What Filipinos Are Tuning Into Besides Basketball
Basketball still owns the Philippine sports conversation by default. It has for decades. This year, though, four other scenes pulled their own crowds without any help from it.
F1 Doesn’t Even Race Here
Formula 1 does not have a single race on Philippine soil, and it still built a fanbase large enough to fill a dedicated venue. Monza Barcade in Pasig has become a gathering point for local F1 watchers, and beIN Sports extended its broadcasting rights across the Philippines and nine other Asian territories through 2030. The momentum traces back to Netflix’s Drive to Survive and to the rise of Filipino racers Marlon Stockinger and Bianca Bustamante, who pulled a domestic audience into a sport that, for most of its history, never had one here.
Alex Eala’s Week in Washington
On August 3, Alex Eala came back from a set down to beat top seed Jessica Pegula and win the Mubadala DC Open, becoming the first player from the Philippines to capture a WTA Tour-level singles title. The run included wins over Naomi Osaka and Elina Svitolina, and it pushed her into the top 20 of the world rankings for the first time in her career.
Volleyball Filled the Big Dome
The Premier Volleyball League used to draw fifty people to a college gym. Its finals now regularly fill arenas. The clearest marker of that shift came when 24,459 fans packed the Big Dome to watch Creamline clinch a title over Choco Mucho, setting a new Philippine volleyball attendance record and surpassing a UAAP finals mark that had stood since 2016. League organizers now regularly report finals crowds of 20,000 to 24,000.
Mobile Legends Runs Its Own Economy
MPL Philippines has claimed six of the last seven global championships in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, the most successful record of any regional league in the game’s history, and its January 2026 world final peaked at 5.68 million concurrent viewers. For its 2026 season, the league moved to Victoria Sports Tower, a larger dedicated venue, to handle the growing live audience.
