Honor of Kings International Championship 2022: an astoundingly small viewership despite a $10 million prize pool

With over 100 million players every day, Honor of Kings has become one of the most popular games worldwide, gaining a sizable following and a rapidly expanding competitive scene within the mobile industry. Tencent developed Arena of Valor, a game adaption intended primarily for a Western audience, in an effort to reach a larger audience. Nonetheless, it was declared in 2021 that both games’ esports scenes would merge.

Since then, Tencent has made Honor of Kings available in beta test form throughout a number of Western nations and regions, including the Middle East, Latin America, Brazil, and Turkey. These nations established their own leagues, and the champions of each would be eligible to compete in the 2022 Honor of Kings International Championship. The Honor of Kings World Champion Cup is being replaced with this competition, which is the rebranding of the Arena of Valor International Championship. Thus, the Honor of Kings International Championship stands as the most esteemed competition in the game and possibly the highest point in the mobile esports industry.

The inaugural Honor of Kings International Championship will take place in 2022. The top 16 teams from throughout the world are invited to fight for an incredible $10 million in prize money. It began on December 3rd and will end on December 30th of the same month. The event is being held offline and is happening in Seoul and Shenzhen.

The expectations for the event’s viewership were high, given the massive prize pool and the presence of one of the largest player bases in the video game industry. Nevertheless, the tournament’s initial two days yielded dismal results, with only 4.5K Peak Viewers, 2.3K Average Viewers, and 35K Hours Watched.

It’s important to note that these figures exclude Chinese platforms where the event receives a substantial amount of watching activity, such Douyu, Huya, and Bilibili. China accounts for the bulk of Honor of Kings viewers, and while the event enjoys considerable popularity domestically, it is not reaching a large enough portion of the global audience. Considering that YouTube serves as the primary streaming channel for the event, along with other factors, it is evident that the numbers are likely below projections.
The inadequate promotional strategy is one of the reasons the event has not been able to draw in a large number of spectators. For instance, the official broadcast channel for the Honor of Kings International Championship 2022, which caters to Western fans, was established in May 2022 and currently has a mere 5.5K members. The same is true for social media: the tournament’s Twitter page was established in the same month as the event, indicating the beginning of the event’s general Western audience promotion campaign.

Despite having a far larger fan base, the Chinese community’s official YouTube broadcast channel still has dismal watching figures. Still, it’s astounding how many people watch on Chinese streaming services. Huya had 10 million reactions by heat index, compared to 6 million for Doyu. The competition did not achieve the expected international audience, despite being a big success domestically.

The event is being aired in many different languages on a number of worldwide channels. While some are official broadcasts of the event, others are watch parties. Most of them are established years ago, have a sizable subscriber base, and cater to a broader demographic. In spite of this, the tournament has received less than 1,000 Average Viewers on every foreign channel that has carried it thus far.

Further evidence that the event’s viewership figures are far from ideal comes from a study at the three largest foreign streaming sites. With 4K Peak Viewers, YouTube is the preferred outlet for the majority of enthusiasts. Only 425 PV were on Facebook, compared to 361 simultaneous viewers on Twitch. This big of a tournament isn’t drawing as many spectators as anticipated.


In place of its World Cup, the Honor of Kings International Championship 2022 will co-occur with the Arena of Valor Premier League 2022. The Honor of Kings’ viewership figures appear much lower when we compare them to the other event.

Much more international viewers—the bulk of whom are from Asian nations—were drawn to the Arena of Valor event. The languages in which the event is most widely watched are Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese. Fans are more eager to see Arena of Valor Premier League 2022 since they will be watching two events with the same audience. It’s evident which tournament is the most engaging with 355K Peak Viewers, 104K Average Viewers, and 10.4 million Hours Watched—especially for non-Chinese viewers.

Since the Honor of Kings International Championship 2022 is still a ways off, more people might watch the event. But there’s no denying that the event is failing by all measures, and in order to attract more people, something has to be done.

Although it’s a fantastic idea, the attempt to introduce the game to a Western audience hasn’t exactly gone well. Asia has traditionally comprised the bulk of Honor of Kings’ players and watchers, with China leading the way. Due to the fact that Honor of Kings is not as well-liked in the West as it is in Asia, and because of this, the audience figures for Honor of Kings International Championship 2022 were remarkably low.