MLBB Looks Forward to More Tournaments, Viewership in Female Scene in 2025
MLBB Looks Forward to More Tournaments, Viewership in Female Scene in 2025
For years, esports has been seen as a male-dominated scene, with almost all major tournaments featuring male players, while female tournaments mostly took a backseat.
However, as the scene expanded, so did female involvement in various titles. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) has seen a booming female esports scene with the MLBB Women’s Invitational (MWI) being the only female-only tournament in the recent Esports World Cup 2024 in Saudi Arabia, achieving a peak viewership of 265 thousand.
Proper Ecosystem for PH and Other Regions
Moonton Games’ Head of Esports Ecosystem, Ray Ng, shared the MLBB developer’s plans for 2025 in the female esports scene after seeing the success of MWI, which ranked eighth out of 23 total tournaments in terms of peak viewership, as well as the success of the International Esports Federation and Asian Esports Games female tournaments.
“I think 2024 is a good year for MLBB women’s teams because we have three international tournaments,” said Ng during the M Summit in Kuala Lumpur last December, highlighting the three aforementioned tournaments. “I think that’s a very good year for us, setting up the global scene of the women’s division.”
However, Ng believes more needs to be done to expand the scene and replicate Indonesia’s success.
“Indonesia was dominating because they started the women’s ecosystem way earlier,” said Ng, referring to the popular Women’s Star League.
“They had the talent incubator earlier, and because of that, their teams are dominating almost every tournament,” he added.
Indonesian teams have indeed been dominant in almost every international MLBB women’s tournament until Smart Omega Empress famously swept powerhouse Team Vitality in the MWI. Other teams, such as GPX Basreng (now Team Falcons Vega), MBR Delphyne, and RRQ Mika, also had notable success.
Ng wants to establish a proper ecosystem in the Philippines and other regions.
“We’re going to launch a more structured league in the Philippines so that the Philippines can further develop their talents,” said Ng, while also expressing interest in tournaments in the Western regions, particularly in Eastern Europe’s Cyber Heroes.
“We’re looking to do more with them so that we can create a scene or a qualifying tournament, giving those women’s teams something to participate in. We’re trying to do something together with different players to incubate the local scene,” Ng added.
Attracting More Viewers to Female Tournaments
Ng hopes to bring more attention to the women’s MLBB scene, acknowledging the struggles of both female teams and players in securing opportunities at the highest level of competition, citing parallels with traditional sports.
“The traditional esports scene started way earlier, and we seldom see women step on the stage. Gradually it becomes a stigma. So women seldom think, ‘Okay, one day maybe I can achieve that; I can become a pro player in the scene.’ So we set up the first women’s invitational (MWI) to showcase that they have the chance to do it with the platform,” he said.
Ng also highlighted that audiences of women’s tournaments focus more on the personalities behind the scenes and their stories beyond the Land of Dawn.
“We want to highlight more personality-behind-the-scene footage and present some of the uncovered stories to the audience. Nowadays, we have a lot of short-form video formats. I think that fits very well for that category,” Ng said, attributing this to MLBB’s new ways of promoting players and teams.
Ng envisioned mixed-gender teams competing at the highest level of competitions but maintained a realistic perspective.
“This is the ultimate goal. Maybe it takes years or a decade to achieve it, but that’s the ultimate goal when we design the ecosystem,” he said.
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