MPL Indonesia Season 8 Sets New Records — It's Currently ahead of Worlds 2021 by Peak Viewers

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This weekend marked the end of the seasons in the biggest regions for competitive Mobile Legends: Bang Bang scene. This firstly applies to Indonesia, where Moonton’s mobile MOBA is super popular among gamers. 8th season of MPL ID became the biggest regional esports event ever (with teams from one country and a single major language of broadcast) by key viewership metrics, and it even outperformed Worlds 2021 by Peak Viewers, at least for now. Esports Charts sums up the results of the event and breaks down its statistics. 

Overall Statistics of the Event

Just like League of Legends splits, MPL ID Season 8 ran for over two months as it started mid-August and ended on October 24. It should also be noted, that Indonesian league was the most popular tournament by Peak Viewers both in August and September including all the desktop disciplines, such as LoL, CS:GO and Valorant.

MPL ID Season 8 was incredibly successful in terms of viewers’ interest. It's the second most popular ML:BB event ever by Peak Viewers, and the most watched one by Hours Watched. It even entered the top 10 by both metrics in the entire history of esports.

Viewers spent over 76.9M hours watching the broadcasts of the league, which is 41% more than previous season. It’s the biggest number among all the mobile esports tournaments, and 7th among all the events in esports.

MPL ID S8 attracted over 2.39M Peak Viewers as that many spectators followed the lower bracket final where ONIC played against EVOS Legends, winners of Season 7. The event is placed 8th by the metric in entire esports, as it got more viewers at peak than Fortnite World Cup 2019. It’s also more than the current record of Worlds 2021, but LoL World Championship is not over yet and most certainly will improve its stats.

Most popular matches

The majority of viewers were following games of Rex Regum Qeon Hoshi and EVOS Legends, two most popular teams in the discipline. Interestingly, these teams didn’t play with each other in playoffs as RRQ got the the Grand Final through the upper bracket, while EVOS got to the lower bracket after the 1st round of playoffs and then lost to ONIC in loser’s final.

Four out of five most watched matches were played in playoffs. But the 3rd place went to RRQ vs EVOS LGN game in the group stage with 1.7M Peak Viewers.

Note, that grand final of the event was played in not-so-convenient time for Indonesia (after the midnight). Probably, that’s why it didn’t become the most popular match of the event, it lacked 18K viewers to beat the numbers of the loser's bracket final.

Most popular teams

As we already noted, two teams are especially popular among the viewers: Rex Regum Qeon Hoshi (winners of Season 6) and EVOS Legends (winners of Season 7). These two teams became the most watched ones with the average audience of 709K and 641K viewers respectively.

Winner of Season 8, ONIC Esports, are the 3rd most popular team of the league as 635K viewers on average watched its matches throughout the event. It’s 28% more than Alter Ego had, which is the 4th most popular team. Top 5 is rounded up by AURA Fire with 360K Average Viewers.

Broadcasts of MPL ID S8

The main broadcasting platform of MPL ID Season 8 was YouTube. This service collected 64.2% of the total number of Hours Watched (49.3M), and Peak Viewers number reached 1.5M spectators during the grand final.

Second most popular platform was Nimo TV with 30.4% from the total (23.3M Hours Watched). Peak Viewers number was reached during the lower bracket final, ONIC vs EVOS game was watched by up to 787K concurrent viewers.

Top 3 is closed by Facebook which got 5.5% from the total. Peak Viewers number reached 159K spectators during the grand final.

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MPL Indonesia Season 8 is surely the most watched regional esports event ever. By the total number of Hours Watched it only loses to world championships in League of Legends (Worlds 2018-2021) and Dota 2 (TI9 and TI10). As for Peak Viewers number, MPL ID S8 is only behind LoL, Dota 2 and several events in Free Fire, as well as PUBG Mobile event and second ML:BB World Championship — M2.

Viewership statistics of MPL ID S8 speaks for itself, and all these numbers were reached by mostly Indonesians, the core audience of the tournament. League could have got even more impressive stats if RRQ and EVOS met in the grand final.

Each season Indonesian ML:BB league attracts more and more viewers. And as of now there’s little doubt that this trend will continue in the new season, which will start after M3 World Championship.