individual tweets each. The esports industry is on its way to generate $465 million by 2017 from sponsorships, advertising, and ticket sales, and with this kind of attention, fighting games will play a major part in that growth.