When talking about major MOBAs, one quickly thinks of League of Legends. However, a Mobile game is making significant competition for the title and has recently celebrated the largest e-sports final in the world, even though the Worlds for LoL are currently taking place.
Which game is it? LoL is one of the largest MOBAs in the world, as shown by huge events like the current LoL final, which T1 won again. However, there is also significant e-sports competition. The most successful Chinese MOBA is Honor of Kings, a mobile game.
Although the game is relatively unknown here, Honor of Kings recently celebrated 260 million active users in a month. Thus, it is one of the most played games in the world.
During the weekend, alongside the Worlds in LoL, the Honor of Kings Championship Grand Finals took place in Beijing, China. In addition to the game, a record was also celebrated, as Tencent announced during the matches that they achieved the world record for the largest number of participants at an e-sports event of all time.
The world of Honor of Kings is set to expand soon with a new game:
A gigantic success story
How successful was the final for Honor of Kings? Live at the event, it was announced that the final, with 62,196 spectators in the National Stadium in Beijing, received the Guinness World Record for the largest audience at a stadium for an e-sports event (via Instagram). The stadium can hold a total of 80,000 spectators.
According to The Esport Advocate, tickets for the final cost between about 60 € and 250 € depending on the price level. As analyst Daniel Ahmad reported on x.com, the tickets for the event were reportedly sold out in just 12 seconds.
For the King Pro League Grand Finals of Honor of Kings, the prize pool is approximately 8.6 million €. The winning team will receive approximately 2.4 million € (Source: liquipedia).
This is significantly more than at the current Worlds in LoL. There, the total prize pool is about 4.3 million €, and T1 as the winner will receive approximately 865,000 €.
Actually, Riot Games was even offered by the Chinese company Tencent, which has completely owned Riot Games since 2015, to develop a mobile version of LoL before the release of Honor of Kings. However, Riot declined, and Tencent released Honor of Kings in China in November 2015, developed by TiMi Studio Group. It was not until 2020 that Riot released Wild Rift, a mobile spin-off of LoL.
This has proven financially rewarding. The analytics site Sensor Tower reported in March 2019 that Honor of Kings generated 4.5 billion US dollars (approximately 3.9 billion euros) in revenue on the iOS and Google App Store between November 2015 and March 2019.
The great appeal of Honor of Kings is likely due to the many events and the accessibility that the MOBA offers as a mobile title. When looking at how much money is behind the tournament, Tencent also seems to be investing significantly in e-sports. A MOBA in the Dragon Ball universe was recently released on Steam: After 10,000 hours in games like LoL, a new Dragon Ball MOBA on Steam has captured my attention
