RED Canids, Vivo Keyd, Santos e-Sports among MPL Brazil invited teams

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) has announced the six invited teams which will be competing in the inaugural MPL Brazil season.

The invited teams are RED Canids, Vivo Keyd, Santos e-Sports, Black Dragons, Imperial Esports, and DreamMax. All six teams will compete against each other — alongside two open qualifier teams — when the season officially commences on August 14th.

MPL Brazil
(ESI Illustration) Image credit: MOONTON, RED Canids, Vivo Keyd, Santos e-Sports, Black Dragons, Imperial Esports, DreamMax

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MPL Brazil was first announced last month and is the first MLBB professional league set to take place outside of Southeast Asia. The tournament will feature a $30,000 (~£21,551) prize pool, with the winning team qualifying for future global MLBB tournaments.

RED Canids currently competes in the CBLOL, Riot Games’s franchised Brazilian League of Legends competition. Meanwhile, Vivo Keyd currently has teams that compete in Free Fire PUBG Mobile, and League of Legends Wild Rift (under the name Keyd Stars). 

ESI spoke to Felippe Corradini, the CEO of RED Canids Kalunga, to discuss the organisation’s decision to enter into MLBB.

He said: “As we are in business with new sponsors from the mobile sector, it makes total sense for us (to enter MPL Brazil) to build a great start in a great league that has huge potential to grow here in Brazil. Especially knowing the success it has in Southeast Asia.

“We are entering a new era, mobile gaming is huge and the public is younger. It opens up a whole new level of possibilities!”

MOONTON, the mobile title’s publisher, currently has five regional MPL leagues in Southeast Asia. MPL Indonesia, the game’s most popular league, recorded a peak viewership of  1.83m in May 2021, according to Esports Charts. Moreover, the competition’s 2021 world championships garnered a peak viewership of over 3m.

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Regarding the title’s growing popularity, Marcus Oliveira, the COO at Select e-Sports Management – Santos e-Sports, told ESI: “​If MOONTON does the same investment and development work (that it does in Southeast Asia) for the scene as a whole, they will be welcomed with open arms. The chances here are promising.”

“Santos e-Sports is always studying the worldwide mobile gaming market and sees it as a valuable opportunity to be among the teams that will act at MPL Brasil Season 1.”

Black Dragons is regarded as one of the oldest esports organisations in Brazil, having been founded in 1997. The organisation currently has competitive rosters in Rainbow Six Siege, Free Fire and PUBG Mobile.

Imperial Esports is largely known for being in the Brazilian CS:GO scene, however, the organisation also competes in Crossfire and VALORANT.

Qualifiers for the remaining two MPL Brazil spots are set to commence on July 16th.

Esports Insider says: There is certainly a mixture of teams that have been invited to compete in MPL Brazil’s inaugural season with notable names such as RED Canids, Vivo Keyd and Santos, joining up and coming organisations in Imperial Esports and DreamMax. It’ll be interesting to see which teams will compete in the open qualifiers and how the viewership figures will look like for the event.

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