ML:BB’s female esports scene continued to thrive with the new Asian Esports Games event
The Asian Esports Games is a new tournament series from the Asian Electronic Sports Federation. The inaugural 2024 edition was organized by the Thailand Esports Federation, featuring two of the world’s most popular mobile gaming esports titles: Mobile Legends Bang Bang and Arena of Valor (Honor of Kings). The ML:BB women’s event was wildly popular, reaching a high enough peak viewership for its final game to rank as one of the most popular women’s esports events of the year.
The Asian Esports Games 2024 tournament saw AESF members send their best female players to Bangkok, Thailand, to compete for the title of Asian champion. Although the teams competing at the event represent their country rather than a specific organization, many of the top-performing teams were simply established mono-national ML:BB rosters competing under their country’s flag.
To this point, the teams which made it to the tournament’s grand final, Indonesia Female and Philippines Female, are both established and successful ML:BB teams. The Philippines was represented by the players for Omega Empress, the current reigning champions of the MLBB Women’s Invitational. Indonesia’s representatives are all signed to Team Vitality, and were the runner-up to Omega Express at the recent invitational event. Team Vitality also recently competed in the tier-two MDL Indonesia circuit alongside male competitors.
The grand final between these two titans of the female ML:BB esports scene reached 326.1K Peak Viewers. This was the second time they met during the playoffs stage; in the Upper Bracket Final, Indonesia defeated the Philippines 2-0, sending the latter team to the Lower Bracket Final, where they had to overcome the Chinese roster. After making their way back to the Grand Final, the Filipino team was defeated 4-2 by the Indonesian squad.
The grand final for the event was particularly exciting for Indonesian fans, who watched their female national roster claim yet another title. Team Vitality signed the roster of female professionals earlier this year, after they left their home of Bigetron Esports. Under the previous banner, the team managed to claim two MLBB Women’s Invitational titles and three WSL titles in a row. More than 256K Indonesian fans tuned in concurrently to support their national superstars during the grand final, accounting for a majority of the event’s peak viewership.
Of the hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers, the vast majority were spread across YouTube Live and TikTok. YouTube Live is the historically strongest livestreaming platform in Asian esports broadcasting, but TikTok is rapidly finding success as a mobile-based option for fans. Whereas in the past, TikTok added a slight nudge to events’ viewership, it is now reaching numebrs on par with YouTube Live.
Other significant audiences for the tournament included Filipino fans, Malaysians, and an international English-speaking audience, which likely came from Asia. In total, the event received 1.54M Hours Watched. All in all, the new Asian Esports Games series has started off to a significant success, becoming one of the most popular female esports events of the year and one of the most popular mobile gaming female esports tournaments ever.
The only female tournament to outperform the Asian Esports Games this year was the VCT 2024: Game Changers Championship. The event was hosted by the game's developers Riot Games and is an established part of their esports calendar for Valorant. The Game Changers series is open to both women and other marginalized genders, but the vast majority of attendees are women, which is why we include it under the female esports banner.
In general, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Valorant are the world-leading titles for female esports. Other event series like the ESL Impact circuit have a long history in their own discipline, but ML:BB and Valorant have managed to outperform all other esports games in terms of viewership.
These two titles host many official events for women, and have made significant efforts to include and encourage women to compete in esports. In the mobile gaming side of esports, all the most popular female events are ML:BB tournaments. Between events like the Asian Esports Games and SEA Games and the MLBB Women’s Invitational, there are a plethora of events every year for female competitors in ML:BB.
As Valorant and ML:BB continue the good work of supporting women in esports, viewership will only continue to rise and rise for these events. Of the top five most popular female mobile gaming esports events, three of them were recorded this year. Next year will bring another edition of the MLBB Women’s Invitational and more events from the IESF and AESF. Keep an eye on the female side of ML:BB esports, as it is arguably one of the most competitive and strongest women’s scenes in the whole industry.
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