Now here's a thread I'm surprised doesn't exist yet, as far as I can tell: There's one for general Beyblade as a hobby, but not so much the competitive aspect of it. There seems to be a pretty sizable population gap between the casual fanbase (anime watchers, casual collectors, etc.) and the competitive community for Beyblade for some reason, and I'm a bit interested in finding out why.

Backstory (why does this thread exist?)

Spoiler (Click to View)

The competitive "pipeline", I guess, is something that I've been interested in over the past few years, especially as I was more active on my YouTube Channel. I was actually inspired to start my channel by Leo Burst in 2015, and as stated in the description, it's is one of the few English-speaking competitive Beyblade channels out there. At about 1,700 subscribers, it's among the larger competitive channels... but still very tiny compared to many of the other big-time BeyTubers like Zankye (536,000), BBG (1,240,000), and Drago Galaxy (850,000).

Due the rise of commercial social media during the late 2010s coupled with the release timing of Burst, BeyTubers saw a huge increase in popularity during the past 5 years. Again, to use Zankye as an example, his channel has existed since 2010 or 2011. In 2015 he celebrated 100,000 subscribers, and since then as of this post he has gained over 4 times that many, in about half of his channel's lifetime. Other big channels like Drago Galaxy, Super Beyblade Family, and LeftBurst didn't even exist before Burst started and they are all well over 100,000 subscribers as well. Meanwhile, the largest English-speaking competitive channel is I think Mack The Burst, who only has about 10,000 subscribers.

While larger channels with more views and subscribers will make more money, meaning that the creators can invest more into better production equipment, the fundamental difference is more than just video quality. These large channels make primarily, if not exclusively, casual content: including things like news about upcoming releases, unboxings and reviews of new Beyblades/products, and stock battles. This isn't meant as an insult at all - this type of content is clearly very popular as it's what gets these channels views and revenue. Any sort of competitive content, like combo battles/testing or tournament footage, is rare or absent, even among Beytubers who are also competitive players and at least semi-regular tournament attendees. The prominence of dF.P.At and hS.0B.At at large tournaments goes to show that competitive videos from these big Beytubers can be popular enough to influence the meta, but they just don't get made most of the time.

What I think is the weird disconnect is not the lack of competitive content. That's just a result of the real issue, which is the lack of demand for that content. Production value aside, the main audience of BeyTubers, who are in a way the 'faces' of the community, just don't seem to care about the competitive aspect of the game as much as the anime and content based on that for some reason. I've always thought that because the anime always pushes the narrative of going to tournaments, winning tournaments, and becoming the strongest blader, people would be more inspired to attend real-life tournaments, where they'd be exposed to the competitive aspect of the game, and possibly develop an interest in it, creating demand for competitive content. But that just doesn't seem to be the case for some reason, no matter how much it makes sense.

TL;DR: I was wrong to think that making competitive Beyblade YouTube videos would grow interest in the competitive scene of the game, so now I'm asking all active and former competitive players: Do you remember how exactly you got into the competitive aspect of Beyblade? Also, for any casual fans that happen to be reading this, your input is welcome too: What discourages you from getting into competitive, and is there anything that could be done, in your opinion, to make the competitive aspect of the game more appealing?

I feel like I've always technically been "into it", like even when I got my first few Beyblades 8 years ago I was trying out all these different combos to find the best one so I could beat everyone else in my friendgroup, so is it just something you either have interest in, or don't?

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Well some years ago some people at school were playing beyblade. I was into bakugan at the time but thought it was cool. I got my first bey hades h3 and went to school with it. How no one was playing anymore. The teachers must habe told them off but I didn't want to think I bought hades for nothing. I bought more and collected and eventually was looking for information about a beyblade (I forget which one) and stumbled across a wbo thread. That's how I got into beyblade and found the wbo. I was a guest for quite awhile before I actually made thus account.

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Sup Turtle
Leader of the Spryzenlightnings
I make beyblade recolors!  Check out my thread if you want one (or a few) done!
spoiler (click to view)

I loved watching the anime and was so interested by how there were tournaments and wanted to go to one. I remember watching BZK and reading the description of a video. There was a link to here, and I started reading around. I found some of kjrules17’s testing threads (and this was before he was staff, I think) and was fascinated by how it all looked. Fast forward 6-10 months and there were tournament listings for Virginia and Maryland. I ended up going to the Maryland one and I loved it.

I enjoyed being able to see so many other Bladers and being able to battle them. I noticed patterns in what people were using, had fun being around other people with the same interest as me, and got to learn a bit how the tournaments were run. Tournaments really helped keep me into the hobby, and here.

