AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

• Competitive mobile games are slowly making their way into the spotlight and are successfully cementing themselves as the next big thing in the world of esports
• You heard it right – 2018 might be the year of mobile esports

If you told your parents years ago that you wanted to make a career out of playing mobile games, chances are they would have shrugged it off and got mad at the thought of their child make a living with a mobile phone.

But that is not the case in 2018, as competitive mobile games are slowly making their way into the spotlight and are successfully cementing themselves as the next big thing in the world of esports.

You heard it right – 2018 might be the year of mobile esports.

Esports is currently a popular spectator sport that has gained a lot of fans over the years. In fact, data shows that it may have overtaken some traditional sports when it comes to viewership. One example of this is when the Mid-Season Invitational 2017 League of Legends, a popular esports game for PC, garnered over 360 million unique viewers last year. That is more than the Super Bowl, which only took around 111 million unique viewers the same year.

As for mobile esports, they could not yet reach a viewership count equal to traditional esports games. According to Esports Chart, last year’s Clash Royale tournament only had around 20 million views while the lowest viewership was from Vainglory World Championship 2017 with only 56,000 viewers at its peak.

However, competitive mobile gaming has seen a huge increase this year. Mobile games such as Vainglory, Clash of Clans, and Arena of Valor have been organising successful tournaments and fostering a healthy environment for its professional athletes.

Clash Royale recently made a big announcement that it will be organizing one of the biggest mobile esports events called Clash Royale League with a prize pool of over $1m. Notable teams from other esports games such as Fnatic and Team SoloMid have also announced that they will be participating in the event.

Tencent, a Chinese tech company, also tried to capitalise on the western market by releasing Honor of Kings in the US and Europe and renaming it to Arena of Valor. The game drew heavy inspiration from traditional MOBAs. They also announced this year that they would be holding an international tournament with a prize pool of around $500,000.

Super Evil Megacorp, the developer of Vainglory, has also announced a partnership with Alibaba that will include Vainglory in the official lineup of games in the World Electronic Sports Games 2018 (WESG). Vainglory also announced before that it would be having a new 5v5 format, having had only a 3v3 format previously.

This will be the first time that a mobile game will be integrated into the WESG and will be headlining along with other popular games like Dota 2, Starcraft II, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

With no signs of backing down, mobile games may be the next big thing in esports. It’s only a matter of time before we fully embrace the notion that you can have a successful career just by playing with your mobile phone.

Source: http://www.foxsportsasia.com/esports/839328/rise-mobile-esports-2018/