A Mobile Game Was the Most Watched Esports Event of August and the Winner Was Not From Southeast Asia
The MLBB Mid Season Cup peaked above 1.9 million viewers. Team Spirit won it, then won The International as well.
Esports Charts published its August figures on 3 September and the Mobile Legends Mid Season Cup is at the top of them, peaking at over 1.9 million viewers.
The International grand final is second at close to 1.8 million, the highest Dota 2 audience in five years, and the PUBG Mobile World Cup third at 1.79 million, the second highest that game has recorded.
The Mid Season Cup was played inside the Esports World Cup in Riyadh rather than as a standalone event in the region, and Team Spirit beat Yangon Galacticos in the final to become the first team from outside Southeast Asia to win a major Mobile Legends title.
The International ran from 13 to 23 August at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai with sixteen teams. Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 in the final on 23 August and took 1.4 million dollars from a crowdfunded pool of 3.33 million. They are the first three-time winners, after 2021 and 2023, and Yatoro and Collapse are the first players to hold three Aegis wins.
Spirit also won the Counter-Strike event at the Esports World Cup, which made them the most watched team of the month across all three.
The English-language picture looks different from the global one. Counter-Strike at the Esports World Cup peaked at 383,300 among English speakers, well under what the mobile titles drew worldwide. Elsewhere the LCP closed its season with watch time down 38 per cent year on year.