AFK Weekly: Was Wild Rift’s Inaugural World Championship a Let-Down for Riot?

Hello everyone! The first ever Wild Rift Icons Global Championships has concluded with Nova Esports being crowned as the inaugural champions of the tournament. This is the organization’s fifth world championship in a mobile esports title, having won world championships in PUBG Mobile, Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, and Brawl Stars prior to this. The organization is becoming a behemoth in mobile esports and is truly one of the largest esports organizations in the world, just on the back of mobile esports titles.

Unfortunately, Riot did not have the same degree of success with the viewership of the Icons Global Championships 2022. Despite various promotions and marketing strategies, the title only drew in a peak of 53.9K and an average of 27.5K viewers during the event. This pales in comparison to the Arena of Valor (AoV) International Championship 2022, which also ran alongside the tournament and drew in a peak of 581.8K and an average of 196.5K viewers.

With AoV also bringing a host of new changes to its world championships, by hosting a world cup featuring teams from both AoV and Honor of Kings (the game’s Chinese clone). Given that Honor of Kings is one of the most watched esports titles in the world, the game could see a quick upsurge and may even begin to threaten Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’s position as the top mobile MOBA.

Wild Rift is being left in the dust compared to its competitors and drastically needs to reinvent itself in order to keep itself in the race. In a conversation with AFK Gaming, Riot Games’ Director of Wild Rift Esports Leo Faria spoke about how the company plans to evolve Wild Rift’s next season. 

— Vignesh Raghuram, Supervising Editor, AFK Gaming