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Honor of Kings’ publishers Tencent Games and Level Infinite have announced the game’s first ever official esports tournament in Brazil. This set of matches will act as qualifiers for the World Champion Cup, the title’s international tournament, with the winner seeding through to the main event.
New Brazil league features impressive prize pool
The Brazil tournament’s large prize pool was highlighted in the announcement. Honor of Kings’ mobile leagues generally involve hefty sums of money, the WCC seeing a whopping $10 million prize pool spread among 16 teams.
The Brazilian qualifiers, though conducted on a smaller scale of course, also features quite an impressive prize pool. A sum of $65,000 USD will be distributed among eight teams. The winner takes $14,000 and a direct invitation to the WCC, while the runner-up gets $10,000. The teams finishing in 3rd-4th place get $8000 apiece, while those from 5th-8th will receive $6000 each.
Tournament’s schedule, format and teams
The Brazil qualifiers kicked off on October 3, and will continue through the month with the grand final scheduled for October 29. The eight teams will be split into two groups of four, and the group stage of the tournament will be conducted in a single round-robin format.
Black Dragons Esports, Keyd Stars, Fluxo, and INTZ are the teams that make up Group A, while Group B comprises Corinthians, RED Canids, B4 Esports, Miners. The initial round of matches has been completed. Black Dragons and Keyd Stars won their opening games from Group B, and the Corinthians and RED emerged as winners from the other division.
If you’d like to watch the Brazilian qualifiers, you can check out the games as they are streamed live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. They will be cast by popular presenter Diego ‘Toboco’ Viamonte, who was the voice of the CBLOL (Brazilian League of Legends Championship) for eight years.
Growth of Eastern MOBA games across the world
Honor of Kings is the highest-grossing mobile game of all time, and one of the most popular titles ever. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) was first published for China in 2014 by Tencent. An exponential surge in popularity within a few months of its release led to its international rebranding as Arena of Valor.
The new title, while built on the same engine, included a number of changes to the UI and character design to appeal to the global market. Level Infine took care of the game’s release outside of China, and it enjoyed massive success outside of Asia too. Honor of Kings’ art style and gameplay borrows heavily from its inspiration, Riot Games’ League of Legends.
Eastern MOBA games are growing in popularity in different regions of the world, and this isn’t the first time one has taken root in Brazil. The Mobile Legends: Bang Banga Professional League (MPL) was expanded to include Brazil last year, and MOONTON conducted their first tournament in June. Major South American sports organizations Vivo Keyd and Red Canids were issued direct invites to participate in the MPL, but both dropped out after its first season.
The MPL Brazil is still functional, however, now featuring orgs like Rex Regum Qeon (RRQ) Akira and Brazilian teams ZEUS Esports and DreamMax E-Sports.
The World Champion Cup will kick off in early December, and span the duration of the month. Other international representatives aside from Brazil are Isurus from the Latin America region, Fut Nova and Next Ruya from Turkey, and Yalla Esports from the Arabian region. Four teams from the South East Asian region , South Korea, Europe, North America, and Japan will have a shot at the World Cup through the play-ins.
