One year ago no one could imagine that mobile games can become a major competitive discipline like traditional PC esports. Nevertheless, we have the opportunity to observe an incredible situation — mobile games grew so fast for the last several months that they can compete with industry’s big players nowadays. If you want to be updated with the latest information about mobile esports market you should read our blog.

Esports Charts wrote an article in September about the future of mobile esports. We were sure that the prospects of portable games in the industry is quite vague and they will not receive tournaments like The International in the nearest future. Situation changed completely in several months.

Mobile MOBA still can not gather a huge audience in the western countries. Vainglory with a 3x3 game format doubled its audience — Vainglory World Championship 2017 was held in December and it had 56.000 viewers in the peak. The same tournament in 2016 had only 22.000 viewers in peak. If developers will maintain a stable development of their game, Vainglory will have a bright future in esports in several years.

Chinese MOBA King of Glory and the western adaptation Arena of Valor have the opposite situation. King of Glory beats all records and grows with the speed of flying Superman. Summer King Pro League gathered 9 million viewers at the peak. King Pro league Fall Season doubled the number of viewers — 20 million people online at the peak. In the same time Arena of Valor is quite unpopular in the Western market.

Clash Royale is a new contender for domination in the mobile esports. Supercell tried to make Clash of Clans a new esports discipline, but only few people were interested in tournaments. Developers realized that they chose the wrong way and they need to change something. Supercell decided to focus on Clash Royale since this game is much easier to understand for beginners. Clash Royale didnt gather huge audience for some time — ESWC Gamescom Clash Royale 2017 had 40.000 people viewers at peak. But in a very short time everything changed.

Clash Royale Touchdown Tournament was a entertaining one-day tournament based on special game event. Although, it gathered 277.000 people online at the peak. It happened due to successful marketing, especially in the Latin America — the biggest part of viewers were Spanish-speaking. Clash Royale is very popular in this region since the strongest players in the world are exactly from Latin America.

The success of Clash Royale Touchdown Tournament inspired the developers to develop mobile esports further. Supercell decided to host King's Cup II — another Clash Royale tournament. It gathered record numbers of viewers for mobile esports discipline — almost 187.000 people at the peak with 53,000 on average. Amount of english-speaking viewers became more than Hispanic which leads to healthy growth of Clash Royale as an esports discipline. King’s Cup II proved that the Clash Royale popularity can be stable thus Supercell tried to go further.

The developers decided to host Crown Championship World Finals 2017 — the largest and the most ambitious tournament in the mobile esports history. An impressive prize fund ($400.000), well organized working process and professional marketing turned this tournament into something bigger than just a similar championship. It was especially interesting to watch the tournament in the event itself. Supercell placed the projector on the ceiling and broadcasted the game on the floor — it looked revolutionary and extremely unusual thus made the event quite popular among viewers. More of it — amount of English-speaking viewers became even bigger compare to the last tournament despite the fact that the player from Mexico took the first place.

Another well-known game is Summoner Wars from the South Korean developers. At first it seems that this game has no prospects in esports, but reality demonstrated the opposite situation. Summoners War: World Arena Championship 2017 gathered 72.000 viewers at the peak with 50.000 on average. Esports Charts will take a closer look at this game in the future.

There are a lot of other mobile games which host tournament for small audience. For example there are one more mobile MOBA — Mobile Legend, which have the championship in Indonesia with a prize fund $100.000. We will publish the results of this league as soon as it will be finished. The same statement applies to all other disciplines.

Mobile esports sounded like a joke several years ago. It was hard for them to gather their audience but the result was worth it. Esports Charts expects a lot of new records from mobile esports in 2018.