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TWIG 144: Riot makes $100M on mobile. Micenuts?

5 Aug 20217 min video

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let's talk about riot games so there was a sensor tower article that said wide games mobile titles generate over 100 million dollars so this is 100 million dollars in global players spending to date on mobile and league of legends generate the most player spending which is over 60 actually 65 percent of all the publishers mobile revenues and they have a nice chart and they show that the league of legends wild rift has made 65 million till date team fight tactics 28 and legends of roontera 16 million they're talking about majority of players spending coming in from the united states making 26 percent of total mobile spending with south korea close behind at 22 and they mentioned that looking ahead there's two big milestones for riot mobile that is of course the wild rift entering chinese market and their plan to release ballarand on mobile in in future so my analysis let's let's be clear it's well documented i'm a huge fan of team fight tactics to a

point where we're getting as angry as eric because of their battle pass but i i still still very much like it i've played runeterra i was pretty much one and done with that it was so similar to to the what's the um hearthstone yeah to hearthstone and i was like okay i know where this game is heading i don't have time for this and i played wild rift for for at least couple of weeks until i kinda was reminded why i don't like mobas with their complicated gear systems and so forth and so so forth so the analysis itself 100 million is a lot of money that's that's a fact but that's still gross revenue and it's over nearly a couple of years and for a publisher that makes between 1.5 billion to 2 billion a year from their pc game furthermore when you look at the downloads you can see that the these brand extensions meaning team fight tactics and legends of roon terra are not really performing that well on mobile so teamfight tactics has about six million installs and legends of roon terra

only a little bit over three million installs overall on mobile during the lifetime and league of legends which accumulated 65 million has almost 50 million installs till date and when you look at the revenue trends it's pretty clear that roon terror on mobile is about a one million dollar a month game now you have to take it into account that usually with these type of cross-platform games that were first launched on pc the the revenue on the pc side could be eighty percent of total revenue so this game could be you know financially pretty good but it's definitely not massive tft is making about 2 million a month in grass revenue on mobile and again if 80 of that revenue is coming in from pc8 so it's not a bad one wild rift is purely mobile game and it's you know it's impressive um generally speaking it makes about seven to ten million dollars a month in march the game looks super iffy and it actually was in a bit of a decline they had a massive push of content with up to four champions added in an update and

several updates that they were coming in they got the runes the skins the events and all kinds of content coming in but nevertheless when you compare them to let's say brawl stars or mobile legends mobile legends bang bang so you can see that compared to these two different mobas the game is really underperforming because nine months after the launch so wildworth has been out for nine months wild rift is is making that solid five million net mobile legends was making at this point almost eight and brawl stars was making at this point nearly 20 and and yeah it's it's a different strategy so brawl stars came in hot they had a massive surge of revenues and kind of declined but still declined to be a much bigger than league of legends currently and then mobile legends started kind of like wild rift where they had a pretty modest start but kept growing month after month ever since whereas we can see from the wild rifts graph that it's not really growing as steadily as that's right perhaps was was expecting

but i want to end this on a positive note it is fantastic not fantastic it's just like a unique ip they have the great teams they have all the resources they got the china launch ahead i think valerian mobile is going to be very interesting and um i stay bullish about riot i think they can find the way to execute because they have the all the rest and all the time in the world and yeah i just want to end up on the note of tft like come on guys we can do more let's let's please you know add some basic elements to it to actually uh monetize that game i know it has a lot of potential but eric what's your take sorry what are we talking about here right tft will you stop talking about tft it's not going anywhere i love it i don't care what you love it doesn't make any freaking money dude and 100 million dollars is mice nuts for riot they're like make more than north of two billion dollars a year right how many bodies did they put against these games these opportunities to generate only 100 million dollars like how many bodies are

on league of legends right and let's compare like revenue per player user right or revenue per employee i don't even know if sure their break even on these games given the cost development cost marketing ongoing overhead like live ops and stuff my whole thing with these guys is they need to make games that are more in line with the consumer demand in the west period right they need a better to think about what people play and spend money on and and and work on those type of games with their amazing ip you know so anyway that's my whole spiel on this but it's not a good performance right that's suffered have you played wild ruff because i remember you were you were deep into vainglory no i haven't played wild rift i am i am so busy that i'm just like banning myself from playing any game that i might get attacked god i wish i had taken your advice except northgard that you can play on a plane as well actually i was because i was on a plane the other day i saw it on my phone and i was thinking i wonder if i do i want to even mess with opening it up

can you play it offline yeah you can play it offline uh but on mobile phone it kind of sucks so you need to bring your ipad plus it will suck your battery like nothing else oh really okay i figured you know

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Summary

Riot Games has generated over $100 million in global mobile player spending across its portfolio, a figure that, while significant in isolation, represents a modest contribution relative to the publisher’s annual PC revenue of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. League of Legends: Wild Rift leads this performance, accounting for $65 million of the total, followed by Teamfight Tactics at $28 million and Legends of Runeterra at $16 million. Geographically, the United States serves as the primary market, contributing 26 percent of total mobile spending, followed closely by South Korea at 22 percent.

Performance metrics indicate that these mobile extensions have struggled to achieve mass-market penetration. Wild Rift has accumulated approximately 50 million installs, while Teamfight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra have reached only 6 million and 3 million installs, respectively. Revenue analysis suggests that Wild Rift generates between $7 million and $10 million monthly, yet it underperforms when compared to established competitors like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Brawl Stars at similar stages in their lifecycles. Furthermore, because these titles are cross-platform, a substantial portion of their total revenue is likely derived from PC players, suggesting that the mobile-specific contribution is relatively small.

Despite these challenges, the outlook for Riot remains optimistic due to the strength of its intellectual property and upcoming strategic milestones, specifically the expansion of Wild Rift into the Chinese market and the anticipated mobile release of Valorant. However, concerns persist regarding the efficiency of these mobile ventures. Given the high development and operational costs associated with live-service games, there is skepticism regarding whether these titles are currently breaking even or effectively aligning with Western consumer demand. Future success will likely depend on the publisher’s ability to refine monetization strategies and optimize live operations to better leverage its existing resources.