What is the Esports World Cup?

The Esports World Cup (EWC) is an esports festival launched in 2024, featuring 23 competitions across 22 different video games of many genres held in Riyadh Boulevard City. It is the successor of Gamers8, where the goal is to determine an overall winning club from these diverse games. The competition took place throughout the summer, from July 3 to August 25, and featured an unprecedented total cash prize of $62.5 million, making it the largest prize pool ever in an esports event. It is a cross-game competition that rewards individual game winners and overall club performance, leading to the "Club Championship."

Club Championship itself distributes $20 million among the top 16 clubs based on their performance across multiple games. To qualify, clubs must finish in the top 8 in at least two competitions, and to win, they must secure first place in at least one. Points are awarded based on placement, with first place earning 1000 points and eighth place earning 20 points. Team Falcons won the 2024 edition, earning an additional $7 million.

There was a total of 92 "clubs" represented. Organizations have been mostly been chosen based on their performances in their respective games since the beginning of the year. For instance, all the winning teams from major regions Spring Split on League of Legends have been invited. Other organizations however have been directly invited, to create more diversity and representation of regions such as on Counter Strike 2 with Furia and Complexity receiving invitation for the Americas region. There was also some spots to earn through qualifiers for several games such as Tekken 8, CS2, EA FC 24 or StarCraft II.

As with every League of Legends tournament, it was T1 who made their mark first, adding another milestone to Faker's immense list of achievements. This achievement is, however, not a major one. It was only the first edition of the competition, and its format is still in its early stages. Indeed, the tournament suffered from comparisons with the MSI, which took place a few weeks earlier and shares many similarities. The participating teams are the same, featuring the best teams from the four major regions in the game: GenG, T1, BLG, TES, G2, Fnatic, Team Liquid, and FlyQuest.

The teams only competed in Best-of-Three matches, with no loser's bracket, leaving little room for error due to a tournament that could only last a week within the vast schedule of the entire EWC. Everything had to be done quickly, at a pace of one match per day with no breaks. Additionally, there was no draw, and the teams were automatically positioned to ensure regional matchups: Korea vs. China and Europe vs. NA. There was a clear bias in this, as the Asian favorites inevitably clashed right from the start of the competition. While an Asian winner was expected, it left a bitter taste for both the competition and the final victory.

With $1 million cashprize ($400.000 for T1) against $250.000 at MSI 2024 ($50.000 for GenG), the EWC is for sure extremely attractive for organizations and has very good chances to remain on the roadmap in the future. However, as reported by Sheep Esports, a new third international event organized by Riot Games will be introduced in 2025. This means the pro-circuit roadmap will be quite full for successful teams, leaving little room for the EWC to make its place if it has bigger ambitions next year. Answers will be provided in the next months.