CEMENTING its place as the esports viewership juggernaut in this corner of the world, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang racked up 2.2 million concurrent views during its three-day run in the Vietnam National Convention Center for the 31st Southeast Asian Games.
That’s ten times the amount of views from the last SEA Games in 2019, which was hosted by the Philippines at the Filoil Flying V Centre.
Analytics site Esports Charts has a further breakdown. The tournament garnered a total of 17.8 million hours watched, with an average of 612,083 viewers. More than 2 million peak viewers tuned in during the Indonesia-Sibol finals.
By comparison, only 284,888 viewers tuned into the SEA Games 2019 finals at its peak.
Sibol vs. Indonesia became among most-watched Mobile Legends matches
In both editions of the SEA Games, the national team triumphed over the Indonesian squad. If the 30th Southeast Asian Games saw an all-star assemblage of ML athletes, this year’s squad was made up of only one team: the MPL-PH Season 8 and M3 champions Blacklist International.
It was a bet that paid off for Sibol, as Blacklist International, bannered by a return of star ML duo Johnmar “OhMyV33nus” Villaluna and Danerie “Wise” del Rosario, completed a near-flawless campaign for gold. They only dropped two games: the first against Singapore during the semis, and then Game 2 of their best-of-five versus the Indonesian team during the finals.
According to Esports Charts, the SEA Games finals isn’t even the most-watched ML match in recent history. That honor belongs to an MPL-Indonesia showdown between EVOS Legends and RRQ Hoshi, at 2.8 million peak viewers, as well as the faceoff between Onic Philippines and RRQ Hoshi at the M3 world championships, at 3.2 million peak viewers.
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