Mobile phone manufacturer HONOR has announced a new gaming phone production line alongside a partnership with Honor of Kings esports player Yinuo.

As a result of the partnership, the Chengdu AG Gaming Club player has been appointed as a brand ambassador for the new Honor GT phone line.

The news of the partnership was shared via sports and esports agency SPORTFIVE. The agency previously shared another HONOR collaboration between the manufacturer and Gamers8 in 2023.

In the release, HONOR detailed that the partnership aims to reinforce the manufacturer’s position in the esports industry. Moreover, the collaboration will attempt to appeal to the ‘young generation of gaming enthusiasts.’

The Honor GT is a gaming-oriented smartphone that is currently only available in China. The phone features a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution and has been built using three pillars — “next-generation technology, ultra-high performance and pioneering design.”

Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, an enterprise controlled by the Shenzhen Government, acquired the HONOR smartphone brand from Huawei in 2020.

More recently, HONOR partnered with the Esports World Cup Foundation for the EWC 2024. The Chinese phone manufacturer supplied its smartphones to be used for Mobile Legends Bang Bang, Honor of Kings and other mobile esports tournaments at the event.

Eike Gyllensvärd, President of Global Esports and Gaming at SPORTFIVE, commented: “Yinuo’s remarkable achievements at the Hangzhou Asian Games exemplify competitive excellence and a relentless pursuit of perfection, core values that align seamlessly with Honor’s brand philosophy.

“This partnership marks a significant milestone in deepening Honor’s integration within the gaming ecosystem cherished by the younger generation.”

Following the conclusion of Mobile Legends Bang Bang’s M6 tournament, there are officially no large-scale esports events left in 2024.

Looking back, several major events caught the eyes of esports fans across the globe.  From regional leagues such as South Korea’s LCK to mammoth spectacles across the FPS, MOBA and mobile scenes, esports has flourished from a viewership perspective.  

In this article, we have compiled a list of the top 10 most-viewed esports events of 2024, according to esports data and viewership platform Esports Charts. This list does not include Chinese viewership, as well as data from Facebook Gaming and battle royale games.

It should be noted that this is the last list before League of Legends and Counter-Strike undergo significant ecosystem changes. In the case of League of Legends, there is an entirely new international event to be played in 2025, which is sure to attract substantial viewership.

VCT Masters Madrid 2024, which took place early in the year, was the most popular VALORANT event of the season. Garnering more viewers than its season-ending World Championship, the Madrid event saw a peak of 1.68m viewers. This makes it the most popular VALORANT event in history. 

For context, VCT Champions 2024 managed to attract 1.41m peak viewers, making it the fourth-most-watched event in the game’s history. The popularity of VCT Masters Madrid 2024 shows that VALORANT is steadily growing to be the world’s most-watched FPS game overall.

However, this is still the only VALORANT event on this list. 

The final event of the 2024 LCK season, the Regional Finals, was held in September 2024 just before the League of Legends World Championship. The event, won by Dplus KIA, recorded an impressive 1.82m viewers. 

The growth of South Korea’s franchised league cannot be understated in 2024 with this year’s Regional Finals dwarfing previous editions. The second-highest Regional Finals peak viewership was in 2020, which garnered just over 1m viewers.

Overall, the LCK was the most popular regional League of Legends competition in 2024, with its Summer split also recording an impressive 1.6m viewers, just barely missing the top 10 this year. 

The only CS2 event on this list, the PGL Major was the first-ever Major to take place in CS2 following Counter-Strike’s shift to the new game in late 2023. The Major was won by Ukrainian team NAVI and was the fourth-most watched Counter-Strike event in history. The event is behind two other PGL-organised Major competitions — Antwerp 2022 (2.1m peak viewers) and Stockholm 2021 (2.74m peak viewers). 

PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 garnered a peak of 1.85m viewers, making it more popular than the likes of the 2023 Blast.tv Paris Major and 2022 IEM Rio Major. Still, it is far off the all-time CS:GO peak recorded in Stockholm in 2021.

