Throughout August, esports fans were delighted by top-tier competitions across some of the world’s most popular gaming titles. The Esports World Cup in particular had a significant impact on the viewership of the month, catching the tail-end of some of its more popular events. Outside this festival, other large-scale events from League of Legends, MLBB, and Counter-Strike topped our rankings.
Leading our rankings by a wide margin, the MLBB Mid Season Cup 2025 was a massive success, hosted as part of the EWC and setting a new viewership record for the series. The mid-year event received over 3,000,000 Peak Viewers (PV) for its top match, which took place just at the end of July; in August, the semifinal between ONIC Philippines and SRG.OG claimed the top spot with 2,777,007 PV.
Staying with MOBA games, League of Legends snatched the silver spot with the ongoing LCK 2025 Season. The Korean circuit often tops the viewership for the title, and as usual, the showdown between regional titans T1 and Gen.G secured the most viewers for their Week 12 match.
MLBB also took the third spot with the MPL Indonesia Season 16, which continues to be one of the world’s favourite regional leagues. The circuit had only just begun in the last week of August, making it even more impressive that it ranked ahead of the grand finals of other popular tournaments.
In fourth place, the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2025 marked one of the best results for the game in years. Another part of the Esports World Cup, this event set new viewership records across various Asian languages, which were newly activated by the expanded presence of the event with its EWC backing. With 1,389,269 PV, this was the second-most popular PUBG Mobile tournament ever and its best result in over four years.
Finally, IEM Cologne 2025 made up the last spot here, with 1,139,440 PV for its grand final between Team Spirit and MOUZ. The tournament slightly increased its peak viewership compared to last year, but total watch time shows the event’s true power: 2025 marked the most-watched IEM Cologne tournament ever, marking an increase of over 5,700,000 Hours Watched over the next-most-watched edition which was also broadcasted for 19 hours more.
Filtering our detailed viewership database for English-language viewership exclusively, IEM Cologne 2025 shot up the rankings to take the top spot. Counter-Strike has a particularly strong foothold in Europe and North America, which helped set it ahead of the competition here. The BLAST Premier Bounty Season 2 2025 and Counter-Strike 2 Esports World Cup 2025 event also received enough viewership to make this ranking a Counter-Strike majority.
Perhaps surprisingly, the MLBB Mid Season Cup 2025 managed to maintain a high result here; whereas Counter-Strike appeals to many native English-speaking audiences, MLBBs English-language viewership largely represents diverse, international audiences with English as a common tongue.
The official broadcast channel of the LCK was the most popular esports channel of the month, having received just shy of 400,000 Korean-language viewers for the iconic showdown between T1 and Gen.G. The top esports channels of August largely represented Asian viewership, with MPL Indonesia representing the mobile gaming side of things and just falling shy of the LCK's peak.
On top of Korean and Indonesian viewership, other major audiences for the month included Vietnamese fans — both for PC esports with League of Legends and mobile gaming with Liên Quân (Arena of Valor) — Indian viewers, and Mongolian supporters of The MongolZ on Meta.
