With community casting slowly growing in influence across esports livestreaming over the last few years, the segment's share at events has slowly been rising. The same was the case during the first two stages of the ongoing M7 World Championship, where co-streamers were engaged with the matches for much longer.
Compared to the first two stages of the M6 World Championship, the cumulative watch time share of community casters rose by 3.11% this year. The more heartening fact is that this rise happened despite the total number of overall channels covering the games dropping by 47.
Leading this improvement were some of Southeast Asia's most prominent content creators. The most-watched co-streamer in the Wildcard and Swiss stages was Ade "set1awanade" Pamungkas, the star Indonesian MLBB influencer who ensures to cover its biggest events and news, emerging as one of the most preferred destinations for the MOBA among viewers from his homeland.
Next was the professional Mobile Legends: Bang Bang caster Zay "ZyZyy" Yar So, who made sure to cover all matches in Burmese. Of course, viewers from Myanmar had a team of their own to support: Yangon Galacticos. The side notched one of the standout results in MLBB esports history by beating title favorite ONIC Esports in the Swiss Stage, and it will resume its improbable journey in the Lower Bracket Round 1 of the Knockout Stage.
The third-most-watched community streamer during the first two stages of the M7 World Championship was Rivaldi "R7 Tatsumaki" Fatah. The ex-professional MLBB player and popular Indonesian streamer has made a name for himself via his livestreams of the game, be it for his analytical insights from a player's point of view or for his talented gameplay, which has earned him thousands of fans.
The live broadcasts of Amirul "Feekz" Shafiq and Lius "liusandre.s" Andre on TikTok also made this top five list. Led by the massive audiences that SEA co-streamers have been able to attract, the rising platform has embedded itself as a firm favorite for viewers from the region to watch matches in MLBB tournaments.
We also have to add that the efforts of these channels, combined with a slightly longer Wildcard Stage and more matches being evenly contested, especially in the Swiss Stage, helped the latest MLBB World Championship far outperform its immediate predecessor by overall watch time. While the first two phases in the 2024 event accumulated almost 34.8 million Hours Watched (HW), this year, they put up 50.3 million HW, a rise of over 44.5%.
The Knockout Stage resumed on January 21 at the Tennis Indoor Stadium Senayan and will run until January 25. Esports Charts will continue to cover the action and update readers about results and viewership insights in our news section.