The second Major of the season, the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 in mid-December, recorded lower viewership (1.3m peak viewers). This could be attributed to time zone differences, the lack of NAVI — one of the world’s most popular teams — in the finals and Chinese viewership not being recorded by Esports Charts.

By now, esports fans should know to keep an eye out for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The mobile MOBA is not only growing, but it has one of the strongest viewerships of any esports game, only outdone by League of Legends. 

The first of several entries on this list, the franchised Indonesian league has recorded an impressive amount of views in its 13th season and is the first event on this list to break two million viewers at its peak. With 2.25m viewers watching Fnatic ONIC vs EVOS Glory, it’s perhaps surprising to note that this is only the fifth most popular MPL Indonesia season.  

The main event for MLBB at the Esports World Cup 2024 was the Mid Season Cup. Similar to other titles that featured during the EWC, the tournament saw the best teams from multiple regions compete against each other in Riyadh for a sizable prize pool.  

With 2.38m peak viewers, the Mid Season Cup was an overall success and provided a major boost to the overall viewership of the EWC. Still, despite its $3m (£2.36m) prize pool, it was the lowest-viewed edition of the tournament since 2021. 

Going back to South Korea, LCK Spring 2024 was much more popular than Summer this year, garnering a peak of 2.65m viewers. 

Interestingly, this was another event where the eventual League of Legends world champions, T1, were defeated in the grand final. However, the team’s appearance alone provided a massive boost to the tournament’s viewership.

Looking back, T1 had more than 12m more hours watched than the split’s eventual winner Gen.G, which goes to show just how popular the team is in South Korea.

League of Legends continued to break records this year, with its well-known mid-season tournament, MSI, peaking at 2.82m viewers. This makes it the most popular edition of MSI in history and the seventh-most watched League of Legends event ever. Taking place in Chengdu, China, the competition was won by a returning name, Gen.G.

The first six most viewed League of Legends events are, of course, six editions of the World Championship. An interesting piece of information to round up this entry: MSI 2024 was more popular than the 2017 and 2018 editions of Worlds. 

The second season of MPL Indonesia in 2024, Season 14, was much more popular than its predecessor earlier in the year. MPL Indonesia Season 14 saw a peak of 4m viewers, almost double the amount of Season 13. The new season also saw two different finalists with eventual winners Team Liquid ID defeating RRQ Hoshi.

The Indonesian league is the most popular mobile esports league of the year, with only the LCK comparable in terms of sheer numbers for a regional competition.

With just 120,000 viewers more than MPL Indonesia Season 14, generating 4.13m peak viewers, the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’s World Championship, M6, takes the runners-up spot. Interestingly,  M6 recorded a lower peak number of viewers than last year’s event, which had more than 5m peak viewers. However, this year’s edition has shown large increases in average viewership. 

M6, and Mobile Legends in general, are proving that mobile games are showing no signs of slowing down, especially in Southeast Asia where the scene is at its strongest. 

The League of Legends World Championship is once again the most popular esports event of the year, and also the most popular event in esports history. 

Esports Charts started collecting data about viewership in 2017, and Worlds has been the most-viewed event every year except 2021 when the Free Fire World Series took its place at the top. With a peak of 6.91m viewers, the biggest tournament in all of esports has once again proven that no other event can come close to it in terms of numbers. 

The tournament had around 500,000 more viewers than the 2023 edition and has once again raised the bar for esports events.

Indian esports and gaming company NODWIN Gaming has announced the acquisition of digital esports media firm AFK Gaming.

After the acquisition, AFK Gaming will become a step-down subsidiary of NODWIN Gaming, enhancing the latter’s offerings for esports and gaming-related marketing activities.

According to a release, NODWIN Gaming entered into a share purchase agreement with AFK Gaming’s shareholders, acquiring a 92.30% stake in the media firm. This is valued at an aggregate consideration of Rs 7.58 crore (~£704,600).

Of the total consideration, Rs 4.59 crore (~£426,700) would be paid in cash, while Rs 2.99 crore would be received via a swap of NODWIN’s equity shares.

