M3 World Championship review — Mobile Legends: Bang Bang attracted more viewers than The International 10

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The main event of the year on the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang esports scene ended on December 19. The M3 World Championship set new records in the discipline and attracted more viewers than The International 10. In a new article, Esports Charts will tell you about the results of the tournament and compare its viewership performance with M2.

Viewers watch M3 World Championship in venue 

The M3 World Championship was held from December 6 to 19. The prize pool has almost tripled compared with M2 and reached $800K. Sixteen teams participated in the event — all of them got to the tournament through MPL (in Asia and Brazil) or regional qualifiers. Singapore hosted the competition at the Suntec — Singapore Convention and Exhibition Center. The fans could attend the playoffs of the event.

M3 World Championship broadcast viewership records

The M3 World Championship gathered many teams from different regions, and some of them exceeded all expectations. For example, Natus Vincere (former Deus Vult/Unique Devu) ranked 12th in the competition two years in a row, but this year they took 7th place at the tournament. The Americans from BloodThirstyKings performed even better: they went to the World Championships for the first time and instantly took third place, although everyone thought that they are the outsiders.

Top matches of M3 World Championship

Indonesia has the largest fan base in ML:BB, but the local teams did not achieve more than the 6th place in the standings. Two Philippine teams, Onic PH and Blacklist International (winners of MPL PH Season 8) fought in the grand final. Blacklist International won the tournament as they beat Onic PH 4-0.

*We compared M3 and M2 by Peak Viewers of a сertain language. The M3 set new records on some regional streams:  

• Indonesian broadcasts - 32%↑
• English broadcasts - 220%↑
• Malaysian broadcasts - 71%↑
• Khmer broadcasts - 183%↑
• Russian broadcasts - 52%↑
• Spanish broadcasts - 189%↑

The new broadcasts were in Arabic, Thai and Italian as the game keeps growing both in players and esports fan bases. 

The tournament was broadcast on 7 platforms: YouTube, Twitch, NimoTV, Facebook, TikTok, VK Live and Trovo (new platform for the series). The platform owned by Google was the most popular: it had 52% of total Hours Watched. NimoTV ranked second with 30% of total Hours Watched.

3.1 million viewers at Indonesia vs. The Philippines and other popular matches

The match between RRQ Hoshi (Indonesia) and Onic PH (the Philippines) drew a record 3.1 million Peak Viewers on the fifth day of the playoffs. As a result, the M3 World Championship not only became the most popular tournament of the discipline but also overtook such major PC events as The International 10 (Dota 2), PGL Major Stockholm 2021 (CS:GO) and Worlds 2017-2018 (League of Legends).

Blacklist International and their trophy

The top-2 match of the tournament was Blacklist International against RRQ Hoshi — 3 million Peak Viewers. Two Filipino teams, Blacklist International and Onic PH won their way up to the finals. But the match drew 1.5 million Peak Viewers and didn't even enter the top 5 of the tournament (Philippines broadcasts lost 47% Peak Viewers compared with M2). The reason for overall viewers loss is that Indonesian teams couldn't reach the Grand Final, while the Indonesian-speaking viewers are a large part of the tournament's audience. 

M3 World Championship — the most popular tournament in the discipline

We compared the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang World Championship tournaments. In contrast to M2, M3's Hours Watched increased by 47%. That happened because the event's audience has grown a lot and the event itself was on air for 42 hours longer than M2.

The Peak Viewers number of the M3 World Championship increased by 4% (+100K spectators). This number made the tournament the most popular in the discipline of all time.

Soon we will release M3 World Championship 2021 most popular teams review. Subscribe to our social networks if you don't want to miss it. If you want to see the full M3 statistics, try our PRO subscription.