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Yes finally an epic backstory time (it’s not really lol)

My friend introduced to me to beyblade in hasbro switchstrike time. I got satomb S3 and valtryek V3 as my first beyblades. I got lots more beyblades and continued playing for a few months probably around GT .

I stopped until September of this year where I got involved since I was bored in quarantine. So then I got my first Takara tomy beyblade, Super Hyperion as I really like Hyuga. So then a few days after I searched online for beyblade tournaments since I saw a YouTube video about it and thought it would be really cool.

I found this website and saw a tournament that was beginning that same week with three spots left called “The Battle of The Roses.” I made an account and me and my brother signed up.
I went their and used Balkesh, 0, Bump, Bearing and my brother used Super Hyperion Stock.
We won red dragren venom diabolos and death diabolos. I said I would wait for another time since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to one next week but as soon as I came back home I realized how much fun I had and had to go to more.

Then I went to The Battle of the Titans and got mirage Fafnir. But didn’t do the best. I went to the next tournament and I did really good with my mirage 2s Xtend+ bearing notable bladers like cscramon, UnionAchilles, and SSJR I also got fourth on the third and fourth tournaments I ever did. I also did a classic after but I did horrible lol. I won a few more prizes like Ace Valkryie Random Layer and Dead Hades 1 High Blow’.

Ok sorry for making this a history of my wbo account but yeah without tournaments it would have been another phase that I would just pass on after a week or so. Tournaments are the only thing keeping me on here and I’m glad I m in here. Thanks to everyone

Okay, so I'm pretty casual when it comes to Beyblade. I can't really afford to grab that many, and I never participated in a tournament before. I've always been a fan since Metal Fusion back in 2010-2011. For the longest time, I kept my beyblade consumption on the casual end until very recently. Way early this year (I forgot which month), I managed to grab a couple Burst Beyblades from the Dollar Tree: Kerbeus.W.F, Roktavor.C.A, and Minoboros.O.Q (Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any more there since). They were all single packs, so I didn't have a launcher for a couple months until Spring where I grabbed Turbo Achilles.00.Dm-S. When I did, I went online to see if my purchase was a good one or a bad one. The moment I went on the official Beyblade Fandom page and started looking through all the parts, I was hooked on the Competitive Aspect. For the longest time, I had never considered that Beyblade could actually have a competitive scene, but finding out that it did fascinated me. Now, I do as much research as I can to get a firm grasp of Competitive Beyblade, and to understand the inner workings of it. Heck, even back in my metal fusion days, customization was always my favorite aspect of this game. Each part allows for different options and different techniques.

Now, about the Competitive scene and why I choose not to participate in it. Unfortunately, it's the main appeal of beyblades: the social aspect. For me, I've always lived a kind of sheltered life. I never went to any friends' houses as a kid, and I never really asked any friends to come over to my house either. As a result, I'm kind of uncomfortable around people. Not only that, but I never had a reliable mode of transport. Even to this day, only one of my relatives can drive; and he's a bit finicky about his time, so I never even attempted to bother him about anything. So I kind of treated beyblades as a "study-and-research" type activity and not a "go hang out with friends/strangers" type activity. So, even though I love competitive beyblade, and I study the craft pretty much every day, I don't think I can participate in it for a long, long time (even longer thanks to quarantine).

I, sincerely, don't know how to get others into Competitive Beyblade. The reason I love this game is likely not a common one. I'm not sure if there's a way to get people to like the competitive aspect without getting them to like the game in the first place. What makes this worst is that this isn't a video game or card game, these are Battle Tops. They're toys. I'm not sure if anyone can take our hobby seriously, and I'm even less sure they'll give the competitive scene a shot. As grim as it sounds, I think the only thing we can do is promote the competitive aspect of this game, and just hope for the best.

I first got into Beyblade in general when me and my little brother bought 1. I got Valtryek V3 and my little brother got Typhon T4. We played in a homemade cardboard stadium and I started watching the anime immediately afterwards. Fast forward a while and my collection was much bigger and my little brother became bored of Beyblades, leaving me with no one to play with. I started watching videos on YouTube and saw a YouTuber go to a tournament to test out this combo. I immediately googled "How to join a beyblade tournament" and found the WBO. I made my account and joined my first tournament. I have been competitive ever since.

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My favorite character is Free. My favorite bey is Drain Fafnir. I don't even have it but it's just so cool!

“You don’t get stronger by accepting how everyone else does things. You get stronger by finding your own path. That’s how champions are made.” – Free De La Hoya