#96 🎮 Esports World Cup: more investment in gaming!

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Recap of a recent visit to Riyadh for the New Global Sports Conference, held alongside the Esports World Cup.

As always, have a great weekend!

Riyadh Roundup: Esports World Cup & NGSC

As soon as the the invite to attend the New Global Sport Conference in Riyadh came in, our curiosity was piqued. For a couple of reasons:

1. Never been to Riyadh before

2. Given the amount of money the PIF and other Saudi Arabian orgs have been splashing in sports recently, it was about time #1 was changed.

The conference was held alongside the first edition of the Esports World Cup, where the total prize pool was an eye-watering $60 million (!!!) and apparently drew more than 500 million viewers.

A rebranding and expansion of Gamers8, the tournament featured competitions in 22 different games, including Dota 2, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, Apex Legends, and others.

Taking an Olympics like approach, bringing multiple games to one tournament at this scale is an interesting format. Especially since the Saudis will host the first ever, actual Olympic Esports Games in 2025.

Let’s see how this pans out. For now, our focus was the conference. The title of which suggests that it was not just about Esports. And the content reflected this.

Ralf Reichert, CEO of Esports World Cup Foundation, is the brains behind this operation. A role he has taken on after the $1.5 billion Saudi backed merger between his previous company ESL Gaming and Faceit in 2022. The event certainly felt like a continuation of KSA’s commitment to establishing itself as a Gaming Hub. A line that was mentioned often at the event.

Here are our major takeaways from the 2 days.

1. Tough to make money in Esports, but the Saudis are trying: It has been clear for a while that Esports teams find it very difficult to make money, a fact that was further confirmed in conversations with multiple team principals. Backed by significant Saudi investment, new formats like the EWC and Esports Olympics are an attempt to attract viewers / fans and build a viable commercial model for the long term. Whether the macro-structural issues within this space allow this remains to be seen.

2. Sports & Gaming a big part of the new city Qiddiya: Will be honest to say that I didn’t know much about this Giga-project, which was talked about a lot at the conference. Ground has already been broken on this new city 40 mins from Riyadh, which will have a potential F1 track, a 40,000 seater Football stadium ready to host games for World Cup 2034 & the world's first gaming and esports neighborhood, where “fantasy meets life and gaming takes on another level”. More details on the last point in an upcoming podcast episode.

3. Investment is available, only as long it makes sense for them: While the numbers are big and the scale of projects almost hard to fathom, from up close somehow it doesn’t seem all that crazy. There is a plan here and clearly the Saudi orgs involved are careful who they work with. The investments made have to make sense for the local economy, how that is achieved is the multi-billion dollar question.

At the conference we were lucky to have a bunch of in-person interviews for our podcast, to be released over the next couple of weeks:

• Ralf Reichert: CEO of Esports World Cup Foundation (former CEO of ESL)

• Mike Milanov: Qiddiya Gaming Chairman (former Team Liquid)

• MJ Acosta-Ruiz: On-air host for NFL Media, Sideline Reporter for ESPN Deportes’ Monday Night Football and Anchor of ESPN’s SportsCenter in Los Angeles

• Andrew Chen: General Partner, a16z

Tune in for some really interesting conversations around what is happening in this part of the world around Sports & Gaming.

Irrespective of one’s political views, their efforts are impossible to ignore and it is inarguable that the Saudis are truly disrupting the sports world. Look at golf, tennis, boxing, football, and now esports.

No one can accuse them of lacking of ambition. We will certainly be keeping a close eye on how things develop.

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🤝 Fastbreak.ai, a sports technology company specializing in AI-driven scheduling and sports logistics, announced the acquisition of Optimal Planning Solutions, for an undisclosed amount. 

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