PUBG Mobile Esports announced Wednesday that Saudi Arabian government-owned city project Qiddiya will serve as a sponsor.
Financial terms of the deal between the division owned by South Korean publisher Krafton and Qiddiya Gaming were not disclosed, but marketing efforts will begin this weekend during the PUBG Mobile Global Championship (PMGC 24), which runs from Dec. 6 – 8, at the ExCel Centre in London.
While the exact details and nature of this partnership were also not disclosed, we suspect that the event will provide Qiddiya Gaming with exposure to PUBG Mobile esports fans with signage in the arena during the event, branding on social media and video content on various platforms, and during live broadcast on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube across international markets. Qiddiya will also work with the game makers on a range of in-game content through the game’s World of Wonder game mode (a creator club-like mode that lets players create and customize game modes, maps, and other content that can be shared with the community).
Qiddiya Gaming’s marketing strategy has been interesting in the last several months; most recently it sponsored two of the most prominent World of Warcraft guilds—Method and Echo—during their “race to World’s First” in beating the biggest bosses and challenges in the new World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within.
PUBG Mobile is jointly developed by PUBG Studios and Lightspeed (formerly known as Lightspeed & Quantum Studio), which is owned by Tencent and is operated under the Chinese conglomerate’s Level Infinite publishing brand. In March, Level Infinite signed a broad, multi-year deal with the Esports World Cup Foundation (another Saudi Arabian government-funded operation) for both PUBG Mobile and its popular mobile MOBA game Honor of Kings.
Qiddiya Gaming/Qiddiya City are both part of the mega city project backed by the Saudi Arabian government as part of its plan to transform the country’s economy and slowly move away from generating revenue from just oil. The goal of this project is to bring prominent games publishers and developers, and esports organizations and tangentially related companies to the region, creating a base of operations from which they can conduct business, grow the sector locally, and help make the country the epicenter of these entertainment offerings.
On a semi-related note, PUBG Mobile launched a partnership with U.S.-based luggage company American Tourister, which will include in-game products as well as ROLLIO product line merchandise launching today in South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Egypt. There are also plans involving esports, according to an announcement, but those are to “be announced” at a later time.
Also slightly related, streaming analytics services company Esports Charts was announced as the official viewership data supplier for the PUBG Global Championship 2024 through a deal with PUBG Esports on Monday.
Saudi Arabian government funded projects such as Qiddiya, NEOM, and the Esports World Cup often face opposition from human rights groups and activists around the world because the Saudi Arabian government is regularly criticized for “sports washing,” or using sports and other forms of entertainment such as gaming and esports as a cover for its record on human rights, women’s rights, and military actions in Yemen, among other things. These criticisms have been highlighted by international watchdog groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
But it’s de facto ruler, His Royal Highness Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (or HRH Crown Prince MBS, as he is commonly referred to) is famous for noting in a 2023 Fox News Interview with Brett Baier:
“If sports washing [is] going to increase my GDP by way of one percent, then I will continue doing sport washing. I don’t care. One percent growth of GDP from sport and I’m aiming for another one-and-a-half percent – call it whatever you want, we’re going to get that one-and-a-half percent.”