2021 In Review

2021 In Review

As the Panda community prepares for a new and exciting year, let’s look back on some of our highlights for 2021!


Adhering to the four key pillars of Panda (Competition, Content, Community, and Charity), this past year was filled with thrilling tournament victories, exponential growth in content, and many more notable milestones.



Competition

Panda’s very own Punk has seen a dominating chain of placements in Street Fighter V tournaments throughout 2021. Including noteworthy placements, such as his 1st place victory at The Pinnacle 2021, 2nd place win at Evo 2021 Online and most recently rising to the Top 8 in 3 titles at CEO 2021.

 

 


Kizzie Kay also placed well at this year’s CEO, ending his run in 3rd place. With his cumulative placements and dynamic playstyle, Kizzie ended 2021 as one of the top Guilty Gear -STRIVE- competitors in North America! Kizzie also gave back to the Guilty Gear -Strive- community by hosting a tournament at the anime convention Nishi Fest in Arlington, Texas, where he attended as a special guest and Top 8 commentator.


Along with becoming a stellar staff member at Panda, JWong has kept busy with over 100 Online Tournament wins in 2021 across multiple fighting game titles! 


This year, our Super Smash Bros. Melee Panda players achieved back-to-back tournament wins. IBDW became Champion of the Smash Summit 12 invitational, followed by Plup earning the title of World Champion. IBDW also reached one of the greatest milestones of his Melee career when he won first place at the first offline Melee major tournament, Riptide.



Content

Panda has continued to flourish in our content on YouTube and Twitch. In 2021, we reached 150,000 subscribers and uploaded over 750 videos to our main Panda YouTube Channel. As well as launching our Panda Fighting Games channel.

 

 


Congratulations to the following Youtube channels (alphabetical order) for reaching these subscriber Milestones!

- Anna Cramling 50,000 

- HookGangGod 50,000

- Justin Wong 100,000

- Kizzie Kay 75,000

- Marss 100,000

 - Panda Main 150,000

- Punk 75,000

- SmallAnt 2,000,000

-Wadi 50,000


Community

Since the return of Bamboo Battles in March of 2021, we have held 77 Bamboo Battles to date; Supporting the Super Smash Bros. and Guilty Gear - Strive- competitive communities. You can view our weekly Bamboo Battles tournaments on our twitch channel at twitch.tv/pandaglobal every Monday and Wednesday!

 

 


In 2021, we collaborated with 42 community artists to create 42 Panda unique t-shirts, with themes spanning food to mecha. During the week of a VS line release, Panda would sell each artist’s design for one day. With some designs selling out in just under a few hours! In December, we ran a mystery VS bundles promotion, and community members were able to grab up 3 of these limited edition shirts for only $30!

 

 


In the early months of 2021, we launched the official PGstats.com website! A hub for tournament rankings, player placement records, and community map posts from around the world. Additionally, with the launch of the PGstats website came the return of the PGR official Smash player rankings. 



Charity 

One of Panda’s proudest achievements was hosting 12 charity events throughout 2021! In total, we raised over $125,000 for charity this year.


Some of our most successful charity tournaments included the Smasher’s Gambit ($10,143.55 raised) and the Nickvitational (over 100,000 raised!). We collaborated with multiple charities for various events, including five charity cups for Adorama benefitting four different charities, along with officially becoming a Premium Partner of Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

 

 


Thank you to all of our Panda community for supporting us throughout our milestones throughout 2021! We are eager to see what new adventures await us in 2022.

 

 

 

-Kathryn “Ruffian” MacPherson

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