It’s simple to know that League of Legends, with its immense historical past and recognition, is probably the most watched MOBA on the planet. In 2025 alone, greater than 735.9 million watch hours of League of Legends content material had been seen by followers, in keeping with Esports Charts.
Cell Legends: Bang Bang, League’s cell cousin, ranked second in MOBA with 435.1 million watch hours.
Honor of Kings, one other cell MOBA, is fourth, trailing behind the highest two and MOBA staple DOTA 2 within the watch hour rankings. Though it trails massively behind the opposite three video games (Honor of Kings has did not crack the 100 million watch hour mark), it’s receiving a little bit of buzz not too long ago.
“2025 was a report yr particularly for the cell MOBAs,” Esports Charts co-founder and CEO Artyom Odintsov instructed Esports Insider. “Each MLBB’s M7 World Championship and the Honor of Kings World Cup hit new all-time highs in hours watched and peak viewers, whereas League’s final all-time report was set again in 2024, and Dota 2’s in 2021.”
League of Legends and DOTA 2’s international viewership is well-known within the esports area, whereas Cell Legends: Bang Bang has a powerful viewership in Southeast Asia.
So, the place are Honor of Kings followers coming from? Effectively, should you thought China – the place the sport is from and the place it takes a lot of its lore – you’d guess proper. But it surely isn’t the one space that’s watching.
Southeast Asia’s cell monopoly
In a broad sense, Southeast Asia is by all accounts the house of cell MOBAs.
Whereas China owns a lot of the fan base for Honor of Kings, Indonesia stays one of many high markets for the title.
In keeping with findings by Esports Charts, Indonesia accounts for 34.9 p.c of the title’s viewership.
Cell Legends: Bang Bang, Honor of Kings’ MOBA sibling, is far more concentrated.
Esports Charts’ knowledge revealed that 97.8 p.c of Cell Legends: Bang Bang’s watch hours in 2025 got here solely from Southeast Asia.
A deeper view of the title exhibits that Indonesia is the predominant nation, with 63.5 p.c of watch hours coming from the nation.
The Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore are additionally among the many high markets.
Odintsov credited the cell video games’ dedication to prioritizing fixed, localized content material over occasional international peaks.
Whereas League of Legends does equally with its areas, the one space that cell MOBAs have is an on the spot transition from viewer to participant.
“Cell MOBAs grew by being native and fixed slightly than international and occasional,” Odintsov stated. “Nationwide leagues [run] a lot of the yr within the viewer’s personal language, on the telephone they already play on. Cell Legends now accounts for 61.6 p.c of all esports watch hours on TikTok, a platform PC esports has barely entered.”
However on the Esports World Cup, the MOBAs had been the beginning of the occasion, amassing report numbers.
An honorable exhibiting
Cell Legends: Bang Bang stays probably the most seen title on the Esports World Cup.
The sport earned 50.3 million watch hours in 2025 however noticed a ten p.c decline in 2026 (45.3 million watch hours).
League of Legends, in the meantime, grew from 18.2 million watch hours to 23.7 million watch hours from 2025 to 2026. DOTA 2 remained flat, going from 15.1 million watch hours to fifteen.1 million watch hours.
Honor of Kings was clearly fourth with 4.8 million watch hours in 2026, however the quantity is up 30.8 p.c from the earlier yr (3.7 million).
Odintsov famous that Honor of Kings continues to be early in its worldwide aggressive, however he stays constructive on the titles’ total progress.
“Honor of Kings had its largest yr but. Its 2026 World Cup broke its personal all-time viewership report. League of Legends grew too, by 30.8 p.c, simply shy of HoK’s tempo, however the context behind that progress is totally different,” he stated. “HoK continues to be a younger title on the worldwide stage, and its writer is actively investing in advertising and marketing and occasion exercise to construct that international viewers, whereas League’s progress is coming from an already-established, mature ecosystem that doesn’t want the identical push.”
Honor of Kings’ viewership numbers stay modest in comparison with the opposite three giants within the MOBA area. For instance, at its peak, League of Legends amassed 753.9 million watch hours. Honor of Kings, for comparability, peaked at 16.4 million in 2025.
