The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Southeast Asia Cup, which concluded over the weekend, has become the game’s second-most-watched esports event.
The event saw a peak of 3.6m viewers tune in, according to esports data and viewership platform Esports Charts. This makes it the most successful SEA Cup to date with only the M4 Word Championship ahead of the competition in terms of peak viewership.
The SEA Cup saw a total of 659,000 average viewers and 40m hours watched, as well as around 166m total views. The most-watched game was the grand final between Blacklist International and ONIC Esports, with ONIC securing its first SEA Cup title.
The event, which took place from June 10th to June 18th, is a regional competition that sees teams from different leagues in Southeast Asia play each other. These include the likes of Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, but this year’s edition also saw North American, Turkish and Egyptian teams participate. The event had a total of 12 teams, a prize pool of $300,000 (£234,000), and took place in Cambodia.
The tournament was expected to record high peaks for the knockout stage, considering that even the group stages of the tournament attracted more than a million people at peak. Compared to last year’s event, the SEA Cup saw around 800,000 more peak viewers and around 5m total hours watched more, with 12 hours less airtime.
The ever-increasing numbers show just how large the MLBB esports fanbase is in Southeast Asia. The event was streamed by official MLBB channels, but also by community creators and streamers from the region. Interestingly, the tournament also saw a record for peak number of viewers from Cambodia – the Khmer language broadcast reached 130,000 peak viewers, more than any MLBB tournament to date.
Historically, the most-watched MLBB event is the World Championship, and this year’s M5 will take place in November and December in the Philippines.
