The Esports World Cup Foundation announced Monday the 40 esports organizations around the world that have been selected for its 2025 Club Partner Program. The program, which has a cap of $20M USD, will give partnered organizations up to $1M USD each to “expand their brand[s] and grow their global audience through innovative content and marketing campaigns leading up to and throughout the Esports World Cup 2025.
Or more succinctly, to promote the eight-week Esports World Cup competition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia through their social media and content creation channels, leading up to and during the competition.
The program has been expanded from 30 teams to 40 for 2025, and offers (as far as we know) the same incentives for this year, as detailed in our previous reporting on the 2024 program and this follow-up story.
Selected teams include 100 Thieves, All Gamers, Bilibili Gaming, Cloud 9, Edward Gaming, EVOS Esports, FaZe Clan Esports (owned by GameSquare) Fnatic, Furia Esports, G2 Esports, Gaimin Gladiators, Gen.G Esports, Gentle Mates, Heroic, JD Gaming, Karmine Corp, Leviatan, LOUD, Mouz, Movistar KOI (owned by OverActive Media) Natus Vincere (NAVI), NIP Group, Onic, Powr, Reject, S8UL, Sentinels, T1, Team BDS, Team Falcons, Team Liquid, Team RRQ, Team Secret, Team Spirit, Team Vitality, Twisted Minds, Virtus.Pro, Weibo Gaming, Wolves Esports, and Zeta Division.
Teams chosen from China were selected with the help of Tencent, the EWCF said in its announcement.
Teams that were in the program in 2024 that have either exited/or were excluded include Spacestation Gaming, Talon Esports, OG, Blacklist International, Guild Esports, NRG Esports, TSM, Tundra Esports, LGD Gaming.
Last year’s participants appeared to ignore basic disclosure laws when advertising the Esports World Cup on social media platforms in 2023—which The Esports Advocate detailed in our reporting at the time. It is unclear if rules on disclosures as required by law in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere have been baked into this new agreement with teams for EWC 2025.
The Esports World Cup is a multi-title, eight-week competition held on an annual basis during the summer (July to August), and is a replacement for the Saudi Esports Federation’s Gamers8. The event is managed by the Esports World Cup Foundation, a non-profit funded by (it claims) a sports 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.