Most watched esports mobile games in 2021

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The market for mobile games and their respective esports scenes was actively changing throughout 2021, which was reflected in the viewership statistics of games. A local version of PUBG Mobile appeared in India, LoL: Wild Rift became more successful than Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, and Call of Duty: Mobile, while the most incredible growth was shown by Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Esports Charts provides an overview of the most popular esports mobile games tournaments that managed to attract the most viewers.

Disclaimer: the ranking is based on the total Hours Watched of esports matches, with the exclusion of the data from Chinese streaming services from the statistics due to the peculiarities of methods they use for calculating the viewer activity.

Top 5 esports mobile games in 2021

#5 — Battlegrounds Mobile India

Opening the top 5 is the Battlegrounds Mobile India – a version of PUBG Mobile specially adapted for gamers from India. The game was released in the summer as an alternative to the original, which was banned in the country in September 2020 along with a hundred other Chinese apps.

The game became an instant hit and reached the mark of 16M players shortly after its release on Android. On the occasion of the launch of BGMI, the game’s publisher Krafton hosted the first tournament, The Launch Party, which brought together popular Indian streamers and pro players. The championship has reached incredible success in terms of audience, attracting 547.8K Peak Viewers.

By the end of the year, dozens of tournaments were held on Battlegrounds Mobile India, including those sponsored by Red Bull, Tesseract Esports, Skyesports, Upthrust Esports, and other companies, including the publisher Krafton. All of them attracted tens of thousands of viewers. In total, since the summer, the discipline has amassed 19.3M Hours Watched over 1.1K hours of airtime.

A major iQOO Battlegrounds Mobile India Series 2021 event started in the discipline early December. Its finals took place at the beginning of 2022, and matches gathered over 300,000 viewers every day. It seems that BGMI will become a full-fledged competitor to Free Fire in India in the new year.

#4 — Arena of Valor

The most popular discipline of 2019. Arena of Valor, retained the fourth spot in the ranking last year. The tournaments in the international version of the Chinese hit game Honor of Kings continue being hosted regularly. Additionally, in 2021 the game managed to set a new record, reaching the mark of 879K viewers before the final of the Arena of Valor International Championship 2021.

Regional publishers of the game from Level Infinite and Garena are actively promoting the game in new markets, as well as actively investing in esports. In addition to championships for Asian teams, regional tournaments for Europe, America, the Middle East, and North Africa are also planned for 2022.

Also held offline in the summer shall be the Arena of Valor International Championship 2022 with a prize pool of $2M (twice as much as a year earlier) while October will feature the final tournament Arena of Valor World Cup 2022 with a record (for mobile esports) prize pool of $10M. So far, only TI and the Fortnite World Cup have featured larger prize pools. In addition to international championships, attracting the most viewers in the discipline are the regional leagues of Vietnam. The Arena of Glory Spring 2021 / Winter 2021 games gathered hundreds of thousands of viewers.

In 1,6K hours of airtime, the discipline gained 82.1M Hours Watched, which is 12% less than in 2020. But perhaps the publishers' investment in new regional tournaments will help make a difference in the current year.

#3 — Free Fire 

Free Fire remains one of the top mobile esports games. Although the game dropped from second to the third spot with 142.2M Hours Watched (7% growth compared to 2020), its tournaments still attract hundreds of thousands of viewers on a regular basis – especially in India, Brazil, Latin America, and Indonesia.

The most popular esports tournament of 2021 took place in the game published by Garena: Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore attracted 5.4M Peak Viewers. This is a record for esports (not taking the Chinese services into account) in terms of the online audience, as the event surpasses even the League of Legends Worlds tournaments. As for the regional championships, the Liga Brasileira de Free Fire, Free Fire League Latinoamerica, and Free Fire India Championship enjoyed success with the audience.

Alas, Garena was unable to consolidate the success of the tournament in Singapore: it was assumed that the second event of the World Series could take place in Mexico in November, but the publisher's plans were thwarted by the coronavirus. Perhaps, if the championship took place, Free Fire could compete for the second spot, which went to its main rival.

#2 — PUBG Mobile

In 2020, PUBG Mobile took the first spot in the ranking, beating Free Fire by just a few million Hours Watched. This time, the game from Krafton and Tencent has managed to significantly increase the gap from its competitor, with the viewers having spent 216.7M Hours Watched on the broadcasts of its esports matches (61% up compared to the previous year).

The success of the discipline was ensured by active promotion in the regions where local tournaments of various levels sponsored by publishers are regularly held. In addition to Indonesia, tournaments for the game attract thousands of viewers in other countries of Southeast Asia, as well as in Brazil, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. 

January 2021 was when the decisive matches of PMGC Season 0 took place, allowing the latter to attract over 3.8M Peak Viewers (many watched the broadcasts directly through the client, where in-game gifts were distributed). Also boasting an online audience of 1M+ viewers were PMPL 3 2021 Southeast Asia Finals and PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2021.

Note that PUBG Mobile has managed to bypass Free Fire precisely due to a large number of regional events. In 2021, esports matches in “battle royale” were broadcast for 8.8K hours, which is 55% more than that of FF.

In two weeks comes the start of the decisive stage of the PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2021 with a record prize of $3.49M. Entering the competition are the best teams from all over the world, including Natus Vincere, DAMWON Gaming, and Team Secret. The discipline shall likely set new records quite soon!

Note that PUBG Mobile keeps growing rapidly, even though the game lost viewers from India. The main audience for PUBG Mobile now belongs to Indonesia, but there is an even more popular mobile discipline in the country that made incredible strides in 2021.

#1 — Mobile Legends: Bang Bang 

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang became the most popular mobile esports game of 2021. Moonton's mobile MOBA regularly attracts hundreds and even millions of viewers in Southeast Asia. Competitions in the game amassed a total of 386.8M Hours Watched, which is 2.5 times more than in 2020.

The most popular tournament of the year in the discipline was the M3 World Championship with 3.1M Peak Viewers. In total, seven tournaments were held in a year that managed to gather more than 1M Peak Viewers, including both international championships and regional MPL leagues for Indonesia and the Philippines, where the game is the most popular.

While in 2020 ML:BB took only the third spot among mobile esports disciplines, now it not only came out on top but also went far ahead of the rest of competitors. The runner-up in the face of PUBG Mobile scored 45% fewer Hours Watched – and that’s while the ML:BB matches were on air for almost half the time in comparison.

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Other peculiar results of 2021 include the growing popularity of the mobile version of LoL: Wild Rift. The game of Riot Games has surpassed many other popular titles including Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, and Call of Duty: Mobile. At the same time, the developers have ambitious plans for 2022 in terms of developing the game’s esports scene, which features no well-established regional tournament series as of yet.

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