Taken down for 4 days, then back under a new package name: a 210k-follower Myanmar football page treats apps as boxes you can throw away at will

LIVE ME MM launched on Google Play in Oct 17, reached 20k installs in 23.5 days, and in Nov 2 hit #3 in Singapore's Sports free chart and #8 in Thailand. It looks like a new product breaking out, but it isn't: its predecessor was pulled from Google Play 4 days earlier. The new package is the same group, same users, with a new package name. What's actually valuable isn't in the app; it's a 210k-follower Burmese-language Facebook page. This piece covers how it came back, why the charts amplified it, and what you can take from it.

Taken down Oct 13, back Oct 17

On Jun 2026 4, a week before the World Cup kicked off, an app called LIVE ME MM went live on Google Play under the package com.livememyanmar2026.mmfootball. Its store description was blunt: "Watch Myanmar football live… stream directly in the app," followed by a disclaimer: "This app hosts no video; all live streams come from third parties." By autumn it had gathered roughly 107k installs, 313 ratings, and a 4.63-star average (AppGoblin estimate).

In Oct 13, the AppBrain page turned into a single line: "LIVE ME MM is no longer on Google Play. It was removed in Oct 2026 13."

4 days later, in Oct 17, the same developer, Android Tech Myanmar, published a new package: still named LIVE ME MM, but the year in the package name changed from 2026 to 2027: com.livememm2027.mmfootball. The description was down to two sentences: "Myanmar football news and schedules… read the latest football news in Burmese, check daily fixtures and results." The word "live" was gone.

On the new package's day 5 (10-22), it passed 10k installs (AppInsider). At that point it had zero ratings in the store. A new package with no ratings and no history can't reach ten thousand people in 5 days through store search alone. Those ten thousand were called back from somewhere else.

Where those 210k people were

On Facebook. The page is called "Live Me Broadcast", carries a verified badge, lists an address in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and shows 11-06 with 212k followers and 45k people talking about it. The bio is one English line: "Latest football news, in-depth match analysis and global sports coverage. Join our fan community."

The page predates the app by a long way. On Nov 2025 30 at 9:25 a.m., it posted a three-line message opening with the Burmese phrase "ပွဲစပါပီ" (the match has started):

TV: Channel 7, MRTV, Reader Channel YouTube: Pyone Play Sport Website: LIVE ME

It was telling fans where to watch that night's match, and that post drew about 1,400 interactions. On ordinary days it posts things like tonight's national-team match worth watching, kickoff reminders, and goal highlight clips. It has also shared login details for the Android TV version "LIVE ME TV", advertised as "7 days free." A large share of Myanmar internet use happens on Facebook, so a page that tells you every day where to watch the ball becomes the entry point for that audience.

So what probably happened during those takedown days is this: the page and the old app's notifications told people "new version is up, tap here to install," and the old users moved over. Inference. We haven't seen the original posts, so whether it was a Facebook post, a pop-up in the old app, or a push notification is unconfirmed.

The app itself is thin. The official site livememyanmar.com is a Blogger template blog, with one or two English football news posts a day under the byline "Aiden Cole", and a "Live Player" page where you enter a match ID to load a stream. The ability to watch matches lives on the web layer and is not written into the store description. We have not installed the new package to verify whether live streaming still works in it (unverified). There is only one source of money: ads. The old package used AdMob; the new one is labeled as containing ads with no in-app purchases. AppGoblin estimates the old package made less than $10k a month in ad revenue.

Why it ranked #3 in Singapore

In Nov 2, it jumped in Singapore's Sports Top Free chart from #31 to #3, in Thailand from #19 to #8, and in Malaysia from #70 to #14, and for the first time charted in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany. The day before (11-01) it gained 4,365 more installs in one day. We did not find the cause; it may have been a homepage push, or a particular match (unknown). By 11-06 it had fallen back to #8 in Singapore, #11 in Thailand, #19 in Malaysia and #91 in Japan.

These countries share one trait: lots of Burmese people. Hundreds of thousands of Burmese workers are in Thailand, and there are large numbers of Burmese workers and students in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. Also, Myanmar has restricted VPNs since 2024, so many people's store accounts were probably already set to foreign regions (inferred). The Sports Top Free charts in these regions have a low bar: a few hundred to a thousand-plus installs a day can get you into the top 10. For a small app serving the Burmese diaspora, it can rank above FotMob and Sofascore on the Singapore chart. A chart position means "concentrated among a small group of people in this country", not "it became popular in Singapore".

We have no direct data on the Myanmar chart; a third-party source shows it at #2 in Myanmar's Sports Top Free, behind only FotMob. We have not verified this.

Who it's competing with

The Burmese-language football app space is crowded, but every player is small:

None of them is a brand. They all play the same game: build a shell that shows matches, run ads, and when it gets pulled, republish under a new package. The only difference between LIVE ME MM and the rest is that homepage. When the others get pulled or stop updating, users scatter; when this one got pulled, its homepage brought users back within 4 days. There is no discussion of it on TikTok, X or in the media, and we have seen no evidence of paid acquisition.

If it were you

One-line verdict: C. It teaches a hard lesson: the battleground is social media, and the app is just a container. But the product itself isn't worth copying. It grew because of a 210k-follower homepage you don't have, and a gray-area live source that could be pulled again at any time.

Who it suits: People already running a Facebook page or Telegram channel with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of followers in a minority language around a high-frequency topic (football, lottery results, religious calendars, local news). For you, an app is just one more ad slot and push channel.

Who it doesn't suit: Indie developers with no community who expect the stores to bring them users: if you ship a Burmese-language football app, you're one of a dozen shells nobody remembers. Anyone unwilling to touch copyright: "live streaming" is where Google Play takes down the most, and the old package lasted only 4 months. Anyone hoping to make real money: ad CPMs are low, and at this scale it earns a few thousand dollars a month.

How to do it (if you want the method): Reverse the order: build the audience first, then the app. Pick a minority language × a need used several times a week × a gap where legitimate local options are missing or too expensive. Post short native-language messages daily on Facebook or Telegram ("what time tonight, where to watch, who scored") until you have tens of thousands of followers. Then launch an app for schedules, scores and news, and make "where to watch" link to licensed broadcast channels rather than streaming it yourself. Design the app to be replaceable: users stay on your homepage and push notifications, so if the package gets banned, you swap it out and keep the users.

How to acquire users: The homepage is itself the acquisition channel, and match days are the peak. Category charts in countries with concentrated diaspora populations (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East) have low thresholds: a diaspora app can chart on a few hundred daily installs, and once charted it picks up some organic traffic.

When to get in: There is no window. Football runs every season, and an audience takes a year or two to build. The 2026 World Cup wave has already passed.

Signs you're reading it wrong: (1) The new package is still around 3 months later and its installs surpass the old package's 100k: that would mean the re-listing route is more stable than it looks, and worth re-examining. (2) Someone builds the same thing with licensed broadcast rights, or a clean "schedule + where to watch" approach, and reaches six figures in a minority diaspora market: that would be the version worth following. (3) Conversely, if the new package is pulled again before year-end and the homepage posts another "new version" notice, that confirms this assessment.

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Data and sources: Google Play store pages, public install records and regional Sports Top Free charts (10-29 to 11-06); the App Store app of the same name (id6786054924); archived old-package data and install estimates from AppGoblin, takedown records from AppBrain, the 10k-install milestone from AppInsider; the Facebook page "Live Me Broadcast" and its 2025-11-30 posts (11-06 opened); the official site livememyanmar.com; searches on TikTok and X (11-06, no relevant results). Where we write "estimated", "inferred" or "unverified", those are estimates and inferences.