However of the 4 MOBAs, Honor of Kings remained the one title whose viewership has elevated since 2024.
Cell Legends misplaced roughly 9% of its viewing hours, whereas Dota 2 and League of Legends remained regular shedding lower than three p.c. Honor of Kings’ viewers has grown 45% within the final two years.
However how are the opposite worldwide occasions performing, resembling every respective recreation’s world championships?
4 years of world championships
Cell gaming wasn’t all the time on the high of the viewership mountain, in keeping with the Esports Charts knowledge.
At one level, greater than 5.1 million viewers watched Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu and DRX full their Cinderella run within the finals of the 2022 League of Legends World Championships.
In complete, the 2022 League of Legends World Championships accrued 141.9 million watch hours.
The next yr, the 2023 League of Legends World Championships elevated its viewership by 3.5 p.c, with a peak viewership of 6.4 million viewers. That very same yr, 4.2 million followers watched Cell Legends: Bang Bang’s M4 World Championship with 80.1 million watch hours.
Then, in a novel scheduling quirk, Moonton hosted the M5 World Championships later that yr, rising peak viewership by 5.1 million however a close to 10 p.c drop in watch hours (72.1 million).
League continued its upward pattern in 2024 with practically 7 million peak viewers and an astonishing 190.1 million watch hours. A few of this might be credited to extremely widespread T1 taking part in China’s Bilibili Gaming.
That very same yr, Cell Legends: Bang Bang earned its highest variety of watch hours for its M6 World Championship, with 85.6 million complete watch hours and a peak viewers of 4.1 million viewers.
The roof got here down in 2025 for League of Legends when it noticed a 29 p.c lower in watch hours for its World Championship.
In the meantime, Cell Legends elevated its watch hours for its M7 World Championship to 135.6 million with a peak viewership of 5.7 million viewers.
“MLBB’s M7 World Championship matched League’s Worlds 2025 virtually precisely in complete hours watched, however League nonetheless pulled an even bigger single peak,” Odintsov stated. “Viewers dimension is converging; the one-night spectacle isn’t, but.”
“League has one clear peak second annually – Worlds,” Odintsov stated. “MLBB spreads its largest audiences throughout two flagship occasions, the Mid-Season Cup and the World Championship, plus regional leagues that draw critical numbers of their very own. There’s no single ‘largest second,’ there are a number of.
Honor of Kings noticed progress in its Honor of Kings Invitational Midseason to its Honor of Kings World Cup by 47.4 p.c in watch hours, going from 2.5 million to three.7 million hours. The quantity jumped once more in 2026 when 783,318 viewers watched Honor of Kings’ 2026 World Cup for shut to five million watch hours, as each the M8 World Championships and League of Legends World Championships have but to be performed.
Followers, no matter the place they’re coming from, are beginning to discover.
The untapped audiences
The hole between Cell Legends and Honor of Kings’ viewership numbers is very large by comparability.
Given Cell Legends’ small decline in numbers and Honor of Kings’ progress, it appears that evidently Cell Legends has capped, whereas the market share for Honor of Kings nonetheless has loads of room to develop.
The attention-grabbing factor might be if cell gaming ever takes off within the West – primarily Western Europe and North America. Brazil has a powerful cell participant base and stays one of many few Western areas with an Honor of Kings and Cell Legends formally acknowledged league.
Even so, Odintsov assessed that cell gaming and PC gaming viewership will stay shut, particularly on the championship, worldwide stage.
“The clearest signal cell and PC are converging is on the championship stage,” he stated. “In 2024, Worlds pulled in 2.2 occasions the hours watched of MLBB’s M6 World Championship. By 2025, that hole had all however vanished – Worlds 2025 and MLBB’s M7 World Championship completed inside 0.65 p.c of one another in hours watched.”
Whereas the West doesn’t watch Honor of Kings – and even the extra widespread Cell Legends – it’s a proof of idea for the potential of cell viewership.
The bigger query is whether or not a recreation – cell, PC, or console – in North America might match and rule viewership like Southeast Asia and China.
However that’s for an additional time.
