Wild Rift League Asia 2023 Season 1 struggles to find foothold in APAC audience

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Season 1 of the Wild Rift League Asia 2023 saw 20 teams from around the world battle it out in Riot Games’ mobile gaming option. Despite the huge Asian audience for mobile gaming esports, the event struggled to bring in viewership outside of China and it reached a peak concurrent viewers of 9.1K. With the first major Wild Rift event of the year struggling in terms of viewership, what was the cause?

With almost 1M USD available in prize pools throughout the season, the event boasted the second-largest prize pool of any Wild Rift event so far. 12 teams from China and 8 teams from the APAC region qualified, both groups battled it out through a Group Stage and a Playoff, with the top two teams from each playoff advancing to the Finals. After a three-month-long Group and Playoff stage, Chinese team KeepBest Gaming ended up taking the victory in the Finals over Philipino Nigma Galaxy.

The Wild Rift League Asia Finals were the first major tournament for Wild Rift coming into this year. The tournament had $965,000 USD to offer in prize pool, with this being divided up between the China and APAC conferences, and a healthy amount put aside just for Finals. Not only the first major tournament of 2023, but the event was also the most-watched Wilf Rift tournament of the year so far. How did the viewership for this event compare to other Wild Rift events? Have a look at the statistics with us. 

As a fair disclaimer for this article, Chinese viewership was unable to be categorised and analysed, due to the event being streamed on Chinese platforms which we do not cover. Although the Chinese statistics are unavailable, the statistics which are available show the ecosystem of the esports discipline in a wider Pacific region.

Wild Rift League Asia 2023 Season 1 Viewership

Season 1 of 2023 brought in sizable viewership, with 526K Hours Watched throughout the entire season. Despite this being enough hours of watch time to become the most-watched event of the year for the discipline, viewership was steadily low throughout the season, with a Peak Viewers figure of 9.1K occurring during the Grand Finals. Interestingly, the Wild Rift League Asia 2023 Season 1 is essentially three events mashed into one. The Chinese teams have their own league within the event, and the same can be said for the other APAC teams. Eventually, they come together to fight in the Finals but until this point, the two leagues are essentially separate entities.

2023 is the first year since Riot Games’ decided to cease operation of Wild Rift tournaments outside of Asia. Whilst the developer allowed third-party organisations to continue hosting events, without official tournaments to bring in big prize money and help keep the leagues afloat the competitive scene has completely devolved outside of Asia. 

The Wild Rift League Asia could be Riot Games’ attempt at unifying the Asian league into one healthy esports ecosystem. However, the division between the Chinese and other APAC teams leads to a divided viewership, which is sadly expected as Riot Games’ disciplines are known to separate the Chinese region from others. Ultimately, with 20 of the biggest teams from Asia competing, the Wild Rift League Asia 2023’s peak viewership of 9.1K does not impress. Even when accounting for the lack of Chinese viewership in these statistics, the metrics are representative of the overall SEA scene.

Most popular teams of Wild Rift League Asia 2023 Season 1, available for PRO subscribers

A quick detour to the most-watched teams of the event, Nigma Galaxy stood out a cut above the rest in terms of Average Viewers. The Philippines-based team was present throughout the Finals stage, which boasted the highest viewership of the event, but their viewership was even greater than event winners KeepBestGaming.

The Korean KT Rolster team was also one of the more popular teams at the event. The Korean team was the only team in the event to be directly invited instead of competing through a qualifier. 

One thing is of particular interest here, Filipinos were the most represented group in the tournament, besides the Chinese, with two teams coming from the Philippines Qualifier and one more Filipino team coming through the Last Chance Qualifier. The Philippines is well-known to be one of the key countries in Asian mobile gaming esports, fielding numerous teams in various mobile gaming disciplines like Free Fire or Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Despite the high number of Filipino teams and the obvious interest for compatriots Nigma Galaxy, Tagalog remained underrepresented in the language breakdown for the event.

If Wild Rift wants to succeed in Asia, they’ll need to not only appeal to the Chinese market but also draw in viewership from esports powerhouses like Indonesia and the Philippines. These countries make up a large per cent of esports viewership, especially within the mobile gaming scene, and not appealing to these demographics could potentially doom the Wild Rift leagues to lower viewership.

Comparison to other events

Comparison of the Wild Rift League Asia Season 1 to other events, per Hours Watched and Peak Viewers

Comparing Wild Rift League Asia 2023 Season 1 to other events in the discipline, we can see the event became the seventh-most-watched event in the discipline’s history, and the most-watched event of 2023. Nevertheless, the event amassed a monstrous amount of Airtime over the three months it was live, and this was undoubtedly a key reason for watch time inflation. 

In fact, turning towards Peak Viewers we have a more reliable metric for the overall popularity of an event. Here, is where the Wild Rift League Asia 2023’s first season begins to crumble. With 9.1K Peak Viewers, the event cannot even compare to the other top tournaments. The Icons Global Championship 2022 was the official crowning event for the year of esports in the discipline, and the event garnered 2.58M Hours Watched and over 54K concurrent viewers at peak. 

Let’s compare Riot Games' official mobile game to Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, another mobile gaming MOBA esports discipline that has achieved huge viewership in the Pacific region. The on-going MPL Season 12 for ML:BB has currently achieved 15.4M Hours Watched and this season only began this month. MPL Indonesia Season 10 achieved over 80M+ hours of watch time throughout its run, and the M4 World Championship received a peak concurrent viewers of 4.27M earlier this year. Although Riot Games may be building up a viewership ecosystem for itself in China, ML:BB remains the primary MOBA esport for the Pacific region.

Although we expect global championships at the end of the year to experience a significant boost in viewership, the drop in viewership for the recent Wild Rift League Asia event is staggering. Riot Games have decided that Asia is the market for Wild Rift, but it is still unclear if they will be able to break into the mobile gaming industry in this highly competitive market. With games like Free Fire or Bang Bang drawing in millions of hours of viewership, Wild Rift has an upwards battle ahead of it.