Top Esports Games of Q3 2024

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As part of our quarterly reports, Esports Charts presents a ranking for the most popular esports titles of Q3 2024. The selected data reflects the most popular peak concurrent viewership for a single tournament during the period, with only the best result counting for each game. Across our top 10 ranking, a variety of esports genres are represented, with one particular franchise contributing three games to the ranking. 

Sitting once again at the top of one of our quarterly rankings, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang led the pack with 2.38M Peak Viewers. The title has found wild success among fans from Southeast Asia, but the recent EWC X MLBB Mid Season Cup 2024 marked the title’s first major international event held outside of Asia. ML:BB is stepping on to the global stage, and its first step with this Mid Season Cup event was a massive success for the game’s future. 

Critically, ML:BB did benefit from hosting one of its major international events during Q3 this year. Usually, fellow MOBA game League of Legends is more competitive with ML:BB, but it was unable to match ML:BB without a major international event taking place in Q3. Comparing the ML:BB Mid Season Cup directly to this year’s Mid-Season Invitational in League of Legends, the PC MOBA is still slightly more popular. League of Legends reached its Q3 peak during the LCK Regional Finals 2024, thanks to the powerful large Korean audience for League of Legends esports.

Moving down the list, Dota 2 and Valorant were able to rank highly thanks to end-of-year events capping off their major tournaments in 2024. The International 2024 generated slightly more viewership than it could manage last year, earning a slight increase in peak viewership. Things were similar in Valorant, where the end-of-season Valorant Champions 2024 saw a minor increase in peak viewership and not much else in the way of hype. Despite its strong peak viewership, the Valorant Champions 2024 was the least-watched iteration of the series since its inception, according to average concurrent viewers.

Dota 2 and Valorant benefitted in this ranking thanks to Q3 hosting their most prestigious events of the year, which set them ahead of games such as Counter-Strike, which hosted no Major international event last quarter. Nevertheless, IEM Cologne 2024 managed to reach more than 1 million concurrent viewers for the series’ second time ever, and it ranked Counter-Strike as the fifth-most-popular esports game of the quarter. 

Fortnite also benefited from a year-end event, with the FNCS 2024 Global Championship having reached 809.9K PV. Fortnite has made great strides in revitalising its esports scene in recent years, and the 2024 Global Championship was a significant step towards a growing and healthy ecosystem for the title. The FNCS 2024 Global Championship was the most popular Fortnite esports event since 2019, highlighting that Fortnite still has potential as an esports title, even if it remains unlikely it will ever reach millions of concurrent viewers, as it managed during the peaks of its popularity. 

Arena of Valor slipped in behind Fortnite, with 699.9K Peak Viewers recorded for the Arena of Valor Premier League 2024. The game is an international adaption of Honor of Kings, a massively popular mobile game within mainland China, and it has found sizeable audiences in Southeast Asia with this international release. Vietnamese audiences are a major source of viewership for Arena of Valor, and the country is quickly becoming a hot spot for esports viewership activity. Vietnamese audiences have become critical in League of Legends, Arena of Valor, and other esports titles popular in Southeast Asia.

Moving to the tail-end of our rankings, PUBG Mobile, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds Mobile India all managed to secure a spot for their Q3 performances. While all three games originate from the same franchise, their viewership results for the quarter were not that similar. PUBG Mobile held an event in collaboration with the Esports World Cup, which became its most popular event of the year so far. While the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2024 is currently the game’s top event of the year, the world championship for the mobile gaming esports title begins at the end of this month, and will likely reach much higher viewership.

Battlegrounds Mobile India and PUBG: Battlegrounds found themselves in similar situations but at different stages of development. The Indian title is relatively new, and the Battlegrounds Mobile India Pro Series 2024 set a new peak viewership record at 494K PV as the title’s third entry to the Pro Series events. The original PUBG title saw the PUBG Nations Cup 2024 set a new peak viewership record as well; the main difference between these two is that the Indian title is a newcomer which is still finding its audience, whereas the traditional PUBG game is developing a new healthy esports ecosystem, following its pre-2020 popularity, which quickly wore off. 

For Q3 of 2024, it was relatively stable at the top-end of esports viewership. MOBA titles like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends, and to a lesser extent Dota 2, continued to dominate viewership, whereas shooters like Valorant and Counter-Strike followed closely behind to complete the top 5. Outside these usual suspects, Fortnite and the PUBG franchise are making a serious comeback. The battle royale titles enjoyed high viewership and support throughout the quarter.