Introduction: We can't say whether Saudi Arabia's "Golden Yuan Offensive" is good or bad for the development of the industry, but what makes people uncertain is that we don't seem to have much resistance to such an offensive.
Author: Erhao.
Just like everyone was waiting for the showdown between Zheng Qinwen and Sabalenka a few days ago, in the esports circle, many people can't wait for the Esports World Cup in half a year.
Some time ago, the competition items of the E-sports World Cup have been officially announced or rumored one after another, and the first one selected is the mobile MOBA project "Winning the Peak (MLBB)". The latter put the international events of its original tournament system, the Global Mid-Season Cup (MSC) and the International Women's Invitational Tournament (MWI), into the Esports World Cup.
Given MLBB's presence in Southeast Asia and the program's viewership leadership in mobile esports last year, the addition of MLBB with its own core tournament has undoubtedly made the Esports World Cup even more attractive.
Or maybe it's the news that Riot Games has previously announced, and that League of Legends' global regions will also adjust their schedules in July this year to make way for the Esports World Cup and prepare to participate, which also means that a "MSI" or "S game" outside the League of Legends global tournament system is coming.
By the way, Overwatch, which was officially disbanded by the professional league, is also currently trying to find a way to "reincarnate" through the Esports World Cup.
There are also some popular e-sports projects that have not yet been officially announced, but since the Saudi rich buddies have put the two most popular projects in the world on the table, it is naturally only a matter of time before other projects join.
At this time, the most curious question arises, why can the E-sports World Cup attract the top resources of the industry? Gamers8 changes to a vest, and it really has the influence of the "World Cup"?
01 The allure of the Esports World Cup
With about half a year to go before the first Esports World Cup, we don't seem to know how influential this event is, but the predecessor of this event, Gamers8, is an entry point. Last year, Gamers8 snatched the title of "The International Dota 2 Esports Tournament with the highest prize money".
Judging from the ratings data, according to esports charts statistics, the total overseas ** hours of Gamers8 events in 2023 will be about 62.23 million hours.
What is the level of this achievement in the industry? We can take a look at the top two of last year's industry viewing time list: In 2023, the total overseas ** duration of the League of Legends World Championship S13 is 1400 million hours, and the total overseas ** time of the Peak World Championship M5 is 72.16 million hours.
There is no doubt that Gamers8 is in the first echelon, if not in the top spot in terms of ratings data. But at this point, an obvious problem arises: unlike the first two events on the list, Gamers8 is a third-party comprehensive event. In other words, the latter's viewing time data is superimposed by multiple competition items, and if you talk about the ratings data of a single project, gamers8 may not be able to rank among the top in the industry.
Saudi rich buddies can naturally find this problem, so the "E-sports World Cup" after the brand upgrade has an obvious trend: Saudi rich buddies are focusing on leveraging manufacturer resources, such as winning the peak to merge official international events into the E-sports World Cup, League of Legends to make concessions on regional schedules and team resources.
Attracting ready-made events or top team player resources into your own system is the easiest and crudest way for third-party events to make an impact.
So how does the E-sports World Cup leverage the resources of manufacturers?
The answer is not difficult to analyze, and the core reason is naturally banknotes. On the one hand, the E-sports World Cup to hold the manufacturer's original events can directly cover the manufacturer's original cost of running the event, not to mention that these events are the core of the manufacturer's original event system, and the cost of running the event is already very high.
On the other hand, as a comprehensive event, the E-sports World Cup attracts a multi-circle audience, and the organizer's marketing investment in the event is also generous. For the participating manufacturers and subdivision events, not only do they have no cost to run the competition, but they can also get more marketing and promotion investment and get the opportunity to broaden the boundaries of users, so why not.
For projects that send players from top teams, the Esports World Cup can provide huge bonuses for participants. Although this money will not eventually flow into the hands of manufacturers, it can provide financial support for clubs in their own event ecosystem, and bring some new stimulus to the competitive landscape that has gradually stabilized in the project. Of course, the audience can also get new shows outside of the original competition system.
At this time, the "chips" in the hands of the E-sports World Cup are already obvious, and judging from the current effect, these chips are enough to impress most copyright manufacturers in the industry. With the gathering of top resources in the industry, even if this third-party e-sports event is still difficult to compare with the "World Cup", at least we can now regard it as a "WCG" bound to Saudi Arabia, and this "WCG" does not have the shortcomings of the other "WCG".
02 The goal of "de-oiling" behind the Esports World Cup
Behind the Esports World Cup is a huge national regional development plan, and in 2022, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed launched the National Esports Gaming Strategy, which aims to make Saudi Arabia a global hub in the field by 2030.
The Esports World Cup is a key part of this strategy. The goal of the strategy is to reduce Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil resources and related industries.
The most critical question is, can esports help Saudi Arabia complete "de-oiling"? Or to put it more bluntly, can esports make money?
One of the phenomena we have observed from the world's leading domestic e-sports industry is that the profitability of e-sports, including peripheral derivative industries, has not been very outstanding so far, let alone compared to simple and crude liquids**?
Of course, this phenomenon does not mean that the e-sports industry has no "future and money", but that the industry has been born and developed for a very limited time, and the business model of the entire industry is still in the process of exploration. For the current e-sports, how to better show the commercial value and industrial value seems to be the "secret behind the bronze door".
At this time, the value of the rich Saudi buddies is highlighted. Let's take a look at the specific measures behind the E-sports World Cup, Saudi Arabia's implementation of the national e-sports game strategy: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth **PIF's S**vy Games Group will invest about 37.8 billion US dollars (about 271.4 billion yuan), with 86 initiatives involving technology software development, game production, e-sports, education and talent introduction in 8 fields to achieve the above strategy.
Obviously, Saudi Arabia is not aiming at a single e-sports industry chain, but the entire upstream and downstream industrial ecology, including games and e-sports. In the past development of the e-sports industry, all parties in the industry have taken action to connect the upstream and downstream of the e-sports industry due to the scale of capital, such as e-sports + education, e-sports + real estate, etc., but it is difficult to connect the upstream and downstream industrial chains and operate in an overall linkage.
When the gold-winning Saudis spend a lot of money to build a large industrial ecology around e-sports, it is equivalent to creating a case model for the industry to present the value of "e-sports +" in an all-round way. In the author's opinion, this may be an answer to the secret of the "Bronze Gate", and only the Saudis who are more than gold can make such a large-scale attempt.
Is the "ultimate" value of esports like oil? Or can it become a drilling rig to dig "digital oil"? These questions will be answered after the Saudis build a big ecology.
Finally, back to the Esports World Cup, in the above analysis, we talked about the attractiveness of this event for all parties in the industry, but for the regional leagues and clubs in the manufacturer's event ecosystem, this is also a "crisis", which has been reflected in the traditional sports field.
Last year's world football, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Benzema and other superstars left Saudi Arabia, and the flow of these star resources to Saudi Arabia had a huge impact: the Saudi Super League became the hottest football league in the world. To be more specific, after Ronaldo joined Riyadh Victory, the number of fans of the team on Instagram soared from 860,000 to more than 5 million within a week, and within 3 days, the team's jersey income exceeded 28 million euros. The flow of these superstars obviously carries a large number of fan resources.
Compared with football, harvesting e-sports industry stars and other talent resources is easier for Saudis who are not short of money, and this scene seems to be another historical repetition of the development process of the esports industry after 2010. Of course, just like more than 10 years ago, we can't say whether Saudi Arabia's "Golden Dollar Offensive" is good or bad for the development of the industry, but what makes people uncertain is that we don't seem to have much resistance to such a Golden Dollar Offensive.