Latest News
Fan Index Reveals: The MOST Popular Gaming Character of ALL TIME
The most popular gaming character is Mario, receiving a whopping 451 points from the fan index
In second place is Sonic the Hedgehog with 394 points, receiving a staggering 59,700,700 Google searches in the last year
Legend of Zelda’s Link lands third place with 377 points, holding the largest number of Reddit mentions
The least popular gaming character is Jack from BioShock with just 48 points!
We’ve spent a lot of time at home, getting to know our favourite video games more than ever before, falling even more in love with a whole range of gaming characters. However, there is plenty of debate about which characters are the nations’ favourite!
With this in mind, experts at Stashbird.com wanted to discover the most popular gaming characters of all time from the best-selling video game franchises*. To thoroughly investigate, Stashbird.com created a gaming fans’ index by analysing the following factors:
Sales of the franchise
Average worldwide searches over the past year
Number of hashtags on Instagram
Number of Reddit mentions
Gamers’ popularity score (survey)
The top 10 most popular characters
Stashbird.com can reveal that in first place, and crowned the most popular gaming character, is Mario with a massive 451 fan index points!
Mario ranked first for franchise sales with a staggering 653,000,000 worldwide copies of Mario games sold, bagging him an easy 100 points. The fun-loving character also ranked sixth for average worldwide searches with 4,606,547 (86 points) in the past year alone! Despite these results, Mario only ranked 10th for popularity, with 45% of gamers choosing him as their ultimate favourite.
Not far behind in second place is Sonic the Hedgehog with 394 points. The extraterrestrial hedgehog ranked second for worldwide searches (59,700,000), giving him 97 points! He was voted the favourite by only 21% of gamers surveyed, however bagged himself 91 points for his 94,300 Reddit mentions.
Link from The Legend of Zelda places third, accumulating 377 points! It is no surprise as the star of the Nintendo series to have ranked top for Reddit mentions (3,920,000) and popularity score (74%), receiving 100 points for both! Interestingly, he ranked lower down for search volumes, with 1,196,200 average searches over the past year.
At number four is Donkey Kong with 354 points, scoring high with 3,930,000 yearly average searches (83 points), 570,000 Instagram hashtags (77 points) and 26,400 Reddit mentions (80 points).
To complete the 10 most popular gaming characters, the results are as follows:
5. Master Chief (Halo) 323 points, Crash (Crash Bandicoot) 323 points, Sora (Kingdom Hearts) 323 points
6. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy) 314 points
7. Pac-Man (Pac-Man) 308 points
8. Kirby (Kirby) 306 points
9. Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher) 294 points
Closing the top 10 is Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, star of four of the Assassin’s Creed games, with 291 points!
Just making the bottom 10 is Joel Miller, ranking 25th out of a possible 34 places, from the Last of Us. This is not surprising as the franchise only scored 14 points for its 24 million sales. He also scored low on Reddit searches, receiving just 29 points for his 1,670 mentions.
John Marston from Red Dead Redemption and Simon Belmont from Castlevania were both among the least popular with 94 and 74 points, respectively.
Bioshock’s Jack rounds off the bottom 10 list with measly 48 points – a staggering 403 points less than first place contender Mario.
Methodology
1. *Stashbird.com analysed the list of best-selling video game franchises that have sold at least 20 million copies and pulled the most popular/recognised character from each to compile the list of 36 most popular gaming characters of all time.
2. The team then created an index looking at several factors, including sales of the franchise, search volumes using SemRush, the number of Instagram hashtags per character and the number of mentions on Reddit.
3. Finally, to complete the index Stashbird.com surveyed 4,567 gamers worldwide to ask them to vote for their favourite from the list to give each character a popularity score.
4. Games where there is no playable main character were excluded from the list.
5. Stashbird normalised the data by using the PERCENTRANK.INC function in Excel. This function returns the rank of a value in a data set as a percentage of the data set between 0 and 1. These values were then multiplied by 100 to make the range between 0 and 100. The maximum score a character could receive was 500.This enabled the team to rank the 36 characters from most to least popular based on their total points. The data was collected on 29/02/2021 and is correct as of then.
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Affiliates
PartnerMatrix teams with Broadway Platform to roll out Agent System to PAM clients
PartnerMatrix, part of the EveryMatrix Group, has signed an exclusive collaboration with Broadway Platform, a Player Account Management platform (PAM) developed by SPRIBE, to expand distribution of the PartnerMatrix Agent System. The agreement was announced Monday, June 29th, 2026, in Malta.
