Esports World Cup begins in Saudi Arabia with record-breaking £51.5 million prize pot
The Esports World Cup (EWC), taking place in Boulevard City, Riyadh, will see 2,000 players and 200 clubs take part in 25 tournaments until August 24. More than 2.6 million people are expected to attend the event.
Hosted in a specially built village with arenas seating up to 2,000 people, the tournament features 24 games, including Call Of Duty, League Of Legends and chess.
The sport constitutes part of the Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to invest in different areas to diversify the kingdom's GDP and create 39,000 jobs.
The esports industry has been steadily growing in popularity and Saudi Arabia has faced criticism and accusations of 'sportswashing' – investing in sporting events like EWC to distract from alleged wrongdoing and present a favourable image.
Multiple stakeholders resigned from the Esports Awards panel after it announced a three-year partnership with EWC in 2024.
But Mike McCabe, the chief operating officer of the Esports World Cup Foundation that runs the competition, said the investment from the kingdom reflected the interests of the Saudi population – with nearly 70% identifying as gamers.
He said: 'Sportswashing really implies that we're trying to change the reputation through sport. It's just not true. We're meeting the dreams and the ambitions of the people who live here. The majority of people who live in this country love games and love sports, and so why not give them the biggest show on Earth?
'When it comes to individual choices, we encourage people to come and visit – come and see for yourself.'
Mr McCabe said that EWC was making strides to appeal to a wider, non-gamer audience – with Cristiano Ronaldo as the cup's ambassador and rapper Post Malone performing at the sold–out opening ceremony on Thursday.
Mr McCabe has been involved in esports since the mid-2000s and said the sport, which started in South Korea, has grown gradually.
He said: 'If you look at football or athletics, they've grown over hundreds of years.
'Esports is very new in comparison, and it's growing in a different way.
'The games that people play are the ideas of publishers, which is different from traditional sports, where it's an international or a sporting federation who ultimately go and maintain that.
'What drew me to this project was because the EWC has the support and the ability to bring multiple games together into one amazing festival that can extend for many weeks and bring fans on multiple journeys during the course of that – it's really unique in the industry.'
At least 54 UK nationals and two British teams, called Fnatic and Wolves, will be competing over the eight weeks, although that number could rise as there are qualifying events ongoing.
The club championship is a cross-game format that pits international clubs against one another for the largest prize pool in the sport's history.
Each win grants clubs points and the top-ranked one at the end is crowned the world cup champion.
Ahead of the tournament, the EWC Festival for fans has taken place – with community esports tournaments, anime cafes, cosplay and retro arcades, something Mr McCabe called 'a celebration of gaming '.
Fans across the world will be able to tune in on major streaming platforms, including Twitch and YouTube, and by watching live feeds from gaming influencers.
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The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Magnus Carlsen shows how Saudi Arabia gobbles up global sports stars
In February, Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen extended his reign over the online chess world when he defeated longtime rival Hikaru Nakamura in back-to-back matches to retain his Chessable Masters title. The tournament kicked off this year's Champions Tour, a circuit Carlsen has dominated since its launch in 2020. But now, the stakes were even higher: the tour doubles as a qualifier for the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the winner of the chess section of the tournament will take home $250,000 for three days' work. The chess tournament is part of the broader Esports World Cup, a seven-week spectacle that began on 8 July and stretches into late August. This is only the second edition of the World Cup but with more than 2,000 participating players, 25 different events and a record-breaking $70m total prize pool, it is the largest and most ambitious event of its kind. Chess is set to make its debut at this year's edition. The sport has captured a massive new audience in recent years, fueled by charismatic YouTube personalities, platforms like Netflix hit drama The Queen's Gambit, and a pandemic that imposed agonizing periods of isolation. Amid this online resurgence, the centuries-old game of intellectual prowess has remerged as a digital-era sensation. Keen to capitalize on chess's popularity, Saudi Arabia enlisted Carlsen as the global ambassador for the Esports World Cup. Along with Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlsen is expected to lend his name and fanbase to the event in the hopes of luring new fans to the Saudi-bankrolled tournament. That public relations campaign seemingly kicked off on the opening day of the world cup, when Carlsen issued a friendly challenge to play a chess match against Ronaldo. 'I personally don't know what Ronaldo has done on the chess chessboard, but what he has done in his life, in his football career, is extremely impressive. So, I would certainly be very honored if I could, you know, meet him or play chess while I'm here,' Carlsen told reporters. Carlsen's decision to peddle Saudi PR came as a bit of a surprise given his limited engagement with the kingdom in the past. He won the 2017 world championships (in rapid and blitz chess) in Riyadh, a tournament that was boycotted by his top female counterpart from Ukraine because of Saudi Arabia's discrimination against women. The closest Carlsen came to criticizing the kingdom at the time was over the refusal to grant visas to Israeli players. 'I hope that if [the rapid and blitz championships] are arranged here several times, that everyone can participate,' Carlsen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. Carlsen is not known for taking strong stances on human rights issues. 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It is possible, if not likely, that a similar clause is included in Saudi's agreements with each of its ambassadors, including Carlsen. It is a strategy that allows the kingdom to reap the promotional benefits of being associated with some of the world's most beloved athletes while maintaining full control of the narrative being presented, under penalty of litigation. Nevertheless, Carlsen's willingness to cooperate with Saudi Arabia is not surprising. The kingdom's vast investments in sports and entertainment, backed by its seemingly limitless resources, have helped normalize its image, making it more palpable to previously hesitant audiences. Even Saudi Arabia's increasing human rights abuses, from quashing dissent to record-breaking execution rates, have had little impact on those eager to participate in the Saudi gold rush. This including the burgeoning world of esports and gaming. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Over the past few years, Savvy Games Group, a company owned by the PIF, has acquired a large portion of the global esports industry. Aside from holding shares in Nintendo, Electronic Arts, and Activision, Savvy acquired mobile game developer Copley for $4.9bn, which later went on to acquire Niantic, the games business behind Pokémon Go. Saudi Arabia is also building Qiddiya City, a dedicated district that will house regional esports headquarters, clubs, and arenas. It is an exceptional level of investment that makes Saudi impossible to ignore as the major player in the global esports market. And though it would be easy to write off the kingdom's efforts as sportswashing – a term that describes efforts to use sports as a distraction from ongoing human rights abuses – I would argue that the term offers an overly simplistic understanding of the kingdom's aims. It is a multi-pronged strategy that is part foreign policy, part domestic socialization project, a strategy of pacifying the public with entertainment and material goods. With more than two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's population under the age of 35 – a significant number of whom are gamers – the kingdom's heavy investment in gaming has only enhanced bin Salman's popularity among young Saudis, which further stabilizes his regime. As for Carlsen, his role as an ambassador for one of Saudi's spectacles underscores the kingdom's ability to lure almost any athlete across sports and entertainment. 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The Guardian
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- The Guardian
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