In recent years, the mobile esports scene has grown exponentially! The popularity of Esports Games is increasing each year, and even the mobile esports tournaments are expanding. If you're looking to know more about the best competitive mobile esports games in 2023, this article is just for you!

The Top 10 Mobile Esports Games List

  1. Arena of Valor/King of Glory
  2. PUBG Mobile
  3. League of Legends: Wild Rift
  4. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
  5. Brawl Stars
  6. Clash Royale
  7. Call of Duty Mobile
  8. Clash of Clans
  9. Garena Free Fire
  10. Vainglory

Nowadays, mobile esports is quickly taking over. As of 2022, mobile gaming esports tournaments even overtook several of their classic PC and console counterparts, offering similar prize pools and sometimes rivaling them in audience size. And, compared to 2021, mobile esports is even larger in Asia.

Taking all of the above into account, it's pretty obvious then that we live in what are great times for mobile esports gaming. With this in mind, we've listed the top ten most popular competitive mobile games below.

King of Glory (Arena of Valor)

Arena of Valor and its sister game King of Glory are two of the most popular esports games in the world, with 2022 a great year for both games. Although KoG is only available in China, the Arena of Valor version is available for the rest of the world and draws some of the biggest audiences for mobile esports.

AoV in 2021

While AoV was the number four mobile esports game in 2020, it climbed to first place in 2021 – a position that it held also for 2022. The game is most popular in Southeast Asian esports countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. The 2022 Arena of Valor International Championship managed to attract an excellent 550K peak viewers, also featuring a superb $1,650,000 in prize money!

KoG in 2021

King of Glory also had a decent 2022, in spite of lockdowns and other restrictions. The King Pro League Spring 2022 was played both offline & online and featured an incredible $2,800,000 reward; however, its viewership numbers are not as good as AoV’s. Truthfully, though, Arena of Valor is much more popular than King of Glory.

PUBG Mobile

PUBG is available on several platforms, including PlayStation, PC, and cloud game streaming services. Despite this, Bluehole Studios have decided that they will focus on PUBG Mobile for esports, which, in the first half of 2021, saw an estimated 317.7 million hours of audience time. This was almost double the number of hours of total viewership in 2020! Livestreams are available on the official Twitch channel and on Nimo TV.

Although Garena Free Fire did overtake PUBG Mobile as the most-watched mobile esports game, PUBG Mobile made more in revenue than ever before (some $744 million between January and March 2021).

The peak viewership numbers for 2021 came from the PUBG Mobile Global Championship, with a total of 3,801,998 spectators.

As for 2022, there have been a million or two unique viewers for all the PUBG Mobile esports tournaments. The reason for such a low number is a reduction in the number of PUBG Mobile tournaments. Nonetheless, the biggest ones are yet to take place.

The PUBG Mobile Global Championship was also held in January 2022, becoming one of the top five most-watched tournaments overall, including for PC gaming. PUBG Mobile hosts tournaments in the Middle East, including countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The 2022 Global Championship will be held from the 1st of November, 2022 until the 1st of January, 2023.

Meanwhile, the 2021 PMCO series (PUBG Mobile Club Open) was one of the most popular esports tournaments ever, held in more than 20 regions including Turkey, where 75k hours of content were watched. The PMPL also got plenty of traction for both its spring and fall editions.

League of Legends: Wild Rift

League of Legends: Wild Rift took the world by storm in 2019 after it was released on League of Legends’ 10-year anniversary. The game's first esports tournaments were a massive success, going on to see even faster growth in 2021.

It’s also evident that Riot Games is slowly shifting the majority of their focus to Wild Rift instead of League of Legends, given by more consistent updates, larger number of new skin releases, and overall better playability.

The Horizon Cup was the biggest Wild Rift event in 2021, but the Icons Global Championship 2022 completely eclipsed the Horizon Cup’s success. In addition, The Icons Global Championship featured a prize pool of $2,000,000 and reached a peak of 54k viewers. This is far from the numbers that PUBG Mobile and AoV/KoG are reporting, but Wild Rift is still a fairly new game.

