On Monday local time, Saudi Arabia announced that they will host an annual "Esports World Cup" that will include the world's most popular games and have the largest prize pool in the history of esports. The "Esports World Cup" will be held every year in the Saudi city of Riyadh. Starting in the summer of 2024, there will be mainstream esports game championships for "all game types".
The "E-Sports World Cup" will replace Gamers8, which this year held multiple events including "DOTA2", "Fortnite", "StarCraft 2", "FIFA23" and "CS:GO", and provided high bonuses.
Sports, esports and gaming have become part of the Saudi Crown Prince’s transformation plan, Vision 2030, in which the Saudi government will invest tens of billions of dollars to diversify the Saudi economy and reduce its dependence on oil.
Savvy Games Group, a company under the Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF, said last year that they would invest US$37.8 billion as start-up capital to build Saudi Arabia into a global gaming center.
Under this plan, Saudi Arabia aims to establish 250 local game companies, create 39,000 jobs, and increase the contribution of games to Saudi GDP to 50 billion riyals by 2030.