Arena of Valor Premier League 2025 ends as series' highest-watched event

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The Arena of Valor Premier League 2025, one of the biggest events on Garena’s annual mobile esports calendar, concluded on July 20. Despite a few top teams making the Playoffs, their early exits from this round meant it could not match the viewership peaks of the last few editions. However, it did end among the series' top iterations by watch time and average viewership.

This top-tier Arena of Valor competition saw sides from three national leagues — Arena of Glory (Vietnam), Garena Challenger Series (Taiwan), and RoV Pro League (Thailand) — in action. With the return of the Wildcard round for the first time since 2023, a total of 16 sides battled it out for almost a month for a total prize purse of $500,000.

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In the end, Flash Wolves clinched the title after coming back from two games down to beat the Thai side eArena 4:2 in the Grand Final. This made the Taiwanese side the first in the series to win more than one APL championship, having also claimed the 2020 trophy.

However, the summit clash was not the most popular match at the APL 2025; it didn't even take second place. The top game was the Lower Bracket Round 1 encounter between Team Flash and eArena, which peaked at 641,137 viewers. The former is a legendary name in the game's most crucial region by viewership, Vietnam, and sides from this nation tend to attract higher audience numbers.

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Intriguingly, Vietnam has one of the strongest and most passionate audiences despite other regions boasting more titles and competitive success. Its substantial influence on the APL can also be seen in the fact that they occupy four of the ten entries on the most popular matches list. Saigon Phantom, the other top side from this country, was part of the tournament's second most popular game, an Upper Bracket Quarterfinals clash against Thailand's FULL SENSE.

Team Flash and Saigon Phantom's early exit in the Playoffs was a key reason the Arena of Valor Premier League 2025 could not match the PV numbers of the last two editions, which remain the series' most popular competitions. Their failure once again laid bare these teams' struggles against Thai and Taiwanese representatives, who filled the top five placings on the final leaderboard, at the international level.

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Nevertheless, with the game slowly opening up to a more global audience, the APL 2025 saw 125 channels cover the action, a huge rise from the 77 seen at the Arena of Valor Premier League 2024. This was a big reason it ended with 26.26 million Hours Watched, making it the series' second-most watched tournament.

A lot more Vietnamese channels, especially on TikTok, ensured to cover the action, meaning that this language grew in its cumulative watch time compared to last year. It was a similar case for Thai, whose share of the overall HW figures rose by almost 6%.

Most crucially, with so much attention across livestreaming services, this mid-season major for the 2025 Arena of Valor season did set a record. It marginally beat the record-setting 2023 edition to become the most consistently watched competition in the Arena of Valor Premier League.

Arena of Valor continues to be a growing game in the livestreaming segment, led by the passionate support of Vietnamese fans. The APL is a massive showcase for the game on a global scale, and while it continues to be dominated by teams from Taiwan and Thailand, its viewership potential remains unfulfilled for as long as Vietnamese teams don’t consistently finish in the top two.