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang from the Chinese developer Moonton saw huge success in the esports world, particularly in Asia. Fans can now watch tournaments live on Nimo TV and even TikTok. With ML:BB steadily taking over in Indonesia, it is also becoming increasingly popular in the rest of Southeast Asia.

There are currently leagues in the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and each new tournament manages to break records in terms of viewership.

MPL even managed to become the second most popular esports league in the world, surpassed only by the LoL LCK Korean league. The M3 World Championship 2021 featured an $800,000 prize pool and attracted teams from esports countries all over the world, including Brazil, the USA, Peru, and Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, there have been (and are) no S-Tier ML:BB tournaments in 2022; the first one you’ll be able to watch is the M4 World Championship, set to be hosted between the 1st and 15th of January, 2023.

Brawl Stars

Very popular with Street Fighter fans, the Brawl Stars fighting game saw its own records set in 2020. It even managed to attract 172k peak viewers for the World Finals 2021, with the main prize of 400 thousand dollars going to ZETA DIVISION.

The most popular stream languages were English and Turkish. Meanwhile, prizes were offered in the form of a pin just for watching, which must have greatly boosted viewership. On top of that, this event was live for twice as long as it was in 2020, which caused the hours watched to grow by a whopping 118%!

Set to go live on November 1st, 2022, the next S-Tier tournament for this game will be the Brawl Stars World Finals 2022 event. However, there has still not been any word about the prize pool.

Clash Royale

Clash Royale by Supercell suffered a slight knock in its popularity, going down to the 6th most popular mobile esports game. This is mainly because the Clash Royale World Finals 2021 only managed to get 106K viewers at its highest point, a lower figure than that of 2020 (but not by a lot).

Unfortunately, 2022 was not better either with even fewer top-tier tournaments happening around the world. If this trend continues, Clash Royale will slowly start being overtaken by other mobile esports games. We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Call of Duty Mobile

Call of Duty is already popular on PC and consoles, with its mobile counterpart also having gained even more traction in 2021. Surprisingly, the tournament with the most peak viewers and hours watched is the Philippines Championship 2021, with 87.4k peak viewers and 510k hours watched.

In comparison, the Call of Duty Mobile World Championship 2021 Garena Finals featured an peak of 56k viewers and a total of 428k hours watched. Although we cannot find any information about the 2022 edition, numbers seem to support the case that CoD Mobile is slowly moving up in popularity. Still, these are small movements so there’s still plenty of work to be done if the developers want it to become a truly global phenomenon.

Clash of Clans

Another game by Supercell, Clash of Clans esports had a fairly barren year in 2022. Not a lot of esports tournaments were held and the overall viewership numbers are average, if not worse than expected. It seems that Supercell is hard at work focusing on other games while having put CoC on the backburner for the time being.

Garena Free Fire

Esports for Garena Free Fire saw huge growth in hours watched in 2021, with the 2021 Free Fire World Series Singapore the most-watched event, boasting a peak of 5.4 million viewers. The latter marked an increase of more than 100% compared to 2020.

Meanwhile, the Asian and American divisions were the second and third most popular esports tournaments in the world, including PC esports. After PUBG Mobile was banned in India, Garena quickly took its place, becoming the most popular mobile esports shooter and managing to amass 60 million hours watched to date.

Being that other mobile games simply have more viewership, larger tournaments, and more exposure, only time will tell whether or not this free-to-play game will continue to have a presence in the esports ecosystem.

Magic: The Gathering

Magic the Gathering is a bit of an oddball in the esports world since Hearthstone betting is already popular among many punters, with the latter game based around a very similar theme and structure.

The game enjoyed a peak viewership of 39k in March 2021, which is when the Kaldheim Championship Finals were held. Other than that, most tournaments average around 10,000 viewers, which isn’t a lot compared to other mobile esports titles.

