PMPL Spring 2023 Regular Leagues’ viewership dynamics more volatile than Championships

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The PUBG Mobile esports roadmap in 2023 underwent a big change, with the introduction of the PUBG Mobile Super League (two seasons — Spring in March and Fall in August) instead of the usual regional championship. This franchised league, first floated last year, will run concurrent with the PMPLs, with the top teams from SEA advancing to the PMSL.

The Spring season for this year has concluded, and there are a lot of numbers to delve into and see what worked and what didn’t. Esports Charts has done exactly that, and there’s good news for Tencent and KRAFTON.

Viewership stats of Regular Leagues of last two seasons

The Regular Leagues of the Spring 2023 season put together were not watched as much compared to the previous season — Fall 2022. Last year’s competitions combined also did much better in terms of average online viewers, with a key factor helping these metrics being that the total airtime was higher by 14.6%.

  How each region performed over the last two seasons   

There were 14 Regular Leagues in the PMPL Spring 2023 season, compared to the 13 in Fall 2022, with the extra one being the Wild Card Super League added this year. In total, Fall 2022 did much better when looking at Hours Watched and Average Viewers, with the SEA and South Asia regions doing better in terms of the former metric. However, this season did see the other three regions take rapid strides, with Europe, Americas, and Middle East & Africa all seeing their share of the watch hours rise.

Regarding average concurrent viewers, the SEA region fell by 4.9% this year and was the only one to see a dip. The Europe region had the largest growth, climbing by 20.4%, while South Asia grew by 18.4% and MEA rose by 15.4%.

One metric where the Regular Leagues in 2023 did better was Peak Viewers, as it did 20.7% better. When it comes to the individual regions, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and MEA all shot up, while Europe and Americas saw dips.

The importance of the SEA region to PUBG Mobile’s esports scene cannot be underestimated one bit, and that can be seen in the numbers here. Any fall in its numbers most likely also means a decrease in the overall stats of that season, and vice versa is also true. But the main point for the discipline is that its rise, alongside that of South Asia, helped Spring 2023 become more popular than Fall 2022.

Indonesian was the most-watched language during the first season of the year — which was also the case in the Fall 2022 season — taking up 36% of the overall watch time pie. However, one crucial point to note is that its watch hours stats fell this time, totaling 5.4M HW.

In its stead, Nepali (38.7%), Turkish (32.7%), and Portuguese (65.8%) were the big gainers during the Spring 2023 season. In fact, the former two ended as the second and third most watched languages.

  Language and platform distribution at the PMPL Soring 2023 season   

There were also massive losers in 2023, with Bahasa Malaysia, Bengali, and Hindi all seeing falls of more than 50%. The latter two’s reductions can be pinpointed to the fact that PUBG Mobile is no longer available in India, with a localized version, BGMI, now up and running, including a vibrant and well-structured esports scene.

YouTube continued to dominate the charts when it comes to platforms, eating more than 60% of the total stats. TikTok, despite bans in many countries, was the second most-watched site, proving that many fans prefer on-the-go action when it comes to catching their favorite teams and players battle it out for glory.

A deeper dive into the numbers seems to back this fact up, as all the platforms saw dips in their numbers compared to Fall 2022, apart from this video-sharing app. In fact, TikTok rose by 181.1% in 2023, which is quite significant and sets it up to play a more important role in future PUBG Mobile competitions.

YouTube also saw a fall of 33.9% in its watch hours numbers in 2023, reflecting the general trend of a decrease in this metric across the board, as mentioned above. NimoTV, another popular streaming platform in this part of the world that shut down operations last year, was missing from the list this time around, although its share last year was pretty negligible.

Comparing the numbers of the previous two seasons’ Championships

  Comparing the Championships held over the last two seasons   

When talking about Championships, this is where there’s lots to like for the tournament organizers, as most of these PUBG Mobile competitions put together this year have outperformed those from 2022. The Spring 2023 season’s numbers were 17.8M HW, 441K PV, and 91K AV over an airtime of 196 hours, which were 54.7%, 75.04%, and 37.1% better than last year’s stats, with the total broadcast time also rising by 13.2%.

The most popular event from 2023 was the PUBG Mobile Super League Southeast Asia Spring 2023. Indonesian Partner Team Alter Ego Ares came out on top to pocket $50.5K and book its place in the PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2023 and the PUBG Mobile Regional Clash 2023 - Southeast Asia vs South Asia.

A crucial point to be noted is that this tournament is no longer part of the PMPL, operating as a kind of mid-season pit stop pitting the best sides in the disciplines’ most popular region against each other. Instead, the PMSL SEA 2023 was included as part of the analysis to help track the dynamics of the region's highest-tier competition after its switch to the prevalent affiliate format.

PUBG Mobile Super League is the new series first introduced for Southeast Asia in the 2023 season. The league includes qualified teams and partner organizations with permanent invitations to PMSL.

2022’s most popular tournament was the PUBG Mobile Pro League Southeast Asia Championship Fall 2022. Thailand's The Infinity emerged as champion, taking home $37.6K in the process, with the country completing a podium sweep thanks to Buriram United Esports and FaZe Clan finishing second and third, respectively.

It’s a busy time for PUBG Mobile, and the Fall season has already begun with the various regional leagues. Considering how the Spring Season went, there will be hopes that the viewership numbers continue to rise and give the game more success and traction globally.