Prior to the acquisition, NODWIN already held a 7% stake in the AFK Gaming. As a part of this transaction, AFK Gaming’s founders will become shareholders of the company and be integrated into different verticals of NODWIN Gaming’s ecosystem.

Founded by Nishant Patel, Rakesh Ramchandran and Siddharth Nayyar, AFK Gaming is an Indian digital media firm specialising in B2B and esports coverage. In February 2024, the firm launched a digital marketing and PR vertical called Max Level.

Over the years, NODWIN has expanded its portfolio by acquiring multiple companies in the esports and gaming space. This includes the acquisition of gaming marketing agencies Freaks 4U Gaming and Publishme as well as Turkish esports company Ninja Global. This month, the company also acquired gaming agency Trinity Gaming and extended its partnership with awards ceremony The Game Awards.

NODWIN detailed that the acquisition intends to strengthen the company’s offerings to produce and distribute esports-related content and enhance its existing capabilities to provide PR services.

In a release, Nishant Patel, Rakesh Ramchandran and Siddharth Nayyar, Co-Founders of AFK Gaming, commented on the acquisition: “Joining the NODWIN group feels like a homecoming for us.

“When esports was barely a coined term, Akshat and us agreed to work to grow the market rather than compete in an industry that had yet to prove itself. This led to a long and trust-imbued relationship where Akshat watched over us as a friend, investor, mentor and board member. Now that the industry has matured a bit, our existing synergies with NODWIN allow us to hit the ground running and we’re confident in our ability to unlock the next level of growth for the group!”

Collegiate and amateur esports have been having a moment in North America. Despite the crumbling of the Overwatch League, the restructuring of League of Legends esports into the Americas division and many professional orgs dialling back on rosters — the amateur scene and path-to-pro initiatives have grown.

As the largest amateur esports and competitive gaming network in North America, PlayVS has been busy building a partner ecosystem to service its more than 5,000 participating schools and almost 10,000 teams competing in PlayVS leagues and tournaments every year.

The company is also the official high school esports partner of NFHS Network and the Special Olympics.

While the path-to-pro route isn’t for every amateur, organised esports can help young people develop transferable teamwork and communication skills in fast-paced critical thinking intensive environments, PlayVS CEO Jon Chapman told Esports Insider. “We’ve seen the positive impacts from esports and gaming mirror those from traditional sports in schools, especially for keeping students engaged with their community.”

According to the company’s debut PlayVS Esports Impact Survey: 57% of students said that esports makes them feel like they’re part of a community and 46% said esports has given them more friends and reported feeling more excited to go to school after joining an esports team.
The company is opening up its blackbook to further scale this positive sentiment, launching PlayVS Collective, an esports- and gaming-focused partner marketplace. Aimed at building a thriving community of trusted companies, the PlayVS Collective is a network “focused on meaningfully impacting the next generation with incredible gaming, education and community-building opportunities,” the company said.

The scale of the company’s official scholastic and casual amateur tournament operations has led to major publisher partnerships with Nintendo of America, Activision Blizzard, EA Sports and Epic Games as well as numerous other service and solution providers.

“[The PlayVS Collective’s] whole goal is to help create more participation in the amateur ecosystem because we think that will continue a healthier overall esports and competitive game ecosystem,” said Chapman. “The aim is to have more students decide to participate and enjoy the benefits of teamwork and all the other things that come from being a competitor within the space.”

Chapman took over the role of CEO just last year, and has been hard at work adapting the company’s business model, improving its offerings and bringing in new partnerships like the NFL and Premier League.

By leveraging its growing network and rebuilt trust, this newly launched PlayVS Collective aims to be a resource marketplace — offering curriculum materials from non-profits like NASEF or Stiegler EdTech, equipment and technology from Lenovo, Omnic.AI and others.

Think of it as a one-stop shop for resources and services schools would need to build and maintain an esports programme from partners PlayVS trusts, Chapman said.

He also hopes the Collective can create experiences for students to interact with industry professionals to serve as mentors or offer insights into career paths in the industry, or glean transferable skills from gaming to pursue Science, Technology, Economics and Maths (STEM)  careers.

