Free Fire Continental Series: the CIS breakthrough, the new records of Asia and old records of Latin America

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2.5 million Peak Viewers, more than 14 million Hours Watched, nearly 130 million YouTube views, and coverage in dozens of languages worldwide. Here we are not talking about the League of Legends World Championship or Dota 2’s The International. We are talking about the Free Fire Continental Series, a series of regional tournaments that replaced the Free Fire World Championship this year.

Free Fire Continental Series 2020 Asia

Nowadays, the Asian market’s preference for mobile esports is hardly surprising. Major organizations in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines (EVOS, Geek Fam, RRQ Hades and others) sign rosters for popular shooters and give preference to mobile game streamers. And their views are only growing, especially when compared to those more familiar esports disciplines.

Among the Continental Series championships this year, Asia has done something nearly impossible: it pushed the Latin American viewers out of the top spot based on several indicators at once – and that’s while Latin America is a region in which Free Fire is gradually becoming a new esports religion. Asian broadcasts of regional finals attracted nearly 830 thousand average viewers, as well as nearly 2.6 million peak viewers (excluding the Chinese audience). To compare, the CS:GO majors gathered “merely” 1.3 million fans.

The audience from India made the largest contribution to the new record, with 1.5 million peak viewers on the Hindi-language stream. Free Fire enjoys such popularity in the country not only due to everyone’s love of mobile gaming. In September, the Indian government banned PUBG Mobile, the main competitor of the shooter from Garena. As per the explanation of the journalists, this was caused by the tensions between India and China, the latter being the home country of the developer of the game. 

At the time of the blocking, PUBG Mobile was among the top most popular apps in the country with over 200 million downloads. The eastern division of the PUBG Mobile World League also featured Hindi as the second most popular language after Indonesian. Now, this huge audience is in the midst of a gradual switch to Free Fire – and its current size already rivals that of the Brazilian fandom of the game.

Free Fire Continental Series 2020 Americas

Of course, Asia was able to take the first spot and set new records, but South America is still showing impressive results. In eight hours of airtime, the teams from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Argentina have collected more than 6 million hours watched, with more than 800 thousand average viewers visiting the broadcast. The popularity of mobile esports in South America is understandable. 

According to Brazil Game Research, nearly 60% of Brazilian gamers prefer to play on smartphones or tablets instead of PCs and consoles. Meanwhile, the LOUD organization (the main roster of which is dedicated to Free Fire) became the first in the world to overcome the 1 billion YouTube views mark.

At the same time, the Latin American presence of Free Fire does not amount to the Brazilian audience alone. Spanish became the most popular broadcast language during the regional finals, gathering nearly 890 thousand peak viewers. The Portuguese broadcast stopped at around 845 thousand peak viewers mark. And that’s despite the fact that the results of Brazilian cyberathletes are clearly more impressive than those of their rivals from the rest of Latin America. After all, the representatives of Brazil took all the prizes in the tournament.

Despite Free Fire becoming the main mobile esports game on Twitch, it continues dominating YouTube both in terms of video trends and broadcasts. During 2020 the regional Continental Series championships in Asia and America entered the platform’s top 5 most popular esports events based on the peak viewers. Among these, the Asian League took the first spot, leaving behind even the LoL World Championship.

Free Fire Continental Series 2020 EMEA

While the Asian and Latin American are completely occupied by mobile esports, this trend is only gaining momentum in Europe and the CIS. Free Fire Continental Series 2020: EMEA attracted nearly 293 thousand peak viewers. Unlike other regions, it was the second (rather than the first) round of the competition that ended up being the most popular one.

The Russian-speaking audience shows a particular growth in this region. When it came to the CIS broadcasts of the April 2019 spring championship in Bangkok, it had just a bit over 16 thousand peak viewers. Six months later, at the Free Fire World Series 2019 Rio, almost 65 thousand fans watched Russian-language streams. At the time of Free Fire Continental Series 2020 EMEA has already gathered more than 128 thousand peak viewers. In the EMEA region, Russian became the second most popular language after Arabic. It also took 8th place in terms of the hours watched.

Such consistent growth can be attributed to two distinct factors. First, the game developers really immersed themselves into the development of the CIS market – not only through holding a separate league for local players but also through promoting the product. For example, the day of the Free Fire Continental Series finals marked the start of the game's special collaboration with the famous rapper Morgenshtern.

Aside from this, Free Fire has heavily promoted in the region thanks to the results of the local teams. The CIS representatives took the first three spots at the Free Fire Continental Series 2020: EMEA, while the Chechen team has been dominating the largest tournaments in the mobile discipline for the second year in a row. The only thing the region seems to be really lacking right now is the attention of large esports organizations. Despite the constant international triumphs of its teams, even the Chechen national team performs without sponsorship and club support.

The CEO of Virtus.pro, Sergey Glamazda commented on his position on mobile esports and Free Fire in particular in an interview with WePlay. He told that while he understands the reasons for the game's popularity, he believes that entering the discipline through a more popular region (rather than through the native one) would be a correct decision. Just how it was done by Team Liquid, which signed the Brazilian roster rather than the European one. It seems that the CIS region needs to wait another half a year for the clubs to really consider forming their own CIS-based Free Fire teams.