PMCO SEA League 2019 now underway as part of global US$2.5M tournament

PUBG may have slid off gaming headlines (and China’s regulatory approval ) but the battle royale still enjoys a massive following in Southeast Asia through PUBG Mobile. So much so, in fact, that there’s a high-stakes tournament happening right now.

The PUBG Mobile Club Open (PMCO) SEA League 2019 is an official, 5-week tournament partnered by Vivo and hosted by StarLadder. It’s unfolding, quite ironically, in Shanghai, China.

24 teams from SEA, 4 of which are wildcard picks, are fighting it out in hopes of advancing to the SEA Spring Championship next month. It all culminates this July in Germany with the world’s best teams, though PMCO lives on with the Fall split later this year.

PMCO 2019 as a whole boasts a US$2.5 million prize pool, with US$400,000 (~S$545,000) allocated to the spring and fall splits in SEA.

Unfortunately, Singapore doesn’t have any skin in the tournaments, although our neighbours in Malaysia are fielding five teams. The rest hail from the usual suspects Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

You can catch all of that last-team-standing action over at the PUBG Mobile Esports YouTube channel, where we are now into Day 3 of the competitions.

Part of PUBG Mobile’s skyrocketing popularity can be attributed to high-end gaming performance in affordable smartphones, such as Vivo’s V15Pro. Even other manufacturers have partnered with the battle royale game or cited it in performance boost benchmarks, speaking to just how large of a following it commands in the region.

…I could do with some chicken dinner right about now, too.

Photos: Vivo