Arena of Valor Premier League 2024 returns to Thailand with new format

Arena of Valor Premier League 2024 will take place in Bangkok, Thailand with the event’s organiser Garena also revealing a new competitive format.

The top-flight tournament, set to take place June 12th, will now include a Swiss round which will be the event’s first stage.

Arena of Valor is the international adaptation of Honor of Kings, a very popular mobile game in China. The game has the same mechanics, but slightly different playable characters and other modifications. The Arena of Valor Premier League serves as the major mid-season tournament for the game’s esports circuit, gathering the best-placed teams from the four largest Arena of Valor leagues: ASL (Indonesia), RPL (Thailand), GCS (Taiwan) and AOG (Vietnam).

The upcoming edition of the Premier League will see a rather large change implemented in the competitive format. Whereas the previous editions of the tournament started with a group stage, this time around a Swiss stage will take place prior to the playoffs. The stage will see teams that accumulate three wins qualify for the playoffs, with those that lose three times getting knocked out. In total, eight out of the 16 teams will move on to the playoffs.

The semifinals and the finals will be played offline in Bangkok, Thailand. The 2023 edition of the same tournament was also held in Bangkok.

The Arena of Valor Premier League is a very popular tournament in the SEA region, with the latest edition reaching over 900,000 peak viewers, according to data platform Esports Charts. The game’s Chinese version, Honor of Kings, will also have a large-scale tournament at the Esports World Cup later this year, which will feature Chinese teams as well as teams from other regions.