Savvy Games Group agrees to buy Mobile Legends maker Moonton

The company that makes Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is changing owner. Bloomberg reported on March 20, 2026, that Savvy Games Group, the games company owned by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, has agreed to buy Moonton from ByteDance, the Chinese group best known for TikTok. People familiar with the terms told the agency that the deal values the studio at US$6 billion.

What exists at this point is an agreement. Reuters reported the same day, a Friday, that the companies had announced the deal, without officially disclosing any financial terms. The most detailed account of what follows is an internal memo from Moonton's chief executive, Zhang Yunfan, which Bloomberg reviewed. In it he tells staff that the transaction is expected to be finalized in the near future, that Savvy will leave the company's management in place and that employees will be offered incentive programs.

For esports, the studio matters because of one game. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a mobile MOBA, a multiplayer online battle arena, the genre in which two teams of five fight over a single map. Its world championship in January drew the largest audience a mobile esports event has ever had.

Bloomberg and Reuters, March 20, 2026; Sheep Esports, February 14 and March 20, 2026; Esports Charts figure as relayed by Esports Insider on January 26, 2026.

What has been agreed, and what has not happened yet

Three different things are easily confused in a sale of this size: talks, an agreement and a closing. Talks commit nobody. An agreement binds the buyer and the seller to terms. The closing is the moment the company actually changes hands, often weeks or months later.

Bloomberg's report places the Moonton sale at the second stage. Its headline says that Savvy is to buy the studio, and its text says that the Saudi company has agreed to do so. Sheep Esports, which relayed the report the same day, wrote that ByteDance had signed a deal, that the transaction was expected to close soon and that the financial terms had not been officially disclosed.

Reuters gave the buyer's side. Brian Ward, Savvy's chief executive, said the deal would strengthen the group's position in mobile games, the agency reported on March 20. It added that the Japanese daily Nikkei had been the first to report the agreement, and that a letter from Zhang Yunfan to staff said the management structure would stay unchanged, with him still at the head of the Shanghai-based company.

The figure deserves the same care. US$6 billion is what people who asked not to be named told Bloomberg, because the terms are private. Reuters' own source put the valuation at more than US$6 billion. Earlier reports had given a range. On February 13, Reuters wrote that ByteDance was in advanced talks to sell the studio, and The Esports Advocate, summarizing that report the same day, put the asking price at about US$6 billion to US$7 billion. Sheep Esports wrote a day later that the price under discussion was reported to exceed US$6 billion.

Five years from purchase to sale

ByteDance bought Moonton in 2021 through Nuverse, its games arm, in a deal that valued the studio at about US$4 billion, according to Reuters and Sheep Esports. The reported value of the new agreement is therefore half as much again as the price of five years ago, a difference of US$2 billion.

The road to the sale was not straight. ByteDance considered selling the studio in 2023 and then put the plan on hold, Sheep Esports wrote in November 2025. The Esports Advocate records that the group said in 2023 that it would restructure its gaming business after an internal review, and that earlier stated intentions to sell its games division had not been carried out.

The talks that led to the agreement were reported for the first time in late November 2025. Bloomberg wrote then that ByteDance had reopened discussions with Savvy and that they were still preliminary. Sheep Esports added, citing a New York Times report of the same month, that the Saudi fund's assets were largely tied up in domestic projects and that new commitments were becoming fewer.

By February the tone had changed. Reuters' sources said that the deal could be finalized during the first quarter of 2026, according to The Esports Advocate, and Esports Insider wrote on February 18 that an initial agreement on the broad terms had been reached and could be formalized by the end of March. Both companies declined to comment to Reuters. The agreement reported on March 20 falls inside that window.

Why ByteDance is selling

The sale fits a retreat that has lasted more than two years. Since late 2023 ByteDance has been withdrawing from video games step by step to concentrate on its main businesses, among them TikTok and its Chinese version, Douyin, Sheep Esports wrote. The group restructured Nuverse, its games publishing arm, and passed several projects to Tencent in the middle of 2024.

