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Having established the Esports World Cup (EWC) and seen
engagement metrics grow from 2024 to 2025, the Saudi-backed Esports Foundation
is wasting no time in taking the game to the next level.
On 23 August it announced the Esports Nations Cup (ENC), a
new multi-title tournament modelled on EWC and featuring national teams rather
than clubs. Nothing on this scale has been attempted in esports before – and
with good reason, since pride in playing for one’s country has no legacy in the
sports’ development. The foundation is confident it can change that.
“The Esports World Cup elevated the game with the greatest
players, the largest prize, the most ambitious esports event the world has ever
seen,” said Ralf Reichert, CEO, EWC Foundation at the launch in Riyadh. “And
we’re not done yet. The Nations Cup is the first ever nation versus nation
esports competition on a truly global scale.”
Planned to be held every two years beginning November 2026
and hosted first in Riyadh, the ENC would then rotate to other nations. It will
stage 15 competitions across all key genres and aims to attract more than 100
nations to qualify.
Beyond this outline details were sketchy and it’s clear
there are some considerable challenges to mount if it is to be pulled off.
“The challenge, of course, is how to build entertainment
products that capture national pride,” as Alexander Schudey, MD and partner at
Boston Consulting Group succinctly pointed out.
“The purpose of the foundation was to place esports on the
same pedestal as the biggest sports in the world,” explained Mohammed Alnimer,
CCO, Esports World Cup Foundation. “It’s also to make esports much more
sustainable. The EWC was the first step towards achieving that.
“There are 600 million esports fans around the world and
that’s already very significant. But there are more than 3 billion gamers
globally. That’s a gap we need to bridge. By leveraging national fandom and
national pride we can achieve an additional step to making it more mainstream.
My personal dream is to see the new Zinedine Zidane in France, the new Maradona
in Argentina, the new Michael Phelps in the US come from esports and become
national icons and international superstars.”
The road to Esports Nation’s Cup 2026
This sounds all very well in principal but there are
obstacles. ENC is starting from ground zero, including the process for setting
up the national teams and even how the competition format will work. Elite
players tend to be tied into long and lucrative contracts with their teams
making negotiations for the month of the ENC tricky. Club coaches may be
reticent to permit erstwhile competitors in games like League of Legends to
join forces at risk of sharing strategies and tactics. The practicalities of qualification
and player call-up is another knot to unwind. Who should be national head coach
for instance (in the UK each nation has their own esports federation, so would
they compete as individual nations or as part of a GB team?).
An official Olympics Esports tournament was slated to launch
this summer but was postponed until 2027 partly because these issues couldn’t
be ironed out.
Reichert was inconclusive: “Well, number one. We don’t know
yet, so we’ll figure this out. Number two, it’s super different from country.”
“We spent a lot of time thinking about this,” he added.
“It’s not like we just rolled the dice here to try a new system. But disclaimer
– all I’m going to say is there is a plan and the plan might change.”
To identify a national head coach or national team director
as well as help in selecting the best players from the national pool, the
foundation will need the support of games publishers. EA, Krafton, Tencent and
Ubisoft are onboard. They will shape core elements such as qualification
formats, national ranking systems and calendar alignment to ensure the ENC
reflects both the competitive integrity and the community identity of each
title.
“We will work with our game publishing partners to identify
who should be the local coach because publishers know their communities best,”
outlined Reichert. “They have all the data about the best players, they operate
in all of those countries, so we believe it’s a better way to have them clearly
involved.”
In esports it is the game publishers who play the role of
federations in running conventional sport. “They own every pitch across the
world and they can change them digitally with a line of code. Just think about
that – every football field in the world can be changed by one entity.
“We need to rethink how this field is structured. We’re
looking at it from a governance – almost a political organisational –
perspective and also from a player’s point of view. What is best for the
players? How do we find the best players? What is the most inclusive way to
have them qualify, compete, and win? I’m a strong believer that this will then
be supported by the organisations around the world.”
To prevent all the players entered into a national side for
a competition coming from one existing team, Reichert said there will be a
limit on numbers. “We want broader representation from a country than one
club.”
For solo games qualification for the national side could be
decided in a straightforward knockout tournament. Qualification for
multi-player games would be harder to judge and no details were provided on how
this would work.
