While you might still be reeling in the defeat of Croatia in the soccer World Cup, this evening another World Cup kicks off that’s worthy of your attention as an iOS game: The Arena of Valor (Free) World Cup to be specific. At 6:00 PM today on the AoV Twitch channel the group stage matches will begin, which should provide an excellent taste of what’s to come in future pro-level AoV games. To coincide with the championship, Tencent is kicking off a new in-game event where players unlock relevant prizes surrounding the AoV World Cup.

This in-game event will run between July 22nd and July 29th, and on Sunday, July 29th (the last day of event) something called “swag sunday" is happening where just by logging in and playing a match you’ll get enough tokens to unlock any premium hero, which is significantly more generous than any of the other Arena of Valor in-game events have been so far. Between this event and the Summoners War World Arena Championship, the mobile esports scene is certainly heating up.

I’m most curious if this will be the year that North American mobile gamers start to get super interested in these sorts of things, as in other regions, AoV puts on events which rival those hosted by Riot for League of Legends. I guess we’ll see how it all pans out.