MDL Philippines debut season outperforms MPL Singapore by viewership

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The Philippines continues to follow Indonesia's path in developing the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang esports scene. The debut season of the MDL Philippines regional league ended on April 23, which featured the academy teams of members of the MPL, the country's premier national league.

Mobile Legends Development is a series of leagues for the Mobile Legends tier-2 scene from the game's developer, Moonton. The MDL features MPL member academy squads as well as teams that have received invitations or passed open qualifiers. The main goal of the MDL is to provide practice to the substitutes of the partner clubs, as well as to become an intermediate link between amateur and professional esports. The first league of the MDL series was launched in Indonesia in 2020, and in February 2023, the league was launched in the Philippines.

MDL Philippines Season 1 Viewership Results 

MDL Philippines Season 1 Popular Matches

MDL Philippines Season 1 matches accumulated just over 1 million Hours Watched. The event reached 8.3K Average Viewers and 36.9K Peak Viewers. The final series between ECHO Proud and GameLab became the most popular game of the debut season. It is interesting that the latter team does not represent a club from the MPL, being an independent team, but it didn't win the final.

Blacklist Academy became the most popular team of the tournament, attracting 11.5K AV per match. It is far ahead of the other participants by this metric. In general, only two teams saw more than 10K Average Viewers on the broadcasts. 

Most popular MDL Philippines Season 1 teams

When it comes to tournament coverage, MDL Philippines Season 1 matches were streamed on YouTube, and the most popular language was Tagalog. 

Comparison of MDL Philippines Season 1 With Other Tournaments

As for audience reach, MDL Philippines cannot yet compete with MDL Indonesia, where seven seasons have already been played. This is not surprising since Indonesia is the most popular region in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and its MPL league is firmly dominating in terms of viewership. In the academy league, the situation is similar, with MDL Indonesia outperforming MDL Philippines by twice the Average Viewers number and 4.6 times the Peak Viewers number. 

Despite not being able to compete with Indonesian events, MDL Philippines inaugural season still had pretty impressive viewership. For example, it surpassed some MPL leagues in terms of peak concurrent viewership, such as MPL Singapore Season 5, MPL Brazil Season 3, and MPL MENA Fall 2022.

Despite the fact that the MDL leagues are significantly inferior in audience reach to the major MPL leagues, they still have good viewership numbers to match popular tournaments in other disciplines. This once again underscores the popularity of Mobile Legends in Southeast Asia.