There are plenty of hurdles to launching and maintaining a scholastic esports programme. From finding qualified coaches, to maintaining a pipeline of incoming participants (the group’s expansion into middle schools aims to help), to overcoming the long-held negative stereotypes associated with gaming. 

“Especially among groups underrepresented in gaming populations, we’ve seen that using gaming in schools as a conduit to want to study STEM subjects and think about a career as a game developer is a really positive change we hope to contribute to,“ Chapman said.

The opportunities provided by the PlayVS Collective are also a move to amplify the group’s inclusion efforts through its leadership’s belief in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement to drive positive societal outcomes.

By removing barriers to entry and opening up its network, PlayVS is aiming for a knock-on effect to encourage girls and young women towards the esports-to-STEM pipeline too. Recent studies have shown that 50% of all gamers are women-identifying, but the professional competitive landscape doesn’t resemble that ratio.

By encouraging girls at a young age that they belong and can succeed in life thanks to structured experience in gaming, this could bring positive change to the competitive pipeline historically and currently dominated by young men. 

The esports industry is built from competition, but Chapman sees more opportunities in reducing business competition and instead working together to ensure that future generations have an esports industry they can participate in. “

Students and schools are the centre of PlayVS’ universe. Finding ways internally and externally to bring our community the best tools, gaming experiences, educational and career advancement opportunities.”

Metafy, a platform that looks to empower top gamers and creators to earn income, has significantly expanded its offering to users in 2024.

Notably, the company launched a suite of innovative tools and offerings — Guides, Communities and Events — to transform the way gaming professionals monetize their skills, whilst also expanding its business.

Having established itself as a reputable platform for casual and aspiring players to seek one-on-one coaching from their favourite pros, Metafy is doubling down on its mission to help creators thrive. The introduction of Communities has enabled creators to build subscription-based communities with exclusive content and interactions. According to Metafy, Yu-Gi-Oh TCG personality PakTCG is now generating over $15,000 (~£11,900) in monthly recurring revenue through Metafy’s new feature.

The company noted that currently over 50 Metafy Partners are earning between $500 and $10,000 per month — four months after the Communities feature launched.

In an attempt to provide more creative freedom, Metafy offers creators an integrated ecosystem where they can utilise Sessions, Communities, Events and Guides independently or together, with no additional fees. This approach looks to maximise value for both creators and users, whilst also giving the former more opportunities to create tailored content that works for them.   

Metafy’s new Events tool allows creators to host live webinars and interactive sessions for up to 100 attendees, offering a different way to engage with fans in real time through the platform. These live sessions are automatically recorded and packaged as VODs (Video on Demand), providing creators with an opportunity to earn passive income.

 The method of monetization from Metafy’s Event feature is centred around tickets, with users buying tickets (which can vary in price) on the platform to access the webinar and live sessions. There is also additional revenue that can be gained through VOD sales of these Events.

Metafy, in particular, emphasised this feature’s potential by detailing to Esports Insider that  Pokémon pro Tord Reklev recently made $20,000 (~£15,700) from two Events. According to the platform, other partners are earning an average of $500-$800 per Event, a dramatic increase from the $30-$100 range they might make for a similar time investment in 1-on-1 coaching sessions. 

Rounding out Metafy’s offerings are Guides, which provide creators with a way to deliver detailed, monetizable resources to players of all skill levels. These Guides can be offered for free or sold for profit, catering to a wide range of audiences. From FPS experts to card game coaches, creators are leveraging Guides to diversify revenue streams and elevate their brands.

Metafy CEO, Josh Fabian, commented on its expansion: “Thanks to what we’ve been building at Metafy, creators can finally turn their gaming expertise into real businesses, make serious money, and build genuine connections with their communities. This is going to completely rewrite what it means to be a creator in gaming.”

With its new tools and commitment to creators, Metafy is looking to redefine what’s possible in the gaming creator economy. The company noted that more features will roll out in the future as it looks to further connect gaming professionals with their audience and monetize experiences.