Moonton was the exception that stayed. Sheep Esports describes Mobile Legends: Bang Bang as a game that kept growing in Southeast Asia while the wider market for mobile MOBAs slowed and while it faced competition from Honor of Kings, a rival title in the same genre. The game has been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times worldwide, the outlet wrote in February.

As for the money, Sheep Esports reported that the proceeds are expected to support ByteDance's research into large language models, the technology behind generative artificial intelligence, and the infrastructure of TikTok. That is the outlet's account of the group's priorities, not a statement by ByteDance. Reuters likewise wrote on March 20 that ByteDance is concentrating more on its artificial intelligence business.

Who the buyer is

Savvy Games Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, known as the PIF, the sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi Arabian government, The Esports Advocate writes. Several of its holdings are in esports.

Savvy also manages the fund's portfolio of gaming investments, which includes minority stakes in Ubisoft, Nintendo and Activision Blizzard among others, according to The Esports Advocate. Bloomberg describes the Moonton agreement as part of Savvy's effort to build up its assets in mobile games.

What Moonton brings in esports

Moonton is a publisher that runs its own competitive circuit. The base of it is a set of professional leagues named MPL, among them MPL Philippines. The Philippine edition gives an idea of the scale: its sixteenth season, played from August to October 2025, had eight teams and a prize pool of US$150,000, Esports Insider reported.

Above the leagues sit two international tournaments. The Mid Season Cup, or MSC, was played in 2025 at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh with a prize pool of US$3 million and was won by Team Liquid PH. The M World Championship closes the season. Its seventh edition, M7, ran from January 3 to 25, 2026, in Jakarta with 22 teams and US$1 million in prize money, and ended with Aurora Gaming PH beating Alter Ego of Indonesia 4-0 in the final for a first prize of US$320,000.

The audience is what sets the game apart. The M7 final peaked at 5.6 million viewers, Esports Insider reported on January 26, quoting the data firm Esports Charts. That is above the 5.06 million of M5 and above the 5.4 million of the Free Fire World Series of 2021, until then the record for a mobile title. Sheep Esports ranks the figure second only to League of Legends, ahead of Valorant and Counter-Strike 2, and Esports Insider calls M7 the fourth most-viewed esports event of all time.

The studio has also been pushing beyond Southeast Asia. On January 12 it announced a partnership with PGL, a tournament organizer, to create a second-tier competition in Europe, The Esports Advocate reported. The first PGL MLBB Challengers was scheduled to open with a qualifier on January 13, with the eight best teams going on to a main event from January 16 to 18. The financial terms were not disclosed.

Where Mobile Legends and Saudi events already meet

The agreement does not create the link between the game and Saudi-funded esports; that link was already there. The 2025 Mid Season Cup was part of the Esports World Cup, the multi-game event held in Riyadh. Esports Insider wrote in February that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is confirmed to return to the 2026 edition, which the PIF funds, and that it was the first title unveiled for the Esports Nations Cup, a new competition between national teams run by the Esports World Cup Foundation, which also runs the Esports World Cup.

The road map that Moonton presented at the M7 final, as reported by Esports Insider, places the next MSC during the 2026 Esports World Cup in the summer. If the sale closes, the fund that pays for the event would, through Savvy, also own the publisher of one of its games.

Savvy already owns ESL FACEIT Group, an organizer that runs tournaments in several games. Nothing in the reports says whether Moonton's circuit would be connected to it, and the memo that Bloomberg reviewed speaks of continuity: the same chief executive and the same management team.

What is known about the next steps

The calendar of the game for 2026 was set before the agreement and has not been changed by it. According to the road map reported by Esports Insider, the circuit is organized in five regions, the MPL leagues continue, the MSC is played in the summer and the finals of the next world championship, M8, are planned in Turkey by January 2027.

On the sale itself, the only indication of timing is the memo's wording that the transaction should be finalized in the near future. The price has not been officially disclosed by either side, and the reports of March 20 mention no regulatory step and no closing condition.

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