Marcel “MontanaBlack” Eris held a big opening event on Twitch for the trading card game Pokémon TCG. With a special twist, up to 225,000 people tuned in to watch.
Note: We corrected the name of the expert “Butti” on February 7, 2025.
What kind of event was this? On February 2, 2025, MontanaBlack hosted a large Pokémon stream on his Twitch channel, where booster packs worth 15,000 euros were opened. The event featured 10 displays of the highly sought-after latest set, Prismatic Evolutions, as well as a rare 1st Edition Jungle Set as a special highlight.
The special twist is that MontanaBlack is not opening the cards for himself. Other streamers can “reserve” boosters for a few hundred euros.
In the stream, the names of the content creators were drawn randomly, and MontanaBlack, the Twitch streamer UnsympathischTV, and the trading card expert Christoph “butticards” Buttura opened the corresponding number of boosters.
The streamers then receive the cards from “their” boosters afterward – some are happy with rare specimens worth thousands of euros, while others go home empty-handed.
Viewers more than doubled through co-streaming
How did he achieve so many viewers? MontanaBlack’s stream attracted an average of over 68,000 simultaneous viewers, peaking at nearly 93,000 people. This is also an impressive accomplishment for the currently largest German streamer on Twitch: In a regular stream, he reaches an average of between 15,000 and 25,000 simultaneous viewers.
But not only MontanaBlack’s fans got to see the opening. The streamers who were also participating with some of the packs reacted live to the stream.
Those who tuned into Twitch on Sunday evening and sorted the German channels by reach would have seen this picture:
Among others, the following were present:
- EliasN97 with an average of 33,700 viewers, peaking at nearly 55,000
- Zarbex with an average of 20,500 viewers, peaking at around 53,500
- Knossi with an average of 13,800 viewers, peaking at around 24,000
So, through just these three streamers, over 130,000 additional viewers were added for MontanaBlack. Additionally, there were several slightly smaller streams, like xRohat’s with an average of 5,000 viewers. Even though the streamer does not directly benefit from these views, the hype for the next big opening is certainly guaranteed.
Here you see Knossi reacting to how Zarbex reacts to MontanaBlack opening the packs he paid for.
What is exciting about it? The idea of unboxing old Pokémon cards that might be valuable with a bit of luck in the stream is not new. There was already a huge hype about trading cards on Twitch in 2021. MontanaBlack seems to have set out to bring this trend back.
Already on January 19, 2025, he opened packs worth 24,000 euros. However, all of this is just preparation for a particularly large streaming event, where packs worth 300,000 euros will be opened. The stakes, in the form of packs, start here from 8,000 euros.
Twitch colleague Trymacs has also “gone for the packs.” He was also at the forefront of the big Pokémon hype in 2021. How it went for the streamer this time can be read here: Trymacs complains on Twitch about bad luck with the Pokémon TCG, suddenly holding one of the rarest cards in his hand
