M6 World Championship opened to 45% higher viewership for the Wildcard Stage thanks to significant growth among Indonesian audiences
Mobile Legend: Bang Bang’s ultimate tournament of the year, the World Championship series, has returned for its sixth iteration: the M6 World Championship. Throughout 2024, many regional circuits of MLBB’s professional leagues reached new heights. The MPL Indonesia and Philippines both broke viewership records this year, and many other regions have shown strong viewership dynamics. With this in mind, the M6 is positioned to become one of the most popular esports events ever.
The M6 is MLBB’s most significant world championship event yet. The sixth iteration of the series marks the first time it’s holding a million-dollar prize pool, and it has returned to Malaysia, where the first ever MLBB World Championship took place. With mobile esports growing and MLBB leading the charge, the world championship event for the game is often the most popular event of the year in mobile esports.
Following on the wild regional success of MLBB esports, the M6 World Championship began with the Wildcard Stage. This stage is a relatively new introduction to the series, first making its appearance at the previous M5 event. The immediate direct effect of this stage is higher broadcasting time for the event, which can potentially lead to higher overall watch time if viewership is not diluted by the longer broadcasts.
Compared to last year’s M5, the Wildcard Stage at the M6 World Championship has received significantly higher viewership overall, despite broadcasting time falling. Moonton made some slight changes to the Wildcard at the M6: only one team is able to qualify to the main event instead of two, meaning there is one fewer Bo5 decider match to be played. A combination of the new format and overall quicker games at this year’s M6 led the stage to be almost 14 hours shorter than the M5’s stage.
Although the Wildcard stage was over much quicker at this year’s event, it still managed to generate 3.53M Hours Watched and record significant increases in both average and peak concurrent viewer numbers. The total Hours Watched figure recorded a slight decrease of 7% compared to last year, caused largely by the 36% shorter stage, but viewership in general has risen.
The peak of 334.9K concurrent viewers was reached on the first day of the four-day stage, when Brazilian-Indonesian team RRQ Akira faced off against The MongolZ. Compared to other esports disciplines, where Mongolian viewership is picking up steam thanks to The MongolZ success, MLBB has not experienced this just yet. Also, although the team of Brazilian players was highly popular, almost none of their total viewership came from Brazilian audiences.
Instead, Indonesian fans of the RRQ organization were happy to support their brothers in arms: 218.4K Indonesian fans tuned in to RRQ Akira’s first game. Indonesian fans having someone to cheer for caused a 100% increase to their peak viewership at the Wildcard Stage, compared to the M5 where no Indonesian team competed in the stage.
Largely, languages that showed negative dynamics compared to the M5 came down to these audiences having no one to cheer for. Malaysian teams at the M6 qualified directly to the main event, causing a 32.8% drop in peak viewership from Bahasa Malaysia-speaking fans during the Wildcard Stage. As the odd one out, Russian-language viewership also fell considerably, despite Wildcard competitor Insilio having three Russians signed to the team and also making it all the way to the final Decider Match of the stage.
Ultimately, languages which showed negative dynamics compared to last year will likely bounce back for the main event. Multiple Malaysian teams have qualified directly to the main event at the M6, and Russia’s Team Spirit will also give Russian-speaking fans a more well-known organization to cheer for. Speaking of qualification, Turkey’s ULFHEDNAR was the lucky team to qualify through the Wildcard stage.
In terms of the most popular games at the Wildcard Stage of the M6, RRQ Akira reigned supreme, with two of the top three matches attributed to their participation. The Brazilian team enjoyed significant viewership from Indonesian fans who support the RRQ brand, although this would have likely reached much higher if there was an actual Indonesian team for these fans to cheer for.
Aside from this, ULFHEDNAR’s match against China’s DianFengYaoGuai was surprisingly popular. DFYG’s sole Filipino player helped this match to record the highest peaks among both Tagalog and Bahasa Malaysia-speaking fans. It also recorded the highest English-speaking peak viewership of the stage, with this perhaps being more representative of Turkish fans for the mobile esports title. As ULF defeated their Chinese rivals 2-1, viewership reached 279K PV.
As it stands, the previous M5 World Championship is the fifth-most-popular esports event ever, falling only behind League of Legend’s World Championship series, and a similar season-ending event for mobile gaming rival Free Fire. Although Free Fire technically ranks ahead of MLBB here, it has been unable to replicate the massive peak it enjoyed in 2021 in recent years.
With the Wildcard Stage of the M6 World Championship having already recorded a 45.6% increase to peak viewership compared to the M5, it seems that the M6 is on-track to become one of the most popular esports events ever. It’s too early to make guarantees about the event’s viewership, but considering how many regional circuits in MLBB have set new records this year, the M6 could become one of the top three most popular esports events in the Esports Charts database.
The M6’s main stage, a Swiss System group stage, begins on November 28. Keep on track of who’s playing and when matches begin with Esports Charts’ schedule tab for the event. MLBB stands at the forefront of mobile gaming esports, and the esports title might be able to close out 2024 with a new viewership record for the game.
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