Over the summer of 2026, the Esports Foundation, rebranded from the Esports World Cup Foundation earlier in the year, moved its flagship tournament to the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. The switch was announced in May because of the regional tensions in the Middle East, giving organisers roughly eight weeks to relocate an event built to host more than 2,000 players from over 100 countries.
The 2026 edition carried a $75 million prize pool across 25 events in 24 esports disciplines, with 40 club partners. More than 150,000 tickets had been sold by early August, and cumulative viewership was reported at roughly 850 million across some 160 countries. French President Emmanuel Macron personally backed the bid, and its closing ceremony was attended by both Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, along with guests including Cristiano Ronaldo and FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
The tournament was built on Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 ambitions, funded by the Public Investment Fund, with its board chaired by the Crown Prince.
Gulf Insider’s Charlie Cooksey sat down in Paris with Mohamed Al-Nimer, Chief Commercial Officer of the Esports Foundation, to discuss the move, sponsorship strategy, and Riyadh’s future as host.
The EWC left Riyadh for the first time. For a GCC business audience, what does taking the region’s flagship esports event global achieve for Saudi Arabia? Is Paris an export of the brand, or the start of something permanent?
Paris is an exception rather than a rule. This happened because, as we know, the regional situation was not suitable for us to host 2,000 players from more than 100 countries, so we decided to hold the event in a different city.
Paris was the obvious choice for us. First, the French government was extremely supportive of hosting the Esports World Cup. It was announced by President Emmanuel Macron himself, who helped us enormously. We had an inter-ministerial team assist with everything related to visas and all the logistics that come with hosting an event of this scale.
For GCC businesses, I think this is, first of all, an amazing success story. This is a product that was born in Saudi Arabia and has always been broadcast to the whole world, but has never before happened outside the Kingdom, outside Riyadh. It shows the flexibility that people in the Middle East, in the GCC, and specifically in Saudi Arabia, have: the ability to change the location of one of the biggest sporting events in the world, by far the biggest esports event in the world, in a matter of a month and a half. Not many organisations, and not many sports, could achieve that.
We’re very proud of that, and proud to say that this is an event that started in Riyadh, built largely by talent from the region who made this happen. We do have international talent too, but none of this would have been possible without the support of all our stakeholders: our employees and everyone else working around the Foundation.
For a lot of our sponsors, it’s also been an incredible experience. We still have the likes of STC, Qiddiya, and companies like Al Baik sponsoring the Esports World Cup, even though it’s taking place in Paris rather than Riyadh. What that gives them is access to new audiences, and the opportunity to expand their business beyond their core GCC region.
Before Paris, were you looking at other countries, or was your heart set on Paris?
No, we looked at many different cities. But Paris was the easy choice. There’s the support of the government, but there’s also the fact that there’s a huge esports community in Paris. You have three big clubs: Gentle Mates, Karmine Corp, and Team Vitality, each with their own dedicated following, and on top of those clubs there’s real fandom for esports and gaming across France.
We knew that bringing it to Paris would be a success if we produced the right product: a well-organised event, premium experiences, and the best teams, players and games in the Esports World Cup. We were confident we’d attract mass audiences.
We also loved that we were able to activate the whole city. Paris is the most-visited city in the world, every single year, so having the Esports World Cup embedded in the culture of a city that hosted the Olympics in 2024 and the Rugby World Cup, and that has hosted some of the biggest esports events outside our own, was something genuinely unique for us.
We put the Esports World Cup key in front of the Eiffel Tower, our totem on the Champs-Élysées in front of the Arc de Triomphe, ran a series of community tournaments, and staged a full takeover of the Champs-Élysées with a one-day esports and gaming activation, where we also revealed the jersey for the French national team competing in the Esports Nations Cup. The event itself at Porte de Versailles was unique, but what we brought to the city was equally unique for us.
You’ve argued that brands should stop treating esports as just a media buy and instead build themselves into the ecosystem and the experience. In practice, how do you convince a traditional GCC business (a bank, a telco, an airline) that this delivers real returns, not just reach?
We look first at what the brand wants to achieve. Different industries have different objectives, but even within the same industry, different brands want different things. So the number one key to success is really understanding your client: understanding the company you’re speaking to, and what they want to achieve. Do they want to sell more products, or are they already selling enough? Is it about rejuvenating their audience, improving international awareness, or something else? Understanding that objective is critical.
Second is our ability to be flexible with those brands. We’re building a product that’s meant to help an industry, and a sport, become the biggest sport in the world. So when we work with a brand, whether GCC or global, we also want to understand how that brand can help us realise that vision. In return, we’re flexible in how we work with them. Our objective isn’t just to put a logo on a stream, a broadcast, or in the arena. It’s to go ten steps further.
Last year with Al Baik, for example, we did co-branded meals and promoted them across the Kingdom, and they sold out very quickly. We did something similar with Barn’s, a sponsor last year in Riyadh, collaborating on their coffee offering and bringing influencers into their shops. That drives real traffic.
So it really depends on what each brand wants: traffic to retail, increased awareness, or engagement. We build the whole campaign around that objective, to make sure sponsors see the value year on year.
The move to Paris was framed around the regional situation, but it also accelerated a global rotation. What did this edition teach you that will change how you pick and run future host cities, and how do you keep Riyadh as the home while going global?
For the Esports World Cup specifically, Riyadh will always be the home. As I said, Paris was an exception, not a rule. That doesn’t mean we won’t repeat it in future years, but it will remain the exception, not the rule.
With the Esports Nations Cup, it’s a little different. We’ve already announced that its first edition will be in Riyadh. It’s a biannual event, held every two years, but the second edition and beyond will happen internationally. We’ll work with host cities that bid officially to host it in other countries.
Paris taught us a great deal about efficiency. To move an event of this size in a month and a half, you have to be extremely efficient. It also taught us how to work with government entities and host cities. Working with the City of Paris has been an incredible experience, learning the processes of a large, historic and heavily regulated city that understandably wants to protect itself. Still, being able to embed the Esports World Cup in a city like that has been a huge learning experience.
It’s also taught us a lot about bringing new value to sponsors, since the event happened in a different city, with different audiences and different visitors. We’ve learned a lot about how we can create fresh activations for them going forward.
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