The Chinese game, sweeping Mongolia

Text/Repair

01

The final almost overturned China,

Why is Mongolia a dark horse?

On October 8, the Hangzhou Asian Games officially closed. For the first time, e-sports have been included in the official competition of the Asian Games, which can be said to have attracted much attention from inside and outside the industry, and it is difficult to find a ticket for offline viewing. In particular, the Dota 2 final between China and Mongolia has become one of the hottest matches in this Asian Games.

Each of the three games was extremely intense, and the Mongolian team was always able to play an advantage in the early stage, while the two victories of the Chinese team were also after a tug-of-war before finally achieving a reversal.

So it's not hard to understand everyone's excitement, after all, since Ti6 (the sixth edition of The International Dota 2), everyone has not had a chance to shout the phrase "CN DOTA BEST DOTA". Now this Asian Games gold medal can be said to have fulfilled the dream of many Chinese fans.

And what makes Grape Jun even more curious is: almost overturned China in the final, Mongolia's e-sports strength is already so strong?

After all, Mongolia is an unfamiliar name to most people, and it's hard to imagine how it intersects with "gaming" and "esports".

In fact, Mongolian gamers are very keen on esports, and young people are also very talented in esports.

In 2015, a CSGO team called "TheMongolz" was formed in Mongolia. This team has no basic salary, can only train in Internet cafes, and has no professional coaches, and more often than not, the opponents can only be found abroad.

But it was under these conditions that they won two A-League titles in 2016 and beat the MAJOR team Renegades by a big margin in the IEM. Including some players with outstanding personal strength, they were later poached by other international teams.

After some success, in 2018, Mongolian esports began to receive sponsorship and investment from local companies and event organizers, including Skycall, the largest telecommunications company in Mongolia at the time, TV stations and online TV also began to broadcast esports competitions, and Mongolian esports companies like META Gaming that operated events, battle platforms, and direct broadcast packaging also appeared.

This is the background color of Mongolia, the dark horse of Asian Games e-sports.

02

Mongolian "national game", from China

In 2017, with the popularity of mobile smartphones, games gradually no longer rely on PC terminals with higher thresholds, and mobile games began to rise rapidly in Mongolia, and the opportunity for a mobile MOBA game - MLBB (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang) came.

In the years that followed, MLBB users rose steadily in Mongolia, gradually rushing to the top 1 position in the free game app list. According to tripartite statistics, more than 16% of Mongolia's population is playing this game - MLBB has naturally become Mongolia's "national game".

Since MLBB began to gain momentum in Mongolia, R&D and publisher Mu Tong has also continued its consistent thinking: not focusing on market size and revenue first, but investing considerable energy in localization, such as doing Mongolian social media, or holding offline events in lower-sinking cities, focusing on user penetration.

MLBB Mongolian social media is telling the story of the player

Mu Tong hosts a player event in the Mongolian city of Darkhan

This year, MLBB even added a Mongolian version, which is the first global game product to be available in Mongolian. Prior to this, Mongolian players could only understand English in order to experience foreign games smoothly.

This also allows Mongolia to usher in the development of mobile e-sports.

Positive Gaming is the first MLBB professional team in Mongolia. Due to the limited population size of Mongolia and the lack of a systematic e-sports professional league in the local area, in order to improve the level of professional competition, they have received sponsorship and support from some Mongolian payment channel providers, and have gone abroad to Turkey and Southeast Asia to participate in competitions and training, and have been difficult and persistent to adhere to this path of "curve practice e-sports".

Group photo of the Positive Gaming team

In fact, Mongolian players have always been very eager for offline events, but in the past, due to the lack of local e-sports resources, they could only focus on online events with lower thresholds.

But now, Mongolian gamers' enthusiasm for esports has been fully unleashed. In June this year, Mu Tong and Esports Network held the offline final of the MLBB M5 Mongolia Wild Card in Ulaanbaatar, and surprisingly, in this country with a population of only 3 million, there were more than 1,000 teams across the country, with a total of more than 6,000 people signing up for the preliminary round.

The competition was held at the UG Arena, Mongolia's largest indoor sports and entertainment complex, with a sold-out venue of 2,000 people. The level of enthusiasm for esports among Mongolian players surprised both Mu Tong and the local organizers.

The scene of the M5 Wild Card Mongolian Qualifiers

What MLBB has done in Mongolia has made local players feel something that is hard to get in other games – respect and service. This is also an important reason why Mu Tong can often do some markets that have been ignored by the industry.

03

MLBB Esports:

From Southeast Asia to globalization

Coincidentally, we found out that Malaysia, which won the runner-up of "Honor of Kings Asian Games Edition" at this Asian Games, is regarded as a strong team in Dota 2 Asia, and its national game is also MLBB.

