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Mobile Legends Bang Bang, better known as MLBB, is one of the most famous mobile esports in the world. This game is played by 80 million people and despite being heavily inspired by League of Legends, has its own unique flavor.
In addition to the huge number of people who play MLBB, there are millions who also enjoy watching professional tournaments and betting on MLBB matches. Each year, you can follow dozens of A-tier events and a few S-tier ones. Among these tournaments, M4 World Championship is the most prestigious.
To put things into perspective, here are some stats that will give you a better idea of just how successful M4 World Championship was in 2023.
Games like Dota 2 and CS:GO have been around for more than a decade. But despite their long history, their audiences range from hundreds of thousands to around 2 million. And those are the peaks.
The International 11 had 563.000 average concurrent viewers. IEM Rio Major had 548.000. These are good numbers, but they’re dwarfed by what M4 World Championship achieved this year.
M4 World Championship took place between January 1 – 15 and featured 16 teams from the most important regions in this esport. Practically, the best of the best competed in the event. But let’s not forget that this was still an esports tournament played using mobile devices.
This may not seem very relevant given the way in which the action is watched, but it’s still an important factor because computers are regarded as cool in the gaming world while smartphones are regarded as class-B devices, mostly used by children.
Despite all that, M4 World Championship had 806.000 average concurrent viewers. At its peak, the tournament was watched by 4.27 million viewers.
These numbers are comparable to those of League of Legends’ World Championship, which had 987.000 average concurrent viewers and 5.14 million viewers at its peak. But let’s not forget that LoL is played by around 120 million people and is a PC game!
The success of M4 World Championship proves that out there there is a huge audience that is eager to watch MOBA games. And it’s not a surprise. The only surprise is that people don’t seem to have prejudices anymore against mobile devices.
The tournament had a very basic structure: 4 groups followed by playoffs. Based on what had happened at the 2021 edition of the event, Blacklist International were the team that was expected to win. And initially, it looked as though nobody would be able to stop them.
The group stage was rough for a lot of teams, including BI, who had to play a tiebreaker to secure their upper bracket spot. Eventually, they did and started their journey with a match against Team HAQ. The battle began with a long game 1 (24 mins) and a very short game 5 (11 mins). The final score was 3-2 in favor of BI.
The team went on to win two more matches with the exact same score. One against RRQ Hoshi and one against ECHO, who were the only team to finish the group stage with a perfect record: 3 W – 0 L.
In the lower bracket final, ECHO defeated RRQ and got another shot at the title. This time, they completely obliterated Blacklist International and won the best-of-7 without losing a single game.
For their victory, ECHO received $300.000 and gained a lot of new supporters.
The Grand Final of the M4 World Championship was watched by more than 4 million people. And what’s incredible is that all of these people tuned in to see just 1 hour of action. This was the only match of the tournament that was held on that day. And it ended very quickly. Despite all that, people were satisfied with what they got.
The games lasted 14, 14, 14, and 17 minutes respectively. This makes MLBB feel a lot like StarCraft 2. But unlike SC2, which is watched by a small number of people, MLBB is hugely popular all over Asia and has already attracted the attention of big companies.
In Europe, CIS, and a few other regions, it couldn’t gain much popularity because in those regions, games like Dota 2 and LoL were already hugely popular. But in other parts of the world, this game spread like wildfire and proved that people love MOBA games.
The reason is easy to understand. Apart from the team-based action, these games are really hard to master and allow people to express their creativity in very unique ways. The characters you get to pick are fun to play and allow you to gain a competitive advantage if you’re good enough.
That’s why players tend to specialize in a role and then spam one hero over and over until they’ve mastered it.
This new season looks very promising for MLBB. Three important leagues are already scheduled and the betting opportunities will be numerous. The action starts on February 1 and ends on April 1.