Jeremy Gan
❘ Published: 2023-03-07T05:36:29
❘ Updated: 2023-03-07T05:36:38
A group stage game in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang MPL Indonesia Split 1 had the most viewers of any eSports tournament in February. Even beating global juggernauts like IEM Katowice 2023 Grand Finals and VCT LOCK//IN.
To the West, it may seem absurd that a mobile game heavily inspired by League of Legends would attract a massive viewership, enough to comfortably trump games like VCT LOCK//IN and IEM Katowice. However, that is our reality.
In a regular season match between RRQ and EVOS Legends, the show peaked at 1,780,665 viewers, according to Esports Charts data. This number not only beats the big finals of VCT LOCK//IN and IEM Katowice, it even beats VCT Champions 2022 by a large margin.
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RRQ is considered to be one of the best teams in the game and also the most popular. Their squad has multiple Indonesian and regional MPL trophies in their case. They’ve consistently finished 5th-2nd at every single World Cup they qualify for. And if they don’t get trophies, they’re still considered favorites for every tournament they play in.
The team has a long-standing rivalry with EVOS Legends as they denied RRQ the trophy for the game’s first World Championship trophy.
Unsurprisingly, the game was mostly broadcast in Indonesian. Of course, there were broadcasts in other languages too, but the Indonesian stream accounted for 1.3 million of the 1.7 million peak viewership.
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At the time of writing, there are still three more weeks of the regular season to complete and the Grand Finals in March are expected to break records again.
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The match was RRQ’s Upper Bracket semifinals versus Blacklist International. And it only lost to the 2022 LoL World Championship, which came in second, and the 2021 Free Fire World Series in first place.
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