The 2024 edition of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) Women’s Invitational has garnered 265,117 peak viewers, making it the fourth most-watched event in the history of women’s esports.
The tournament was part of the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Saudi Arabia, recording 2.5m watch hours over its 34 hour runtime, according to esports data platform Esports Charts.
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The third iteration of the MLBB Women’s Invitational was held at the AMAZON Arena in Riyadh from July 24th-27th, featuring a $550,000 (~£428,647) prize pool. The event performed significantly better than its predecessor, which attracted 179,024 peak viewers.
Although this year’s Invitational could not compete with the impressive 392,405 peak viewership of the inaugural edition, it did show higher average viewership and watch hours across a comparable airtime.
The most popular match was the Grand Final between Team Vitality and Smart Omega Empress, with the latter decisively securing the trophy. Interestingly, the roles were reversed in terms of team popularity by watch hours. Vitality was the audience’s favourite with 962,500 watch hours, followed by the tournament winner and Falcons Vega.
Vitality’s MLBB roster was formerly known as Bigetron Era, a competitive division of Indonesian esports organisation Bigetron Esports. However, Vitality acquired the team in May this year, marking the organisation’s entry into MLBB esports.
With MLBB being a mobile title primarily popular among Asian and Southeast Asian esports fans, some of the Invitational’s viewership stats differ from those of tournaments predominantly consumed by Western audiences. For example, the Indonesian broadcast was by far the most watched with 154,404 peak viewers. The English broadcast only ranks fourth (37,151), preceded by Tagalog (42,606) and Bahasa Malaysia (58,411).
Moreover, Twitch’s livestream (2,038) was overshadowed by Bigo Live (18,941), YouTube (115,058) and TikTok Live (125,964) in terms of peak viewers.
Multi-title esports festival EWC is set to run until August 24th and features a $60m (~£46.7m) prize pool. Its organiser, the Esports World Cup Foundation, is linked to the Saudi Arabian government. Therefore, the event has faced criticism concerning the country’s women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and censorship records.
The Women’s Invitational is not the only MLBB competition to join the EWC. The game’s Mid Season Cup 2024 concluded on July 17th, recording a slight viewership decrease compared to its 2023 counterpart.
