The 2025 Esports World Cup saw the success of its Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Women’s Invitational (MLBB). With a women’s team being champions, Team Vitality were victors. The tournament peaked at over 490,000 viewers, making it the second most-watched women’s esports event of all time, according to data from Esports Charts.
Viewership Milestones Shatter Previous Records
The tournament spent a cool $500,000. The 34-hour effort caught the attention of over 109K people on average. Players put in over 3.7 million hours of watch time. The peak viewership of almost 496,000 concurrent viewers occurred during the Playoffs Finals where Gaimin Gladiators faced Team Vitality.
The semi-final Gaimin Gladiators vs. Terror Queens (275,000+ viewers) match and Team Vitality vs. Team Liquid (274,000+ viewers) also performed well. The popularity contest also extended to watch time by the team as Team Vitality and Gaimin Gladiators scored 1.3 million hours each, while Terror Queens scored 1 million hours and Team Liquid with 931,000+ hours.
Regional Audience Distribution
Surprisingly, the English-speaking channels were ranked 4th most popular with a peak viewership of over 48,000. Bahasa Malaysia channels placed third with around 60,000 viewers, yet the Burmese broadcast achieved nearly 88,000. The Indonesian channels commanded the highest viewing figures, surpassing 285,000 at peak viewership – indicating massive engagement in Southeast Asia.
The competition was viewed throughout many streaming services. YouTube has 9.8 million total views and almost 224,000 as the peak concurrent audience. Tiktok Live was just behind the first place with a peak viewership of over 2,200. Bigo Live (this is 28,000 peak) and Twitch (4,000+ peak across 49 channels) were next.
Women’s Esports on the Rise
The 2025 MLBB Women’s Invitational has now become the second most popular women’s esports event in terms of peak viewership and hours watched. It dropped behind only the 32nd SEA Games Women’s MLBB tourney, where viewers peaked at over 1.3 million. To provide context, the VCT 2024 Game Changes Championship of VALORANT, the most watched non-MLBB women’s event, peaked at 464,000 viewers.
The viewership of this year’s tournament was much higher than the 2024 tournament, which peaked at 265,000 and averaged 74,000. The remarkable growth indicates that enthusiasm for women’s competitive MLBB is rising and that the momentum for women’s esports in mobile will continue to pick up.