• PUBG has taken the South Asian Esports scene by storm
• Over 2,000 Esports athletes play PUBG Mobile tournaments in Sri Lanka
• Google Search Trends show that PUBG has overtaken Rugby in number of searches
• Higher search trends on “PUBG” in the Nothern and Eastern provinces
• Gamer.LK hosted Sri Lanka’s largest PUBG Mobile tournament in 2020 which gained mainstream interest

PUBG, the OG battle royale game released on PC and mobile has taken the South Asian Esports scene by storm. At present Sri Lanka already has over 2000 Esports athletes who play in PUBG Mobile tournaments across the country. Sri Lankan Esports overall is rising at an impressive rate since the increase of tournaments and events organized by Gamer.LK.

We decided to compare the search trends and scope of Rugby and the most played Esport in Sri Lanka in recent years, PUBG. And the results were interesting! According to Google Trends, in the past 20 months, Sri Lankans have proved to have shown an interest in PUBG more than towards Rugby. The exception being for the period September 14th – Nov 16th, where there’s a peak of searches on the Rugby World Cup and a gradual decline going back to being lesser than the PUBG searches. While categorizing the search trends according to the subregions of the country, it is clear that, out of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka, all other provinces other than Western and Central Province have been engaging in PUBG searches more than Rugby and the highest searches belong to Northern and Eastern province where the percentage of PUBG searches did hit 83% in each province, well now that’s massive!

In February 2020, Gamer.LK  hosted Sri Lankan’s Largest PUBG Mobile Tournament with over 1400+  Esports athletes participating from across the country, which was streamed over Sri Lanka’s first Esports web TV channel GLKtv for PUBG fans, and other Esports enthusiasts. It gained mainstream interest as well from television broadcasts.

Taking the above facts into consideration, it is clearly visible that among Sri Lankan youth society, interest towards PUBG is continuing to surpass that of Rugby except for during the “Rugby season”, where all the madness is about Rugby. This also indicates that Esports already has begun to surpass traditional sports, and soon will be the most-watched, and played sport in the country.