Tencent Continues Investing In “PUBG Mobile” Esports In The Americas

With more than $6 billion in lifetime player spending, PUBG Mobile is one of the biggest and most popular games in the world. Despite the fact that much of that success is primarily from Asia, Tencent continues to invest in making the mobile game more popular in North America and other Western markets. One of the ways it has done that is by investing heavily in PUBG Mobile esports, like the PUBG Mobile Pro League North America, which has a $6 million dollar prize pool this year.

“We think that mobile esports markets will be much bigger in the west soon,” said James Yang, Global Head of PUBG Mobile esports at Tencent. While Tencent is happy with the traffic in the western markets, the audience is less than 10% of the total audience in Asia, he remarked.

But the Western markets are growing and becoming a greater percentage of the audience. This year, it’s more like 15% of the audience. Part of the hope is that other mobile games will catch on as well and get more players in the west excited about mobile esports.

In the recent competitions, five of the twenty teams split the $150,000 prize pool and moved on to the PMPL Americas Championship, where they competed against teams from across Latin America for spots in the PUBG Mobile Global Championship (PMGC) 2021 and a share of the $6 million prize pool. Worldwide, the total prize pool is $15 million. Sponsored by OnePlus, the event features players fighting it out in the battle royale game on Android smartphones. The event is being carried on the official PUBG Mobile Esports social channels on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch.

(All information was provided by VentureBeat)