Commencing this week is the biggest and certainly the most bougie esports events ever as the first-ever Esports World Cup debut begins Wednesday, July 3rd with an outrageous prize pool of $60 million.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will host eight weeks of elite esports competition with an astonishing 22 tournaments across 21 different video games. All of the major esports are present, other from Valorant but it already sounds like Riot Games is preparing for the FPS to join the next iteration.
Sadly, this competition isn’t utilising an actual World Cup format where qualifying countries pick their best representatives to compete for national pride — something I think most of the esports community would be far more interested in watching.
How this tournament impacts the esports betting industry will be fascinating. It’s no secret that the bubble was bursting and most esports organisations are in desperate need of this substantial cash injection.
But I think what is far more important is how these orgs utilise this money. It needs to be invested in securing and developing the future of esports and I think one of the best ways to do that is create connections with fans. Not just through engaging content but also by making more people feel safe and welcome in the community — you can understand why many women and LGBTQ members don’t feel that way right now.
It’s hard to know what to expect from the first-ever Esports World Cup and I’m not going to sit here and try to predict all 22 tournaments because this article would look more like a novel.
But where I will throw my hat in the ring is the unique Club Championship which rewards the most consistent organisations across all the game titles. The higher teams finish in a tournament, the more points they will earn for their organisation as long as they finish within the top 8.
There is a $20m prize pool that will be split across the 16 best-performing organisations with $7m going to the winner. However, the catch is that for an organisation to qualify for this championship and bonus prize they need one of their teams/players to win one of the tournaments.
It’s still very difficult to predict who will win this but to me, the safe bets are Western organisations who have a lot of top teams in multiple games. Think G2 Esports, Fnatic, Cloud9, and Team Vitality.
I’m leaning towards G2 because they should be the highest-placing Western team in the LoL tournament which wi’ll almost certainly be won by a Chinese or Korean org who aren’t competing in many other games. And having just won the Rocket League Major in London, G2 has a few teams in great form.
It’s almost worth mentioning that Saudi Arabian orgs Twisted Minds and Team Falcons, the latter formed by wealthy FIFA legend Mosaad “Msdossary” Aldossary, have entered a lot of teams so they could rack up a lot of points. Especially in the mobile titles like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang that I know nothing about as it is mostly popular in Southeast Asia.
