Wearing headphones and anti-sweat finger sleeves, gamers from eight countries guided gun-toting avatars through a battle royale in the Saudi Arabian capital, as cheering onlookers watched the action on a big screen.
The PUBG Mobile tournament was part of Gamers8, a summer festival spotlighting Saudi Arabia’s emergence as a global e-sports dynamo — one that officials hope can compete with powerhouses such as China and South Korea.
Much like with Formula One and professional golf, the world’s biggest oil exporter has in the past few years leveraged its immense wealth to assert itself on the e-sports stage, hosting glitzy conferences and snapping up established tournament organizers.
Photo: AFP
These moves have attracted the kind of criticism Saudi Arabian officials have come to expect, with some e-sports leaders objecting to Riyadh’s human rights record.
Yet the lack of long-term financing for e-sports makes the industry especially eager to do business with Saudi Arabia, which helps explain why the backlash so far has been relatively muted, analysts say.
Saudi Arabian gamers are reveling in their country’s newfound status and the eye-watering prize pools it brings.
“In the past, there was no support,” said 22-year-old Faisal Ghafiri, who competed in the PUBG Mobile tournament, which featured US$3 million in prize money.
“Thank God, now is the best time for me to play e-sports and participate in tournaments,” he said, adding that what was once a hobby had transformed into a lucrative “job.”
Saudi Arabia’s interest in gaming and e-sports comes from the very top, with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman said to be an avid Call of Duty player.
The national e-sports federation was created in 2017, and the number of e-sports teams in the kingdom has since blossomed from two to more than 100.
Survey findings indicate 21 million people — nearly two-thirds of the national population — consider themselves gamers.
Last week, the prince released a national e-sports strategy that calls for the kingdom to create 39,000 e-sports-related jobs by 2030, while producing more than 30 games in domestic studios.
Gaming is also expected to be a major component of headline-grabbing development projects such as the Red Sea megacity NEOM, with its planned 170km-long twin skyscrapers known as The Line.
Yet NEOM is also where Saudi Arabia has encountered its biggest e-sports setback. Two years ago, Riot Games announced a partnership that would have made NEOM a sponsor of the European championship for the game League of Legends.
The outcry was immediate and intense, led by LGBTQ gamers who condemned Saudi Arabia’s prohibition of same-sex sexual acts, which can be a capital offense.
League of Legends is considered LGBTQ-friendly, having just last week named gay hip-hop star Lil Nas X as its honorary “president.”
Within 24 hours of its NEOM announcement, Riot Games backed out, and Danish tournament organizer BLAST terminated its deal with the megacity about two weeks later.
“Saudi Arabia’s reputation will always be a hindrance to the Western e-sports community, despite attempts to improve it,” said Jason Delestre of the University of Lille, who studies the geopolitics of e-sports.
Saudi Arabian officials are undeterred, and they have deep backing in the e-sports world.
“Gaming was always a bit more morally flexible, as they are mostly project-based and lack a sustainable business model,” said Tobias Scholz, an e-sports expert at the University of Siegen in Germany. “E-sports need the money compared to golf or others.”
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS