Saudi Arabian government-funded organization the Esports World Cup Foundation announced Tuesday that it has expanded its Esports World Cup Foundation Partner Program to include a total of 40 clubs, and will further support this ecosystem with $20M USD in funding. For 2024, 28 organizations were given up to $600K USD each—dependant on hitting certain milestones and how many esports titles they were capable of competing in. According to what sources told The Esports Advocate in February (with additional reporting in July), that figure totaled around $16.8M allocated by the Esports World Cup Foundation for this initiative.
For the 2025 EWCF Club Partner Program (which began accepting applications on Tuesday), 40 teams will be accepted (up from 30 this year), with $20M being put aside—up from the $16.8M figure we mentioned earlier. Applications for the 2025 program will be open until Jan. 10, 2025.
Some “clubs” (esports organizations that are willing to field multiple rosters in games being official titles at the 2025 Esports World Cup) such as Team Liquid and T1 (who were quoted in the announcement) have already been accepted (Esports World Cup Foundation noted in its announcement that “up to eight top Clubs from the EWC 2024 Championship ranking” received a direct invite), though we do not know if teams that leaned hard into participating in this year’s event got a free pass or have to go through the process like everyone else.
Like the 2024 initiative, those clubs accepted into the annual EWCF Club Partner Program will receive “six-figure funding to grow their organization’s brand in 2025 and activate their fanbase leading up to and during the Esports World Cup 2025.” Criteria for being accepted includes having an “established track record of elite competitive performance across multiple games,” a “substantial social media presence,” and the ability to “engage and grow a global fanbase.” Also, like this year’s program, bonuses and incentives will be tied into promoting the event on social media and other platforms.
Teams did engage in this sort of activity vigorously prior to and during the eight week competition this summer, but many likely broke local and international law because they did not disclose that they were partners with the Esports World Cup Foundation and were being compensated for gleefully promoting it on their official social media channels. TEA extensively reported on these activities in May.
It will also be interesting to see if there are any new guidelines in place for partnered organizations that require they keep on signed rosters for a set amount of time; following the conclusion of the Esports World Cup this summer, many organizations immediately dumped rosters/players they had signed, particularly those rosters/players that didn’t manage to compete at the highest levels during the competitions. Those inside the Esports World Cup TEA spoke to privately expressed disdain and disappointment at this behavior at the time.
The Esports World Cup is a multi-title, eight-week competition held on an annual basis during the summer, and is a replacement for the Saudi Esports Federation’s Gamers8, which featured an overall prize pool of more than $45M in 2023. The event is managed by the Esports World Cup Foundation, a non-profit funded (it claims) by a sporting grant from the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. The Esports World Cup is operated by ESL FACEIT Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi government owned gaming and esports company Savvy Games Group—EFG is home to a number of tournament organizers and broadcast production companies including DreamHack, ESL, FACEIT, and Esports Engine.
Projects backed or owned by the Saudi Arabian government such as Esports World Cup have been criticized for helping the government engage in “sports washing,” or using various forms of sport and entertainment to cover up its record on human rights, women’s rights, LGTBQ+ rights, military actions in Yemen, and more. These and other criticisms have been highlighted by international watchdog groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.