The Long Road Ahead for the Esports World Cup
The Saudi government has done a good job of gaining international acceptance amongst stakeholders and fans despite concerns about human rights, but now it needs to get the world to pay attention for e
Today is the opening day of the Esports World Cup, the eight week, multi-title esports competition being hosted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from July 2 - Aug. 25, funded by a grant from the Saudi Arabian government, similar to a sports grant one might get for hosting a major sporting event like the Olympics or the World Cup. Part of its Vision 2023 plan, the Saudi government hopes to create new revenue streams such as entertainment and tourism, and be less dependent on oil—basically the de facto source of the kingdom’s wealth.
The Saudi government has high hopes for this event, though in terms of an ROI on investment, it will be a considerable loss in the first year, as it pays out stakeholders for the rights to host events using their games such as Riot Games (League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics), Activision Blizzard/Microsoft (Overwatch, Call of Duty, Warzone, StarCraft II), Tencent (Honor of Kings), Krafton (PUBG Mobile), Moonton/ByteDance (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang), Garena/SEA LTD (Free Fire), Valve (Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2) Electronic Arts (Apex Legends, EA Sports FC 24), Ubisoft (Rainbow Six Siege), Capcom (Street Fighter), Epic Games (Fortnite, Rocket League), and NAMCO BANDAI (TEKKEN).
In order to get teams to participate it has had some top esports circuits make major stops at the event: it has used its wholly owned tournament organizer ESL FACEIT Group to feed some circuits into the Esports World Cup such as the Riyadh Masters and Overwatch; worked closely with Moonton to host the Mobile Legends Mid-Season Cup, and cooperated with BLAST to bring Epic Games and Rainbow Six into the mix.
But to get the top esports teams in the world to accept it, the Esports World Cup Foundation launched the Esports World Cup Club Support Program, which offers financial incentives to expand into new esports (that are part of the eight week competition) and advertise the event.
The money they have invested in this event is pretty staggering (an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars), but it is just phase one in a multi-year plan to make Riyadh and Saudi Arabia a tourist destination for young people that love gaming, gaming culture, and competitions. It’s the Olympics for the 14-34 year old demo, who grew up playing Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and Counter-Strike.
Cultural, social, and political concerns aside, what will the Saudi government need to see from this event to consider it a success in its first year?
I believe step one has been achieved: convince the international esports community that this is the biggest event in the history of esports, and overlook its social and cultural warts. The advertising campaign over the first half of this year has been a resounding success by anyone’s metric; we have moved from public shaming of stakeholders and teams who wanted to do deals with mega-city projects like NEOM (read about that here) in the past, to at least passive acceptance when a team, game maker, player, or talent says they are participating this year. If you need an indication of this, simply look on Twitter and LinkedIn and see as the most popular esports organizations in the world gleefully promote their participation in events taking place in Riyadh.
Add to this media outlets taking money for sponsorships, partnerships, paid travel and accommodations to events, etc., (Rolling Stone, GamesBeat, Digiday, Esports Insider, etc.) from Saudi-owned entities and then writing about them in a mostly positive light, and you have the perfect formula for changing the hearts and minds of the masses in the community. Naturally, FOMO is a part of it all as well—if you convince the masses that this is the biggest event of the year, then it is.
The second part of the plan was to get the most prominent esports organizations and popular competitive games to be a part of the eight-week competition. By any metric, the Esports World Cup Foundation has succeeded beyond expectations through sheer force of will and suitcases full of cash—lots and lots of cash. The only failure this year was in bringing Valorant onto its international stage, but we suspect it will be there with bells on next year.
The third part of the plan will be playing out over the course of the next eight weeks. You can spend all the money in the universe but if you can’t get people to come to Riyadh to watch the event or tune in online, then it is going to be viewed as a failure. Last year’s event had its high and low points in terms of viewership (Counter-Strike 2 had decent enough viewership at Gamers8 2023 as did Dota 2 during the Riyadh Masters) but if this is the biggest esports event in the history of forever they are going to need the biggest viewership numbers in history—or at least numbers that are in line with international events such as Worlds or The International. With big names like League of Legends and Call of Duty (the latter of which is HRH Prince MBS’ favorite game) on the marquee this year it’s very possible that the Esports World Cup changes history.
This is the stand and deliver moment for the Saudis, and despite my coverage (which I have been told by insiders has been mostly fair and even-handed), I hope they find success, as the good people of Saudi Arabia and MENA deserve to have a thriving esports ecosystem just like everyone else in the world.
I would be negligent in not mentioning criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, but I am not going to regurgitate long-standing complaints about women's rights, its treatment of political prisoners, or how it treats members of the media; better people than I monitor these things,such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.