The M5 World Championship’s brand-new Wildcard Stage reached peak viewership during the opening match
The yearly World Championship event of ML:BB’s competitive season has kicked off for 2023. The M5 is the fifth edition of the World Championship for the esports discipline, and the ultimate tournament of the season has been growing consistently every year since its inception.
The M5 World Championship event has some changes compared to the previous iterations. The prize pool has been upped to a record $900K USD, and the event format itself has seen some changes too. The M5 hosts 22 teams, more than any other ML:BB World Championship, with 8 teams competing in a brand-new Wildcard stage.
The Wildcard stage is a standard Play-In stage, featuring 8 teams who would not have directly qualified for the event having a chance to earn their spot. The stage lasted four days, but only two teams could qualify for the main event. Ultimately, Team SMG and Team Lilgun, who advanced through their respective groups 3-0, claimed victory in their qualification matches and made it to the main event.
In total, the Wildcard Stage of the M5 World Championship has accumulated 3.82M Hours Watched across the 14 matches played. The M5 is the first event to host a Wildcard Stage, so there are no past events to compare this stage to, but viewership looks strong.
The most popular matches of the stage were all hosted on the first day of the Wildcard Groups. Team SMG vs Niightmare Esports was the most popular of them, and also it was the first match to kick off the Wildcard stage. The match received 271.8K Peak Viewers, and viewership slowly fell as the Wildcard stage progressed.
The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang championship has routinely been one of the most popular esports events every year it has been hosted, and usually the most popular mobile gaming esports tournament of the year. The event has grown in viewership year after year, and the 2023 event may finally break 5M Peak Viewers if the growth continues.
The Wildcard Stage of the M5 World Championship is finished, and next up is the Group Stage of the event which begins December 2. If the M5 is to continue to growth of the World Championship events, the event will need to draw in extremely strong viewership for the remaining stages. Keep an eye on the event’s viewership as the Group Stage begins with our tournament page for the M5 World Championship.
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