MLBB, as the leading MOBA title in mobile Esports on account of viewership, has grown quite a lot in the last few years. For example, MSC (Mid Season Cup) peaked as the most watched game of EWC2024, beating out DOTA2, League Of Legends and Counter Strike by huge margins in both peak viewers and general viewership. And if we consider the all time viewership across all titles and all events in 2024, M6 World Championships was 2nd to only Worlds 2024 in terms of viewers, with a whopping 4.13 million viewers at its peak. Even the regional league of the MLBB Esports circuit, MPL (MLBB Professional League), set some huge records, with MPL Indonesia Season 14 having achieved an all time viewership of 3.9 million, placing it just below M6 World Championship in 2024. These achievements of MLBB stem largely from its incredible popularity in the SEA region.
That popularity is also what determined the domination of MLBB at the global stage. A large part of said popularity is cultivated from base-up, through MPL, MLBB’s regional league. It functions as a seed to global events like the Southeast Asia Cup, M World Championships, LIGA LATAM. There are 10 MPL Leagues around the world - Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore (Split in 2 since 2021), Philippines, Cambodia, LATAM, Brazil (Now a part of LATAM) and Myanmar (Paused temporarily) - of which 7 are active. Out of these leagues, MPL ID and MLBB PH run on franchise models.
The teams and players from those leagues go onto the M-Series World Championships, the global stage tournament for the MLBB circuit. The first edition of said tournament started with the 2019 Season, and was known as M1. It was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the Axiata Arena and featured 16 teams from around the globe, with a portion coming from their respective Professional Leagues. Hailing from Indonesia, EVOS Legends, the Champions of MPL ID Season 4, won that tournament.
However, from the next edition onwards, all champions of the M-Series World Championships were teams that qualified from the MPL PH League, that is, from the Philippines. The beginning of that representation from the Philippines is still going strong, so much so that even the recent M6 World Championship title was claimed by Fnatic ONIC PH, who were #1 in MPL PH S14. So, in total 6 editions of the tournament thus far, 5 editions have been won by PH teams. That shows a clear picture of exactly how much influence the audience and players from the SEA region, particularly, the Philippines hold over the MLBB circuit. An example of that can be seen in the case of the M5 World Championship, which was held in the Philippines, and where APBR clinched the title in home turf Manilla.
The absolute domination of PH in the MLBB scene can be further seen by examining the current lineup of MPL PH teams. 6 out of 8 of the current MPL PH Teams have won either the M-Series (M World Championships) or the MSC (MLBB Southeast Asia Cup). FCAP (Falcon AP.Bren), BLCK (Blacklist International), TLID (Team Liquid PH) , FNOP (Fnatic Onic PH) and RSG PH are all M-Series Champions, while OMG/EXE (Execration), ONIC (Now Fnatic Onic PH), Aether Main are MSC Champions. Furthermore, considering that the Execration squad is now Omega in MPL PH, the message is clear. In fact, it’s so clear that after the M6 World Championship Finals, Jang "Hoon" Seong-hun from BTK (BloodThirstyKings) straight up said, “At this point, whoever wins MPL PH, wins the M-Series.”
Now, one might wonder how one region, or more specifically, one country has managed to so thoroughly define how a title has progressed as an esports over its lifetime. Well, a lot of it actually comes down to another title, called DOTA. The Philippines has been one of the biggest fans of Dota since the early 2000s. And the millennials that started playing Dota way back then all retired from it and utilised their 20 years worth of knowledge of macros, drafting and strategies to become the veteran sponsors, coaches, analysts, managers and even parents of MLBB players, thus forming a support system that made utter Filipino dominance possible at a global stage.
And though such a wide community and culture was not as visible in MLBB’s early days due to the meta not yet being mature and the MLBB scene having just started off, the 2018 MPL PH launch soon started bringing it to light. But the main push came when it switched to the franchise model in 2021 and veterans joined the scene as a support system in an official capacity. BREN’s victory in M2 was just a small push that simply put the required motivation into an almost pre-formed game-ready scene that fired into position to bring forth the current 5 year domination. After all, as a redditor once opined, the heroes, mechanics, maps and items may be different in individual titles, but MOBAs will always have universal similarity in principles. So the training for teamwork, mental conditioning, and analysis of meta will always apply. And exactly that is what has happened between Dota and MLBB.
Of course, if one has risen to the zenith, one must come down sooner or later. That sentiment is why many have thought that 2024 would be the end of PH Domination and other regions will begin to rise. And that line of thought did have some credibility when Aurora (MPL PH S14 #2) saw an early exit in the M6 group stages, leaving the hopes of a fifth consecutive win in the hands of Fnatic ONIC PH while regions like Indonesia and Malaysia still had two teams alive. But, FNOP, breaking the upper bracket curse in the knockouts, defeated Team Liquid Indonesia in the Upper bracket finals at 3-1 and fought them to a 4-1 victory in the Grand Finale, thus preserving the 5 year win streak.
This domination of the Philippines in the MLBB Esports Scene, even if it loses to other regions in terms of sheer viewership or other assorted benefits, is still a signifier of the importance of collaboration between esports veterans, young professionals, top talents, publishers and local organizations, and it can make one region the leader amongst many.
