Mobile Esports on the World Map: Asia in 2021

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Mobile esports is growing very fast, but Western audience is still not that familiar with it. That's why we decided to review the results of mobile esports in different countries around the world to find out where and how popular it is, and also to identify the top games in the regions. Let's start with Asia, which is where mobile esports has the most views at the moment.

We analyzed the countries of South, East and Southeast Asia by Hours Watched of esports tournaments, as well as took into account the stats by different Asian languages. In order to calculate everything right by each country, we didn't include the statistics of interregional / international events.

In Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and Macau, the most popular esports game was Arena of Valor. This is a mobile МОВА from Tencent Games and the fourth most popular mobile title in 2020.

Based on the results of the first half of 2021, the game is most watched in Vietnam — 14.7M HW. Taiwan showed the lowest result out of the four countries mentioned, with only 1.2M HW.

The unique game leader in South Korea is Clash of Clans with 12K HW. The number is quite low, and the reason for this result is simply the absence of tournaments in mobile disciplines in the country. In the second half of 2021, everything may change, as League of Legends: Wild Rift is rapidly gaining popularity in the country. The only problem is that there are no regional events, at least for now.

League of Legends: Wild Rift has become the most popular title in Hong Kong with 23.5K Hours Watched thanks to the SEA Icon Series 2021 Summer event. There were no other major tournaments exclusively for Hong Kong, so the new МОВА took the lead.

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has become the leader among the MOBA genre. The game is the undisputed leader of Southeast Asia and beat all other disciplines in terms of HW. ML:BB is most watched in Indonesia. The regional MPL Indonesia league regularly sets new records not only in mobile esports, but on esports scene overall. Other regional ML:BB leagues in the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore also contribute to improving discipline indicators in the region. For the next wave of regional leagues, developers have split Malaysia and Singapore into two separate regions, and also entered new markets in Cambodia and Brazil.

Royal Battles Captures Half of Asia

Shooters and battle royales like PUBG Mobile and Free Fire are also very widespread mobile disciplines. These two games are about equally popular, but in different countries.

Free Fire became the leader in Sri Lanka (11K HW) and India (2.5M HW). The situation in India is especially interesting because it used to be the top 1 region for PUBG Mobile. However, the game was blocked by the government in the region and Free Fire certainly did not stand aside and lured the audience to its side with the help of regional tournaments, for example, Free Fire Pro League India 2021 Summer.

PUBG Mobile had the widest coverage by country: the game became the top-1 discipline in terms of Hours Watched in 8 countries. It reached the highest scores in Brunei and Singapore (11M HW), with the biggest impact from PUBG Mobile Pro League.

It's difficult to analyze China due to the fact that broadcasts there are carried out on regional platforms, and streams' popularity is calculated in a very specific way, so we excluded the country from the calculation. However, we can say that the top games in the discipline are PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings (under this name Arena of Valor is known in China).

As a result, PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang became the leaders in Asia based on the total number of Hours Watched. Free Fire has not come close to its competitor's performance due to the fact that it is more popular in another part of the world. We will tell you about this in a future article.

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