After a fantastic 2020, which saw monthly revenues surge by 43% YoY, the mobile MOBA games have continued to build their gains and hit a new record in player spending.
According to data presented by Mejores Apuestas, mobile MOBAs have generated an average of $339 million per month throughout 2021 or $40 million more than a year ago.
Monthly Revenues Jumped 14% YoY; Downloads Dropped by 17%
Although the multiplayer online battle arena game genre has been overshadowed by the growth of battle royale games in recent years, MOBA games generated billions of dollars in revenue and built up a massive user base.
In 2017, the average monthly player spending on mobile MOBAs amounted to $139 million, revealed the SensorTower data. Two years later, this figure jumped to $208 million.
However, the COVID-19 lockdowns, as with the rest of the mobile games market, sparked a surge in player spending in MOBAs globally, with average monthly revenue rising by 43 % YoY to $298 million in 2020, the biggest annual increase so far.
Statistics show the sub-genre has continued to grow in 2021, with average monthly revenue rising by an additional 14% year-over-year, driven mainly by Honor of Kings as the top-grossing mobile MOBA title.
However, the average number of downloads has slipped compared to a year-ago period. In 2020, mobile MOBAs hit an average of 27.9 million downloads per month, 10.5% more than in 2019. However, the SensorTower data showed this figure slipped by 17% YoY to 23.1 million in 2021.
Honor of Kings Top-Grossing Mobile MOBA with Over $10B in Lifetime Player Spending
The MOBA market is highly concentrated and dominated by industry heavyweights like Tencent, Supercell and ByteDance.
Statistics show that Tencent’s Honor of Kings ranked not only as the top-grossing mobile MOBA but as the highest-earning mobile game globally. In the eight months of 2021, the popular MOBA title generated more than $2bn in revenue worldwide, with its lifetime player spending surpassing $10bn.
Brawl Stars ranked as the second highest-grossing mobile MOBA title, with over $320 million in player spending between January and August.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and League of Legends: Wild Rift follow, with $220 million and around $60 million, respectively.
However, the App Magic data showed Pokémon UNITE leads in monthly downloads. A spin-off Pokémon game hit 12.7 million combined downloads across Google Play and the Apple App Store during September. Far behind, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang ranked as the second most popular title with over 7 million downloads. Honor of Kings and Garena RoV: 5th Anniversary followed, with 1.8 million and 1.5 million downloads, respectively.
