Brawl Stars has captured the attention of players worldwide, enthralling gamers with short rounds and fast-twitch action for quick, exciting MOBA gameplay.
March marked the beginning of the competitive esports scene for Brawl Stars, with the Brawl Stars Championship’s March Monthly Finals. Each month, a new round gives competitors the chance to earn points on the road to the grand final event in the second half of the year. With a prize pool of $2M up for grabs, fans and players alike watch the championship’s proceedings with great anticipation.
Brawl Stars’ mobile platform opens the game up to a massive player base, driving up viewership and player numbers. For that reason, it’s worth looking at the potential impact of Brawl Stars esports this year by exploring the success of the March Monthly Finals.
The Brawl Stars Championship Kicks Off with a Strong Showing for the March Monthly Finals
The March Monthly Finals performed well, sparking off what looks to be a strong esports season for Brawl Stars. Over the day-long event, 961K hours were watched with a peak viewership of 109K. The majority of this demand was generated by the official streams, but a significant portion of 35% was contributed by co-streamers alone. This further supports the emerging trend of co-streamers driving viewership to esports events.
Looking at a selection of the top Brawl Stars streamers in recent weeks, a couple of interesting commonalities emerge. Firstly, not a single one of the top streamers are English-speaking for the period selected. As the number one streamer with an average minute viewership (AMA) of 11K, SpiukBS represents the general popularity of Brawl Stars among the Spanish-speaking community in particular. Secondly, a majority of the streamers use YouTube as their primary platform. This shirks the typical esports trend of streaming on Twitch.
YouTube streamer Holdik represents a special case. His AMA of 7K was boosted by the Brawl Stars Star Drops event, in which Rare Star Drops (an in-game reward) were given away freely for a week beginning on the 15th of March. This Star Drops event led directly into the March Monthly Finals – a clever strategy to boost the player base and then inform this influx of players in-game of the upcoming competition.
On a separate note, popular streamer ibai drew on the success of the March Monthly Finals with his own Brawl Stars content created shortly after the competition ended. He was joined on stream by a professional Brawl Stars coach, getting in on the mobile esports hype.
Brawl Stars Esports Gains More Attention from Non-English-Speaking Regions
The Brawl Stars Championship takes place in four different regions: North America, South America, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA. Each region had its own official stream for the March Monthly Finals, providing a concrete way of looking at demand in each of the different regions. EMEA came out on top as the most popular region for Brawl Stars, with 34.8% of total viewership. North America, however, was the least popular region with just over 10% of total viewership.
The EMEA March Monthly Finals for 2024 was also the most popular Brawl Stars Monthly Final event to date, only being beaten in hours watched by the World Finals events of the past three years (taking place in November of each year). Combined with the observation that the top streamers of Brawl Stars content are non-English-speaking, this regional viewership corroborates the fact that Brawl Stars is most popular among non-English-speaking audiences.
ESL Gaming’s Snapdragon Pro Series Combines the Most Popular Mobile Esports Titles
Mobile esports has seen immense growth in recent times, particularly over the month of March. Looking at the top mobile esports over the past year, Brawl Stars settles in comfortably at #3 with an AMA of 41K. Although Brawl Stars has only 4.3M hours watched over this period, it also hasn’t received the same level of esports support as some of the other top games. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, for example, had a monumental 277.8M hours watched. But it also had 43 events over the past year, compared to just 9 events for Brawl Stars.
Thankfully, Brawl Stars is now receiving the support it needs to become a global esports phenomenon. Just this year, developer Supercell partnered with ESL Gaming to bring Brawl Stars under the Snapdragon Pro Series banner. ESL Gaming is the driving force behind the concerted effort to bolster Brawl Stars esports – including the aforementioned $2M prize pool. The Snapdragon Pro Series is a mobile esports juggernaut, containing six of the top ten mobile games worldwide, including Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Clash of Clans.
As mobile esports continues to grow in popularity, new player bases are being reached. Mobile games lower the barrier to entry for players around the world, dispensing with the need for top-tier gaming setups to remain competitive. Stream Hatchet will continue to watch as mobile esports takes off, finding the most popular mobile games on streaming.
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