Mobile MOBA game Honor of Kings is in an incredibly unique position, possibly unlike any other esports title.
After dominating Chinese esports following its debut 10 years ago, Honor of Kings’ global launch in 2024 now sees the title build an entirely new ecosystem to support its worldwide market.
The King Pro League (KPL), Honor of Kings’ franchised esports league in China, features a competitive structure and passionate fandom that can fill 62,000 seats at the country’s national stadium. However, its global esports ecosystem is still in its development stage as the game looks to create a strong foothold in various new markets.
As a result, there’s a clear dichotomy between these two ecosystems, despite being under the same roof.
Part two of Esports Insider’s deep dive into Honor of Kings tackles its global esports approach and its lofty ambitions to create a competitor outside of China. To understand just how popular Honor of Kings esports is in China, check out part one of ESI’s series.
Honor of Kings’ Rapid Esports Expansion
One of Honor of Kings’ biggest hurdles is creating a holistic esports ecosystem despite there already being an innate skill gap between China and the rest of the world.
Aware of this immediate gulf, Honor of Kings and its global publisher, Level Infinite, invested $15m (~£11.3m) into the ecosystem in 2025 to rapidly build its competitive structure. This included creating professional leagues in the Philippines (PKL), Malaysia (MKL) and Indonesia (IKL), as well as for the West (America/ Europe) and East (Japan, Korea, MENA, South Asia).
These sit alongside Honor of Kings’ existing franchises in China (KPL) and Brazil (CHOKBR), the latter of which launched in 2023 prior to the game’s global release.
“Actually, I think we are not fast enough,” said James Yang, Senior Director of Global Esports at Level Infinite, when asked about Honor of Kings’ esports development prior to the KPL Grand Finals 2025.
“We need to be even faster. Why? Because, as you’ve seen, the KPL started its pro league in China nine years ago, and there is a gap between China and the global [ecosystem]. To chase this gap, certainly we need to move fast.”
Fixing the Skill Gap
During Esports Insider’s visit to Beijing to learn more about Honor of Kings, a heavy emphasis was placed on looking to address the current skill gap between the two ecosystems. In a presentation conducted by Feng, Executive Producer of Honor of Kings Global Esports, three methods, in particular, were highlighted.
The Honor of Kings ‘Power-Up Program’ is a free training project that focuses on multiple areas of the esports sector, in and out of the game. This includes courses on game tactics, team operations, building player brands, and coaching insights from industry professionals.
According to Honor of Kings, its Spring programme featured a total of 150 participants from its pro leagues and the public. For 2026, the programme will return for the first and second halves of the year.
Next year, Honor of Kings will also host an official bootcamp for its global partner teams in Suzhou. Set to take place between the Honor of Kings Nations Clash and the Honor of Kings World Cup (KWC), the two-week bootcamp aims to further develop these rosters with the help of KPL coaches and its facilities.
Finally, the ‘China Coach Initiative’ is a structured reward system for Chinese coaches to develop overseas teams. According to Tencent, the rewards include monthly and ‘long-term’ financial incentives.
“In a more open ecosystem, in more open training and coaching channels with some outstanding KPL players and coaches… I think the performance of the overseas teams will grow and develop greatly,” emphasised Cheng Huang, Head of the King Pro League.
Honor of Kings’ Head Start
At this point, it is worth highlighting that the Honor of Kings global ecosystem has somewhat of a development advantage over completely fresh titles.
Whilst Honor of Kings has only been released globally since 2024, the game has had an ‘international version’ called Arena of Valor since 2017.
Despite multiple differences between the two, there is still an active esports playerbase that has the potential to move over to Honor of Kings, depending on Arena of Valor’s future.
Secondly, Honor of Kings’ global ecosystem can benefit from the King Pro League’s experience, whilst adapting these lessons to different markets.
“Without the KPL, I don’t think we can grow this fast. We are not trying to copy the KPL. We are trying to share the DNA of the KPL infrastructure,” Yang explained.
“The pro teams, the skill set improvement, the multi-layer structure….All these structures and things we are learning, we are inheriting, and we are sharing from KPL. Definitely, we also need to make it more localised, like some pro leagues have a different number of teams or whether some region has a more open structure.”
Separating KPL from KIC
Having one league being so far ahead can also cause another major issue: the region’s teams winning everything. To solve this issue, the Honor of Kings International Championship (KIC), the game’s biggest event of the year, now no longer features King Pro League teams.
Instead, the KPL introduced the King Pro League Grand Finals, which was the aforementioned event in China’s Bird’s Nest stadium.
“We need to, a little bit, take care of the global esports [ecosystem] to grow,” said Yang. “Otherwise, if the skill gap is too different, then it’s not good for teams to compete, and also audiences may not be happy to watch their team if it is a one-sided demolition.”
Still, while having a separate world championship is a strategically smart decision, it remains imperative that the world’s top teams get the opportunity to face off. This is why, for KIC 2025, which kicked off earlier today (November 14th), the top three teams will compete in the KPL Challenger Cup.
Commencing in December, the Challenger Cup will feature KPL and KIC teams alongside women’s, streamer, tier-two and grassroots rosters.
Moreover, the Honor of Kings World Cup (KWC) at the ever-discussed Esports World Cup also features a mixture of international and Chinese teams. Speaking on Honor of Kings at the EWC, Yang noted in a different interview: “I cannot imagine EWC without Honor of Kings. This is the most-played mobile MOBA in the world.
“The EWC is one of the best esports tournaments, and Honor of Kings is one of the best mobile games.”
What are Honor of Kings’ Global Ambitions?
According to Yang, the goal of Honor of Kings’ rapid esports expansion is to create a non-KPL team that is able to compete against the best the scene has to offer.
“Our ambition, in 10 years, and I hope it can be much shorter than 10 years, is to make a global team to be at a similar level with the KPL,” said Level Infinite’s Senior Director of Global Esports. “So that we can have their KIC and KPL finals together to do a massive event.”
Yang’s response to this question, interestingly, not only demonstrates a clear vision by Level Infinite, but it highlights what was emphasised throughout Esports Insider’s journey to Beijing — Honor of Kings globally is already planning for the long-term.
One factor that hasn’t been discussed regarding the game is the platform on which it is played. Given the title’s popularity in China and rapid global expansion plans, it’s easy to forget that this is a mobile game. This explains why many of its professional leagues are based in Southeast Asia and Brazil — regions known for mobile gaming.
However, to grow Honor of Kings to a true global scale, there is still a barrier to crack when it comes to mobile gaming in the West, particularly across North America and parts of Europe such as the UK.
“Once a certain platform starts dominating the audience, then they have a limited time to game. So it’s not easy to change the platform from here to there,” admitted Yang.
“It doesn’t happen just immediately. However, we can obviously see that more and more people play mobile games, and eventually, I believe mobile esports will also grow.”
In the end, the 2025 Honor of Kings International Championship will be a true test of how far the mobile MOBA scene has come over the last 12 months, both in terms of competitiveness and popularity.
Last year, Honor of Kings’ global championships recorded a peak viewership of 391,000, providing a bar for the event to beat this time around.
KIC 2025 is taking place right now in the Philippines and is set to conclude on November 30th. The tournament can be viewed on traditional streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, as well as TikTok and Honor of Kings TV.
Editor’s note: Some of these interviews have been translated from Chinese. Esports Insider was invited to the event on behalf of Tencent. This included travel and accommodation. Esports Insider has full editorial control of the content.