PUBG Mobile is hosting one of its most important seasonal events this week. It comes in the midst of a global crisis that is affecting everything from esports to video game development to the governments and economies around the world.

PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Continues, Despite Coronavirus

Even with the COVID-19 global health pandemic, Tencent and PUBG Corp. is still moving forward with the PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 event, originally postponed.

It was supposed to begin on March 12 as a live event where the players from each of the teams would have competed in person together. But this is no longer the case. The event is now held in an online format due to the current world situation.

Originally, the South Asian event was going to happen live in New Delhi, India but it is good that the event organizers adjusted and allowed for the teams and players to compete online. This will help keep them safe from the growing coronavirus situation.

It is honestly a welcome change since other esports events, leagues, and tournaments are currently postponed or canceled. Watching something like the PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 event is a great way to pass the time if you are stuck at home.

How and When to Watch the Pro League South Asia Event

The PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 event will broadcast live as it happens. The event begins this Thursday, March 19 and lasts for a good while, so fans will have a lot to watch and enjoy.

The first season will be held between March 19 and Sunday, April 5. That gives a couple of weeks for players to enjoy this event, but the timing is great given everything happening. Though the event isn’t happening in person with the teams anymore, it will still air live.

Players interested in watching the PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 event as it happens, need to visit the official PUBG Mobile Esports YouTube channel. It will be available in multiple languages so that many players in the community can watch.

There will be streams in Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali. For those of us English speakers, there will also be an English stream. The language options are great. All of the different streams will begin on Thursday at a strange time for those of us in the West.

It will start at 5 am PT (8 am ET) on Thursday and it is likely that the stream will follow a similar timing for the days that follow during PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1. As of now, it does seem like the league will only stream on YouTube. We haven’t heard of any Twitch options at this time.

All Teams Competing in the Event

Players tuning in to watch the event live or after with the archived videos can watch 20 teams compete in the numerous days of competitions. The teams qualified through various means of entry.

For starters, around half of the teams in total came from the first method. Nine of the teams competing in the first season of the South Asia league got there by qualifying in the recent PUBG Mobile Club Open India event as they did well enough there to earn a spot in the league.

In a similar fashion, there are six teams that entered the league’s first season by doing well in the PUBG Mobile Club Open for the South Asia region. Those six teams are among the top clubs that competed in the open tournament and will have their shot in the South Asia league now.

Finally, we have the last five teams qualified for the league. They got through in a much different way. Organizers invited them for doing well in the PUBG Mobile Club Open South Asia finals 2019.

You can find the full list of the 20 teams that will be competing in the event below with many of them having recognizable names and companies sponsoring them like Team Solo Mid.

• TSM Entity
• Marcos Gaming
• Team Hype
• Delta
• Soul
• Team Tamilas
• INES
• VSG Crawlers
• SynerGE
• MegaStars
• JyanMaara
• UMExRxN
• IND
• OrangeRock
• DeadEyes Guy
• Fnatic
• Powerhouse
• GodLike
• Team Xtreme
• ElementriX

Those are the 20 teams that players can tune in and cheer for during the first season of the South Asia league. Many of these are really talented teams that shined in 2019, so it is sure to be an intense and exciting competition.

Event Format

The format of the tournament will be interesting. Unlike other esports leagues where all of the teams compete against one another in weekly matches and the like to see who comes out on top, there will be some unique twists thrown in there for the PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia.

For starters, the 20 total teams will divide up into five different groups during the first season. Furthermore, the event will happen for around three weeks. The format of the tournament will divide up between each of those three weeks that it is happening.

The teams will take on the other teams in their particular group by facing off in a whopping 16 matches per week. For the whole event, every team will play an unbelievable 48 matches in just the course of three weeks. That is a lot more than what many leagues do in a single week.

It all starts with the first group that consists of four teams like all of the other groups. Group A has TSM Entity, Marcos Gaming, Team Hype, and Celtz. Group B features Soul, Team Tamilas, INES, and VSG Crawlers. Group C has SynerGE, MegaStars, JyanMaara, and UMExRxN.

For group D, the competing teams will be IND, Orange Rock, DeadEyes Guy, and Fnatic. And last but certainly not least, the fifth and final group E will have Powerhouse, GodLike, Team Xtreme, and ElementriX as their four teams for the event.

What we do find strange about the entire season is that they are five groups for three weeks. The whole point of the event is to see who will come out on top among the 20 teams. So, we would assume that the groups would change each week, but that is something we don’t know at this time.

After all, there might be uneven groups where two of the best teams are in a single group. It could cause other talented ones to fall behind because of the group they are in. That would be certainly unfair to the teams in groups. So, we hope they change with each week of the event to give everyone a chance to compete against one another.

Money and World League Spots

The goal of PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 is to determine who will make it to the PUBG Mobile World League and compete on the global stage later this year. In addition, it is to give away some solid prizes to the teams, based on how well they do.

There is a massive prize pool of $200,000 for teams competing in the league. The 16 matches that the teams compete in each week in their groups will determine the overall leaderboard at the end.

The prize pool as we know it thus far doesn’t actually add up to $200,000 in total. We presume these numbers are for the players themselves on each team. However, this isn’t guaranteed at this time but it looks like each of the players could get this money for them.

Teams that come in 17th place through 20th place will get $1,000 for each of them. For teams that place 13th through 16th, they will get a little bit more at around $1,250.

Those teams that place right around the middle of the pack in ninth through 12th place will get $1,500. Teams that rank seventh and eighth will get $2,000. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth place teams will get $3,500.

The fourth-place team will get $4,000 while the third-place team gets $6,000. The second-place runner-up team gets $8,000. The first-place team gets $10,000.

Perhaps more important than the cash prize money that the teams will win for their placements in the event is the fact that the top five teams in the entire South Asia league will get their invites to join the PUBG Mobile World League and compete in it in the future.

What Happened to the Other PUBG Mobile Events

The PUBG Mobile Pro League South Asia Season 1 event is set to start March 19 and last until Sunday, April 5. However, that isn’t the only PUBG Mobile event affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Oddly enough, the PUBG Corp. and Tencent are taking different approaches to the other leagues in the world. For instance, the Pro League Americas postponed until later this year.

Perhaps the reason behind this is the fact that the league could be attempting to stick to a live event in person rather than online-only like in the case of the South Asia league. Unfortunately, we don’t have any further details on the situation regarding the Americas at this time.

In addition, the World League is also on hold and postponed until later this year like in the case of the Americas. We have no way of knowing when it will happen or in what format, until the situation develops further.

The original dates for the World League were May through June. However, there is no certainty of whether that will be when the Spring Split actually happens. The Malaysia league tournament is getting a slight delay from its original date and will likely still happen.