Sadly, it seems that in a few months’ time, Magic: The Gathering will have a fairly low player count and even lower viewership numbers. We might see a new mobile game take its spot fairly soon!

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Major Mobile Esports Tournaments in 2022

PUBG Mobile Pro League 2022

PUBG is very serious about its mobile esports league, which has divisions in several continents, including PMPL Americas, EMEA League, and South Asia League. There are also two world leagues: World League West and World League East. On top of all this, there is a Club Open for CIS, DE, Egypt, Europe, Iraq, ME-AF, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. There is also a Global Championship set to take place.

Each PUBG Mobile Pro League 2022 regional tournament features $150,000 in prize money, bringing the total to a staggering $3,000,000 (a rough estimate).

Although most of the PUBG Mobile Pro League events have concluded, we are still left with the Middle East & African, Asian, American, and European circuits in October 2022.

CoD Mobile World Championship 2022

The 2022 CoD Mobile World Championship is set to be held from 9th – 11th  December, featuring $1,700,000 in prize money. Sixteen teams will compete in the tournament but other than that, not a lot of info is known at the moment.

League of Legends: Wild Rift Esports 2022

League of Legends: Wild Rift already experienced moderate success as an esports game in 2021, so it’s safe to say this trend will continue. The esports game saw its first major tournament in Southeast Asia (in the form of the Champions Southeast Asia 2022 Finals).

At the moment, the largest and most prestigious Wild Rift tournaments are all being held in Asia. These events also have the biggest prize pools and attract the best esports organisations in the world.

The biggest Wild Rift tournament of 2022 was the Icons Global Championship that offered $2,000,000 in prize money. In the end, Nova Esports went on to finish in first place and received $640,000 of the reward.

Mobile Esports Platforms

Mobile esports are becoming increasingly available on different platforms, many of which are used for more than one game, for example, Capsl or Skillz. These allow for easy organisation of tournaments and integration of rankings.

For instance, Capsl’s Baash lets players compete in various mobile esports tournaments. Meanwhile, Game.tv has become the world’s number one esports platform, with over 11 million players, hosting games like Garena Free Fire, Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, and Call of Duty: Mobile. You can even play in and create your own tournaments at Game.tv.

Summary

Mobile esports games may not be as popular as some of the top esports games today (Dota 2 and CS:GO), but they’re still incredibly popular around the world, especially in Asia and South America.

The features of mobile esports games that traditional games do not have are portability and ease of access. Mobile games can be played virtually anywhere with zero preparation, while traditional esports cannot.

This makes them an exceptional choice for sponsors and organisations looking to use the esports space to expand their operations. As such, mobile esports games are projected to bring even more value to the esports world and could, given time, overtake traditional games in popularity and size.


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FAQ

Mobile Esports Games FAQs

The esports game of the year for 2022 is Arena of Valor/King of Glory. This game has continued to expand for years, and even with the consistent pressure from Wild Rift, it managed to retain its popularity.

All you have to do is register your team for any event, sign up for the competition, and compete! You can find all the details you need on ESL Gaming’s website.

In terms of prize money, PUBG is set to be the biggest mobile esports game in 2022, offering more than $20 million. In 2020, it took the top spot in terms of viewership.

Mobile gaming is slowly overtaking PC and console gaming, so it is only natural that mobile esports will follow. Games on the platform are improving all the time, with the quality starting to rival even their console counterparts. This, together with the advent of 5G and industry support, means you can expect more mobile versions of all your favourite esports games in the near future.

PUBG Mobile is the top esports shooter, though Garena Free Fire and Call of Duty Mobile are also very popular. If you’re looking to start betting on mobile esports and enjoy FPS games, these titles are your best options (especially if you’re after a valuable bonus or two).

Through our in-depth guides and reviews, we are focused on providing the best insights into esports betting.

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