MPL PH bares unified schedule for new season

MANILA, Philippines -- Mobile Legends Bang Bang Professional League (MPL) Philippines is ready to start its 13th season this month with a new campaign promoting its unified schedule for the upcoming season.

Starting March 15, every Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, it will be "4pm, MPL na!", signifying that all matches of the regular season will start at 4 p.m.

"We wanted to instill in the minds of our fans that 4 p.m. is set for MPL. Aside from deciding a unified time across all three days [of matches], we also took into consideration some of our fans who watch matches late because of school or work and wanted MPL, for them, to be their companion from late afternoon until night," said Moonton Games esports marketing manager Harry Leonardo in a press conference for the upcoming season.

MPL Philippines Season 13 will see eight matches per week across seven weeks (two matches every Friday, three matches during Saturdays and Sundays), deviating from the previous eight weeks that MPL Philippines had implemented during past seasons. Season 12 of the league saw a shortened regular season of just six weeks, with some days seeing four matches played a day. Shooting Gallery Studios in Makati City remain the venue for the league's regular season.

Moonton Games also announced a revamped playoffs bracket, the Gauntlet Format. While previous seasons gave teams that finished the regular season at ranks 1 and 3 the chance to decide who their opponents would be, in the Gauntlet Format, teams in the top three positions will advance directly to the Upper Bracket Semifinals; while the bottom three seeds will face each other in a step-ladder format for the final slot in the upper bracket semis (fifth and sixth seed will face each other, with the winner battling the fourth seed for the slot). 

The league will also change the point system. Match winners will get the full three points, regardless if they swept their opponents, 2-0, or won the series, 2-1. Losing matches will still give either 1 point (if lost by 1-2) or no points (if lost by 0-2).

The third season of the Mobile Legends Bang Bang Development League (MDL) Philippines will see its playoffs go offline for the very first time with the league introducing a new rule: the Global Ban Pick format. The rulet limits each team a use of a hero once per match-up. Once a hero has been played by a team, it becomes unavailable for the team for the remainder of the series. 

MDL Philippines Season 3 will begin online on March 12, while MPL Philippines will start on March 15. Tickets for the regular season will be available starting March 4.