Moonton’s Ray Ng on MLBB at the Esports World Cup, growing mobile in the West, and AI coaching tools

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is not the first game that slips off the tongue when you ask a Western esports fan to name one of the world’s largest competitive titles.

The mobile MOBA, however, consistently draws some of the largest viewership numbers in esports. MLBB’s M7 World Championship reached a peak viewership of 5.6 million back in January 2026, and the Group Stages at this year’s Esports World Cup have topped 2 million. It attracted the highest viewership of any title at last year’s EWC, and strong early numbers suggest it could hold that title again this year

Before the EWC got underway, we sat down with Ray Ng, Head of Global Esports Ecosystem at Moonton to discuss growing the mobile title in the West, the growing partnership with the Esports World Cup and AI coaching tools helping make the game more accessible to aspiring Western professionals.

Editor’s note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ESI: When you look at last year’s viewing figures, MLBB certainly was a a standout. What are your expectations for this year’s World Cup? What does success look like?

Ray Ng, Moonton: This isn’t our first year being at the Esports World Cup. We want to continue building the ecosystem together and introduce our game to a wider audience. We’re building better synergy between the two teams. Again, we’re hosting two tournaments this year: the women’s and the men’s. We’re looking at making record-breaking hours watched together again.

That’s why we’re building on very strong storytelling. We continue the storytelling from last year: one game, two champions. We believe our games represent inclusion, which is why we host both men’s and women’s tournaments at the Esports World Cup. We’re looking to start strong: we begin with the women’s tournament and hope to see record-breaking numbers on the women’s side before moving on to the men’s tournament. We also hope the teams are very competitive this year — Team Falcons are a great bet, and there are other teams eyeing the champions spot. I think it’s a very good storyline this year.

ESI: From a Western perspective, mobile esports feels in its infancy, whereas it’s huge in the East. How do you see mobile esports penetrating the Western market? Do you see it getting bigger, especially with hardware prices and the cost of gaming rigs going up? Does that present an opportunity for you?

Ray Ng: Of course. We look at the market and see organic growth year over year. Starting with the influence from the Middle East and Turkey, we then saw neighbouring countries follow, and now communities are building up in the Western world too — we’re seeing communities in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. We’re working with federations and the people there to grow the community together.

We’re seeing a trend where the newer generation coming up with mobile devices will already be used to playing games on mobile — they just need to try ours. Once the game is introduced to a new set of players, if they like it, they stick with it, and the community grows from there. It’s a very good opportunity to grow the Western community for MLBB esports.

ESI: How does the Esports World Cup fit into your overall strategy? Is it a nice-to-have to bring the game to a more global audience, or something more important than that?

Ray Ng: If you look at the partnership over the last three years, it’s been very important to us. We set the strategy to pursue global expansion four or five years ago, and platforms and partners like the Esports World Cup have helped accelerate that whole process. More people in the esports community know MLBB esports now — we’ve been an Esports Awards nominee, won some awards, and were also nominated at The Game Awards. So more people know MLBB esports.

It’s been a very important partner over the past three years, and we hope to continue this journey together. It also ties into the Esports Nations Cup we’re already working on, which helps us unlock more possibilities. We have over 100 countries signed up for MLBB — that’s half the world’s countries, and I think it shows a good sign that they’re getting involved.

ESI: We’re seeing more and more nations trying to build grassroots participation — mobile obviously has that accessibility. When you talk to different nations and federations, how important is it for you to build from the bottom up?

Ray Ng: Bottom-up is always our foundation. When we look at building an esports ecosystem in new-entry countries, we assess whether the community’s base is active and organized. What we’re seeing right now in the Western world is that the community exists, but it isn’t always organized — people playing here and there without a strong community group. When we see that, we help build the community from scratch by creating groups so people can connect with others, and we take a bottom-up approach, working closely with different partners and local organizers so our games can be played by a wider audience.

For certain countries, working with the Ministry of Youth and Education helps a lot, because MLBB has a strong younger player base — a lot of young people get in touch with the game early. Working with youth ministries helps us reach that target audience too.

ESI: Let’s talk AI. Is there any way AI is going to impact mobile gaming? Do you see potential for coaching tools built out of AI? How is AI part of your strategy, and do you see it having benefits?

Ray Ng: AI has become a very important part of the company’s strategy. In our daily work, we’re using AI to help with game development and esports, and we’re looking at different possibilities for using it further. Right now we’re using AI in some of our event productions — for example, when players can’t make it to media day in time, or to create concepts for videos we couldn’t otherwise shoot, like putting a location into a video that we couldn’t film in reality.

On the coaching side, this is a part we’re actively looking at improving through AI. We’re doing internal development of AI tools that will be able to analyse games and give a coaching perspective to certain teams.

We know some new or growing regions find it hard to get a good coach early on, and we hope this tool can help raise their competitiveness. We’re doing a lot of alpha and beta testing internally right 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 some teams and build on it from there. The ultimate goal is to provide this tool to all competitive teams, so they can use it to optimize 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 into this piece.