My 11-year-old son’s entertainment consists of playing Mobile Legends and Fortnite. Apparently he is not alone. Ninety percent of Gen Z and millennials choose to play Mobile Legends as a form of entertainment.
And the 10 percent choose to play it as a serious sport. One team is Bren Esports, an all-Filipino team.
Last week my son told me, “Ma, do you know that the Philippines won the world championship of Mobile Legends? That’s the first for the Philippines Esports to win a world championship!”
I tried my luck and messaged The Bren Esports team owner and CEO Bernard Bren Chong if I can interview him and the team and guess what? He agreed!
Bren educates me as my age makes my ignorance of this game. "Mobile Legends is an online game that pits two opposing teams to fight and destroy the enemy's base. Currently the app boasts of 75 million players worldwide with a strong presence in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia. I started Bren Esports around 2017 with a focus on building Esports Teams around competitive mobile games. With the goal of being represented in all major Esports competitions, Bren Esports is currently the biggest Esports team in the Philippines with 9 active teams from different Esports titles like Tekken, NBA2k, Valorant and CSGO to name a few. The current Bren Esports Mobile Legends team is headed by Coach Francis (Duckey) Glindro, Cj (Ribo) Ribo, Micoo (Coco) Sampang, Angelo Kyle (Pheww) Arcangel, Bords (Lusty) Castromayor, Ephraim (Ejhay) Sambrano, David Charles (Flaptzy) Canon, and Karl (Karltzy) Nepomuceno.
I was able to interview Coach Duckey as well. My son said the team had difficulties in the beginning so he thought the team would never make it.
"We are very confident with how our team adjusts to situations to get the win. Although we had some challenges in the middle of the grand finals, the team was able to close out the win for the Philippines".
Karl (Karltzy) Nepomuceno was confident going into the world championship saying, "we've prepared for the best teams in the World so the question is, are they prepared for us?".
The team fought hard in the early stages of the tournament, beating teams from Singapore, Indonesia and Japan before moving on to the grand finals. With a nail biting grand finals, Bren Esports started with a very comfortable 2-0 in a best of 7 series against the Myanmar based Bhurmese Ghouls.
With the team on the brink of winning the championship, the opposing team managed to make crucial adjustments to their chosen heroes to counter Bren and eventually flipped the advantage with 2-3.
Now, on the brink of losing the grand finals, the Bren Esports team made high risk plays that thankfully worked in their favor and tied the series to 3-3. With the winning momentum on the side of Bren Esports and quick adjustments to their strategy in clashing with the Bhurmese Ghouls, the team eventually overwhelmed the competition and bagged the historical win for the Philippines.
Bren Esports has cemented itself as a force to be reckoned with in the Esports industry and with the historic win has put the Philippines on the global stage of Esports. "We will provide our Esports Athletes with the structure and professional environment they need so that they can continue to succeed in the world stage of Esports" said Chong.
With the success of Bren Esports in the world stage of Esports, the company plans to continue developing new professional gamers to represent the Philippines.