You’re sleeping on mobile esports and you gotta wake up

In the esports world, we often differentiate “esports” and “mobile esports,” with some not taking the mobile scenes as seriously. And it’s definitely a strange phenomenon, as mobile esports are actually quite a bit larger than traditional esports.

After the Esports World Cup, it became clear that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang was one of the most-viewed esports in the world. The mobile MOBA made up more than one-third of the EWC viewership and became the most-watched esport title of the first half of 2025. Period.

Now, the Honor of Kings King Pro League (KPL) Grand Finals this weekend is looking to be the largest esports event ever.

Honor of Kings KPL Grand Finals will have largest attendance in esports history

The KPL Grand Finals has a massive prize pool ($9.8 million) and takes place in an equally massive venue (the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, China). Some of the biggest esports organizations will be competing, including Weibo Gaming, Top Esports, and LGD Gaming.

The hype was definitely building around the KPL Grand Finals. When the tickets finally went on sale, the Grand Final match sold out in 12 seconds — and this is a stadium with over 91,000 seats.

I’m not gonna bore you with the details of who is competing and whatever. You likely don’t care or even know who the hell these people are.

But that’s my point. We are completely oblivious, acting like mobile esports is cringe and fake and whatever else as we glaze VALORANT, Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends… Meanwhile, Honor of Kings probably has more fans than those three esports scenes combined.

I wrote about the phenomenon for Team Liquid in the past as the global esports organization signed a Filipino roster to compete in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The title? “The 5 Steps of Recovering From Mobile Esports Denial.” Why? Because wake up, it’s here. Large esports organizations like Team Liquid are signing rosters for these games after noticing the growing fanbases and passion in Asian countries.

Europe and America can keep pretending that League of Legends is king or that only shooters on a PC are valid — that doesn’t change the growing reality: mobile esports are dominating and you won’t be able to deny it much longer.

“Here in Brazil, the mobile esports scene is already part of the everyday life of esports fans,” PUBG Mobile Team Manager Erick Cardoso told me. “In the past, there was some resistance from these fans, but it was quickly overcome thanks to the impressive numbers achieved and more people became familiar with the gaming ecosystem and fell in love with it.”