Moonton’s Ray Ng on MLBB on the Esports World Cup, growing mobile in the West, and AI training tools
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang it’s not the first game that comes off the tongue when you ask a Western esports fan to say the biggest title in the world.
Mobile MOBAs, however, continue to draw some of the largest viewership numbers in sports. MLBB’s M7 World Championship peaked at 5.6 million viewers back in January 2026, along with the Group Stages this year. Esports World Cup they were more than two million. It attracted more viewers than any title at last year’s EWC, and strong early numbers suggest it may hold the title again this year.
Before the EWC starts, we sat down with it Ray Ng, Head of Global Esports Ecosystem of Moonton discussing growing the mobile title in the West, the growing partnership with the Esports World Cup and AI training tools that help make the game more accessible to aspiring professionals in the West.
Editor’s note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Building on a record year
THIS: If you look at last year’s viewing figures, MLBB really stood out. What do you expect from this year’s World Cup? What does success look like?
Ray Ng, Moonton: This is not our first year at the Esports World Cup. We want to continue to build an ecosystem together and introduce our game to a wider audience. We create better collaboration between the two groups. Again, we held two tournaments this year: women’s and men’s. We are looking to make record breaking hours watched together again.
That’s why we built on the most powerful storytelling. We continue to tell the story of last year: one game, two champions. We believe our sports deserve inclusion, which is why we host both men’s and women’s competitions at the Esports World Cup. We are looking to start strong: we start with the women’s competition and hope to see record numbers for the women before moving on to the men’s competition. We also hope that the teams will be more competitive this year — the Falcons team is a big bet, and there are other teams looking for a championship spot. I think it’s a very good story this year.
The growth of mobile sports in the West
THIS: From a Western perspective, mobile esports feels young, and the largest in Mpumalanga. How do you see mobile esports entering the Western market? Do you see it growing, especially with hardware prices and the cost of gaming rigs going up? Does that give you a chance?
Ray Ng: That’s right. We look at the market and see organic growth every year. Starting with the influence from the Middle East and Turkey, then we saw neighboring countries follow, and now communities are forming in the West – we see communities in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. We work with alliances and local people to grow the community together.
We are seeing a trend where the new generation with mobile devices will already be used to playing games on mobile — we just need to try our own. Once a game gets into a new group of players, if they like it, they stick with it, and the community grows from there. A great opportunity to grow the Western MLBB esports community.
Where the Esports World Cup fits into MLBB’s global strategy
THIS: How does the Esports World Cup fit into your overall strategy? Is it a nice thing to have to bring the game to a global audience, or something more important than that?
Ray Ng: If you look at the collaboration over the last three years, it has been very important for us. We set a strategy to pursue global expansion four or five years ago, and platforms and partners like the Esports World Cup have helped accelerate that entire process. More people in the esports community know about MLBB esports now – we’ve been nominated for Esports Awards, won some awards, and been nominated for The Game Awards. So many people know MLBB esports.
Partnering with the Esports World Cup as a platform to introduce the game to global communities has helped us tremendously, and is very much in line with our vision of inclusion – bringing a women’s tournament to this cycle also helps us grow the game more broadly.
It has been an invaluable partner for the past three years, and we hope to continue this journey together. It also connects to the Esports Nations Cup we are already working on, which helps us open up more opportunities. We have more than 100 countries signed up to MLBB – that’s a lot of countries around the world, and I think it’s a good sign that they’re involved.
The ecosystem starts from the bottom, up
ESI: We’re seeing many countries also trying to build grassroots participation – obviously mobile has that reach. When you’re talking to different nations and alliances, how important is it to build from the ground up?
Ray Ng: Going higher is always our foundation. When we look to build an esports ecosystem in new countries of entry, we assess whether the community base is active and organized. What we see now in the West is that society exists, but it is not organized – people playing here and there without a strong social group. Seeing that, we help build a community from the ground up by creating groups so people can connect with each other, and we take a proactive approach, working closely with various partners and local organizers to get our games to a wider audience.
In some countries, working with the Ministry of Youth and Education is very helpful, because MLBB has strong young players – many young people get in touch with the game early. Partnering with youth services helps us reach that target audience as well.
THIS: Let’s talk about AI. Is there any way AI will affect mobile gaming? Do you see the power of AI-powered training tools? How much is AI a part of your strategy, and do you see the benefits?
Ray Ng: AI has become a very important part of the company’s strategy. In our daily work, we use AI to help with game development and sports games, and we are looking at different opportunities to use it further. We’re currently using AI in some of our production events — for example, when actors can’t make it to a news date on time, or to create video concepts that we wouldn’t otherwise capture, such as adding a location to a video that we couldn’t actually capture.
On the trainer side, this is an area we are actively looking to improve with AI. We are doing in-house development of AI tools that will be able to analyze games and provide training ideas for specific teams.
We know that some new or growing districts find it difficult to find a good coach early on, and we hope that this tool can help increase their competitiveness. We do a lot of alpha and beta testing internally now, and it shows, minute by minute, what you did wrong in the game and what you should have done instead.
After we finish internal testing this year, we hope to start testing it with other teams and build on it from there. The main goal is to provide this tool to all competing groups, so that they can use it to increase their costs and their competitiveness.
Esports Insider’s travel and accommodation for the Esports World Cup was paid for by the Esports Foundation. The Esports Foundation had no editorial input on this piece.
