China News Service, Beijing, February 20 (Reporter Wang Hao) Recently, Honor of Kings officially announced its participation in the Saudi E-sports World Cup. This comprehensive e-sports event, promoted with the help of football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, has attracted much attention from the outside world since it was announced. Now the competition items are being announced one after another. The successful hosting of the E-Sports World Cup will be an excellent example of exploring the type of e-Sports events.
Data map: Cristiano Ronaldo waves to the fans.
The most popular games
Last October, Saudi Arabia announced it would host the annual Esports World Cup, saying the event would include "the most popular games in the world." As the time comes to 2024, the specific competition items of this event will be announced one after another.
On the evening of February 19, Honor of Kings officially announced that it will join the Saudi E-sports World Cup. The Honor of Kings x E-sports World Cup and the Honor of Kings Mid-Season Invitational Tournament will be held in August. A total of 12 king teams from all over the world will participate. Among them, the 2024 KPL Dream Team will participate as the ambassadors of the KPL Honor of Kings Professional League. The remaining 11 overseas participating teams include outstanding teams determined by the Honor of Kings Intercontinental Invitational Tournament S2 and newly released regional teams that have received direct invitations.
Previously, Summit Summit officially announced that it would join the e-sports World Cup. In July this year, Summit Summit Global Mid-Season Cup and Summit Summit International Women's Invitational Tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia. The Global Mid-Season Cup covers more than 40 countries around the world, and the International Women's Invitational Tournament is participated by 12 national or regional teams, including the Chinese division.
Foreign media reported that the E-sports World Cup will also include the League of Legends event. Riot Games in the League of Legends game field allows two teams from each division to participate. However, there is no official news about this yet.
In addition, there are also reports that StarCraft 2, DOTA2 and other projects will join the Saudi World Cup. At present, it seems that this event is likely to include many current popular events as stated in the initial official announcement.
The largest prize pool in eSports history
When Saudi Arabia announced that it would host the e-sports World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo, who was playing for the Saudi Football League, attended the meeting. He also shared the news on social media: "I am very happy to be a part of this group today to discuss the future of e-sports, and The launch of the first Esports World Cup to be held in Saudi Arabia next year!”
This event has been very high-profile since it appeared in the public eye. Correspondingly, there are high prizes for the event. Saudi Arabia officially announced that the E-sports World Cup will have "the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports."
The Saudi E-sports World Cup was formerly the Gamers8 e-sports event held in 2023. The total prize pool for various Gamers8 projects is as high as 45 million US dollars, of which the prize money for DOTA2 is as high as 15 million US dollars.
Among the projects that have been officially announced by the Saudi Esports World Cup, the prize pool for the Summit Global Mid-Season Cup is US$3 million, and the prize pool for the Summit International Women's Invitational Tournament is US$500,000. The prize pool for the Honor of Kings x E-Sports World Cup and Honor of Kings Mid-Season Invitational Tournament totals US$3 million.
Saudi Arabia’s investment in e-sports is in line with people’s impression of it as a “trench”. Sports, e-sports and games are part of Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030”. The Saudi government will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to diversify the country’s economy and gradually Reduce dependence on oil.
Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF, said in 2022 that it would invest 142 billion Saudi riyals (approximately RMB 277 billion) to help Saudi Arabia become a "global gaming center."
Explore multiple types of eSports events
If the Saudi E-sports World Cup can continue to absorb more popular e-sports events, it will become a truly comprehensive event in the global e-sports field. This is a useful attempt to develop the type of e-sports events. In addition to the event itself, the E-Sports World Cup is also accompanied by model innovations for certain specific projects.
For example, the "Dream Team" concept of the Honor of Kings project will represent the KPL division in the e-sports World Cup. The KPL Dream Team consists of 10 players. These 10 players will be selected from the fixed-seat club roster of the 2024 KPL Spring Split through voting by a professional jury and public users.
The specific rules for selection are the 5 players with the first votes in each of the five positions (counter lane, jungle, mid lane, roaming, and development lane) in the 2024 KPL Spring Split roster, and the remaining 5 players except the first 5 players. The player with the highest number of votes (regardless of position) is selected; in addition, each KPL club can only have a maximum of 2 players selected to ensure the diversity and fairness of the representative team.
This kind of team formation model and selection method is unprecedented in the professional field of King of Glory. It is natural to look forward to what kind of results it will achieve in practice.
The exploration of e-sports event types presents a multi-agent parallel state. Earlier, International Olympic Committee President Bach revealed in an exclusive interview that he is considering hosting the first Olympic E-sports Games in 2025 or 2026 at the latest. He said that the e-sports Olympics may follow the format of the Olympic E-sports Week - on the one hand, virtual sports, and on the other hand, some of the most popular video games will be introduced.
All in all, viewers can look forward to more exciting e-sports events in the future! (over)