Under the deal, Broadway Platform will introduce the PartnerMatrix Agent System to its clients as a tool to manage and scale offline traffic operations alongside digital affiliate activity.
PartnerMatrix said the Agent System is designed to give operators visibility and control over agent performance, commission structures and player activity within a connected environment, supporting online and offline traffic management across multiple territories.
Vahe Khalatyan, Head of PartnerMatrix, said: “We are pleased to launch this collaboration with Broadway and expand the reach of our Agent System to a wider network of operators.
“Operators increasingly need stronger control across both online and offline acquisition channels, and this collaboration helps bring that capability to more partners globally.”
Giorgi Samkharadze, Director at Broadway Platform, said: “We’re constantly looking for ways to help our partners grow more efficiently across diverse markets. The PartnerMatrix Agent System offers operators a powerful framework for managing both affiliate and agent-driven acquisition within a single ecosystem.
“As our global footprint continues to expand, particularly across emerging markets where offline traffic remains highly influential, we see significant value in providing our partners with access to scalable solutions that support sustainable growth.”
The post PartnerMatrix teams with Broadway Platform to roll out Agent System to PAM clients appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
affiliate marketing
Intelitics adds generative AI visual reporting tool for iGaming marketers
Intelitics has launched Actionable Intelligence, a generative AI reporting feature designed to let iGaming and sports betting marketing teams create custom data visualisations on demand using plain-language questions.
The company said the tool builds on Intelitics’ existing reporting stack used to track partner performance, campaign ROI and acquisition metrics. Instead of commissioning a new report or writing code, users can query the same dataset and receive a chart or visualisation in response.
Use cases cited by Intelitics include comparing partner performance by traffic source, drilling into individual campaigns, and breaking down player value by acquisition channel. Intelitics said the feature interprets iGaming and affiliate marketing terms including partners, offers, traffic sources, player value, acquisition channels, GGR and NGR, without requiring users to translate requests into SQL.
“The data our customers need to make better decisions has always been inside Intelitics,” said Allan Stone, founder and CEO of Intelitics. “Actionable Intelligence makes it accessible on their terms, with no technical skills required and no waiting for a report to be built. We designed it so that everyone on a marketing team, not just the analysts, can explore their data and act on what they find – and we built it to understand the way iGaming and affiliate marketers actually talk about their business, from partners and offers to GGR and NGR.”
On data governance, Intelitics said Actionable Intelligence runs within each customer’s Intelitics environment. The company stated that customer data is not pooled across accounts, shared with third parties, or used to train any model outside that environment, and that each visualisation is generated only from the customer’s own Intelitics data. The feature is available to Intelitics customers.
The post Intelitics adds generative AI visual reporting tool for iGaming marketers appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Brand Partnerships
Stake names UFC flyweight contender Tracy Cortez as global ambassador
Stake has appointed UFC women’s flyweight contender Tracy Cortez as a global ambassador, with the partnership set to begin in June 2026.
The company said the deal adds Cortez—currently ranked No. 8 at women’s flyweight—to its growing group of UFC athletes and ambassadors. Stake also listed Alex Pereira, Max Holloway, Merab Dvalishvili, Caio Borralho and Alexandre Pantoja among its current UFC ambassadors.
Cortez holds a 12-3 record, according to Stake, and rose through Dana White’s Contender Series in 2019. The company also referenced an 11-fight win streak during her career.
Akhil Sarin, Chief Marketing Officer at Stake, said: “Tracy Cortez is a phenomenal athlete, who we’re really excited to be partnering with in this new ambassadorial role. She has proven herself to be a real contender in the UFC flyweight division already, and as she comes into her prime, Stake is proud to support her journey.
“Tracy’s personality and competitive spirit is something which aligns with our values at Stake – she’s fun, the fans love her, and we’re looking forward to bringing a valuable partnership to MMA fans.”
Stake ambassador Tracy Cortez added: “Partnering with Stake feels like the perfect fit for this chapter of my career. This is a brand at the cutting edge of sports and entertainment, and they value the same grit and authenticity that I bring to every fight.
“I’m ready to engage with my supporters in a whole new way and take this journey to the next level together.”
The post Stake names UFC flyweight contender Tracy Cortez as global ambassador appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
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