There will be at least 32 country teams involved per game
with 15 games featured. With five players per team plus a team coach there
could be over 200 representatives per game and 2,000-3,000 athletes in total.
“We want maximum representation of different countries. We want an inclusive
system like an Olympics in which the whole world competes and watches,” he
said.
Sixteen so called ‘powerful nations’ like Korea and the US
will be automatically qualified for the ENC finals with the other half of
places up for grabs.
“We haven’t fully decided yet but we could include two wild
card entries so we can have countries who don’t normally have the chance to
participate at the highest level in international tournaments.”
It’s also worth noting that the ENC will be differentiated
from the Olympic Esports Games 2027 event (also in Riyadh) partly because it
will concentrate on core esports titles (Counterstrike, Rainbow 6) while the
Olympic event will feature more virtual sports that mirror existing Olympic
events such as Virtual Taekwondo (VTKD), cycling game Zwift, Virtual
Regatta and Tennis Clash.
Pete Radovich, VP of production & senior creative
director, CBS Sports, suggested the concept was “gambling on national pride.”
Reichert responded: “Esports developed very differently
because there were not physical borders limiting who you played with and
against. Esports grew naturally without a top-down structure. It was very
un-regional. You are a fan of the tribe you like, not the one that comes from
your region.
“But national pride matters and is important. We are a
strong believer that team USA, team Saudi or Team UK will have more fans than
any individual domestic esports club does right now. A United States national
team will automatically have 350 million members.”
The foundation devoted a whole afternoon at the New Global
Sports Conference, hedl from 23-24 August in Riyadh, to debating the subject of
national pride in sports, bringing in luminaries like Alex Morgan, double FIFA
Women’s World Cup winner, and LA28 chair Casey Wasserman.
“Storytelling that goes deeper into an athlete’s culture and
background to build interest is one thing that esports has done not even
remotely as well as traditional sports”
Time and time again the Olympics was held up as the gold
standard, not just for uniting athletes to compete for their country but for
telling the human journey of athletes that amplifies views around the games. If
esports is to gain the mass audience that the foundation aspires to it knows it
must do better at storytelling by leaning into how sports broadcasters package
and present.
“The EWC this year was a huge step in showcasing esports
stars, connecting gamers with some traditional sports stars, upping the level
of how we tell stories and increasing how many stories we tell,” said Reichert.
“We had nearly 100 media partners which is unheard of for an esports
tournament.”
More than 7,000 hours of content distributed in more than 35
languages was produced across the seven weeks of EWC, a stat that several
executives and Saudi ministers proudly said was “second only to the Paris
Olympics in any sport”.
“Storytelling that goes deeper into an athlete’s culture and
background to build interest is one thing that esports has done not even
remotely as well as traditional sports,” Reichert acknowledged. “Yet the
opportunity is massive. Esports stars are digital first. They are only one
click away from their fans but in terms of an esports player becoming a global
icon then traditional sports does an infinitely better job. Storytelling is
absolutely something we’re looking to build up.”
Staging more competitions is better, he insisted, “because
we increase the potential to tell an amazing story. That’s why each esport has
a fairly complex and sophisticated production ecosystem. One of the reasons why
we’re launching the ENC is to amplify player stories, just like athletes that
most people never heard of become overnight stars that you care about during an
Olympics.
“To tell these stories, players need more opportunity. They
need more great stages. They need more moments where they can become heroes.”
The team at EWC25 that caught Radovich’s attention were The
Mongolz, a Counterstrike 2 team from Mongolia. “When they competed there were
tens of thousands of fans at 3am back in Mongolia watching an esports event and
cheering on their team. That demonstrated to me that EWC is proof of concept
for creating a healthy esports ecosystem at national level.”
Reichert said: “This only happened because this tournament
allowed people from all over the world to qualify. Most other global sports
events want to see Team USA play Team China or Japan versus Germany and this
comes from a very elitist point of view. It is not inclusive.”
He argued: “The Olympics are one of the few big events where this solidarity
happens in the most positive way. The Mongolz is what happens if you have a
thriving global ecosystem for a sport where there’s opportunities to come to
the biggest stage.”
Even with money seemingly no obstacle and with all the
sincere commitment from Saudi keyholders, the Esports Nations Cup won’t be
conjured without the whole esports ecosystem together. That means publishers,
clubs, players, media and other commercial, legal and policy making partners.
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