In the MPL Malaysia S12 Finals that ended on October 8, the homebios team, which has a very popular local team, won the championship for the first time, and the PCU (peak viewing users of the event) reached 550,000, which was 81% higher than the previous season.

Malaysian university students celebrate the victory of Homebios in their dormitories

In 2019, 2021 and 2022, MLBB was successfully selected for the official medal event of esports at the SEA Games for three consecutive years, and became the most watched esports event at the SEA Games.

Whether it is the popularity of Malaysia or the Southeast Asian Games, which has repeatedly broken the ratings record, this is just a microcosm of the extensive influence of MLBB esports in Southeast Asia. Now when it comes to MLBB esports, if you only talk about Southeast Asia, it is obviously a bit outdated.

In fact, Mutong is building an international e-sports system that radiates Asia and even the world.

According to Esports Charts, in January 2023, the peak number of viewers (PCUs) of the MLBB M4 World Finals held in Jakarta, Indonesia reached 4.27 million, ranking among the top 3 in the history of global esports events. As of now, this viewership data still ranks first in the global esports event in 2023.

On May 14, 2023, the first MLBB North American League also came to a successful conclusion in Las Vegas, USA. A total of 96 teams from North America participated in the Spring Tournament, and in the end, the M3 (3rd MLBB World) semi-finalist team BloodThirstyKings won the championship. On the day of the finals, Gerald Solomon, head of the North American Esports Association, also attended the game.

In September this year, in the IESF 2023 World Championship held in Romania, more than 50 countries signed up for MLBB e-sports, in addition to Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the United States and other traditional MLBB powerhouses, there are also many new faces such as Namibia, Senegal, Colombia, Georgia and other teams to advance, and the Mongolian team even reached the semi-finals as a "dark horse".

In the end, in the finals of Indonesia vs. the Philippines, the highest number of simultaneous online viewers exceeded 700,000, setting a record for the highest viewership of this IESF esports event.

The national group that advanced to the IESF MLBB offline finals in Romania

From October 7th to October 8th, the MCC S2 Playoffs (MLBB Continental Championships Season 2) was successfully held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the event was also the first MLBB offline professional event in Central Asia.

After two days of competition, Team Deus Flult won the championship and secured a direct invitation to the M5 World Finals. The stadium, which can accommodate nearly 2,500 people, is crowded with spectators from Central and Eastern European countries every day, and a large number of MLBB esports fans cheer until 1 a.m. This also doubled the PCU growth in the S2 season compared to the previous season.

MLBB fans from many countries in Central Asia and Eastern Europe

Watch the game in Almaty

Guo Xiaofei, head of Mutong's regional competition, revealed at the annual meeting of the e-sports industry that MLBB has established cooperation with more than 200 teams around the world, cultivated more than 500 professional e-sports players, and hosts more than 600 games every year in 55 countries and regions around the world.

When the Mutong e-sports system expands from Southeast Asia to Asia and even the world, it will form a stronger e-sports scale effect, as well as the possibility of more cross-regional competitive exchanges, and also make MLBB a "global" e-sports event with real gold content.

Mutong E-sports insiders once talked to Grape Jun about a detail: Since the beginning of this year, whether it is at the post-game press conference or on online social media platforms, one of the most concerned questions for MLBB teams, fans, and media in various countries is: When will the Chinese team join?

On October 18th, Mu Tong officially announced: the M5 World Finals will welcome the Chinese team for the first time, and KBG will go to Kuala Lumpur in November to participate in the M5 wild card match, and the MLBB global e-sports system will officially complete this important piece of the puzzle in China.

04

There's so much more to Asian esports

Mongolia's performance in the Asian Games Dota 2 finals has proven that Asian esports is more than just the traditional narrative of China and South Korea.

The extensive influence of MLBB e-sports in Asia and even the world is a true portrayal of the vigorous development of China's "e-sports going overseas" in recent years, and it also shows that Asian e-sports still have more room for imagination.

In 2026, Japan will host the Nagoya Asian Games. The Olympic Council of Asia has also officially decided to include esports as an official sport. This means that e-sports, as an official gold medal event in sports competitions, may soon be about to usher in normalization.

As one of the most influential esports sports in Asia, we have reason to believe that MLBB will be the favorite to be selected for the Nagoya Asian Games.

At that day, I believe that the competition will be very good in the end: on the one hand, the Asian countries that have been developing for several years and have been preparing for a long time, and on the other hand, the traditional e-sports powerhouses, the powerhouses in the MOBA field, it is still unknown who will die in the end.