Esports Nations Cup qualifiers hit by competitive integrity concerns across LoL and VALORANT

Organized somewhat hastily since its announcement in August 2025, the Esports Nations Cup has recently accelerated its process, with the organization of its first qualifiers ahead of the event set to take place in November in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This sense of urgency is visible in the roadmap announced in January, which was not fully respected, but also in the numerous competitive integrity issues observed over the two weekends in June, on the 19-20 and 21 for the League of Legends qualifiers and on the 26-27 and 28 for those of VALORANT.

For LoL, one qualifier grouped together the Middle East and Africa. As a result, the online tournament featured countries such as South Africa and Kazakhstan despite being more than 7,000 kilometers apart, as well as Morocco and Oman, separated by over 5,500 kilometers. In online gaming, those distances inevitably translate into ping, and in esports, into competitive integrity issues.

While the situation improved on VALORANT thanks to the split into two separate qualifiers, one for Sub-Saharan Africa and one for the MENA region, problems still remained. Oman national team coach Sha "ZesBeeW" Mohtar voiced his frustration on X, particularly regarding the behavior of the administrators overseeing the MENA qualifier. After facing Bahrain, the Gulf nation then played against Egypt and Jordan. "Its amazing how you are suppose to play double the ping of your opponents," he wrote on X, before adding that "the admins can say 'Just play first we will check.'"

A similar situation occurred for Senegal. Adam "Breezou" complained during matches against Nigeria and Malawi that he and his teammates were forced to play with an average ping of over 200 ms on the Cape Town servers in South Africa. The situation ultimately led Senegal to forfeit their Winner Bracket match against Nigeria.

The issue was also highlighted by Moroccan star Amine "johnqt" Ouarid on X: "I don't know who thought putting North Africa + Middle East/Asia in the same qualifier for 1 SPOT was a good idea." He then continued by explaining that he and his Moroccan teammates were "spending more time to argue and calculate which server is best than the actual game."

According to a National Team Manager from a Sub-Saharan African country who spoke to Sheep Esports journalists, the issue had been raised well before the qualifiers began: "We did let the organisers know. We rallied together as NTMs, we spoke at our NTM and ENC meetings." The problem was partially addressed on VALORANT through the split into separate SSA and MENA qualifiers, but the same solution was not implemented for League of Legends.

The Esports Foundation therefore appeared to acknowledge the issue twice, reportedly proposing a change before eventually reversing course. "There was a time the server allocation and region was briefly split correctly but they reverted and said it was a mistake," one NTM told us, before adding: "My theory is it came from the Publisher side."

While "some considerations were made with VALORANT" and "we managed to get it to Cape Town servers," it appears the same could not be done for Riot Games' MOBA. "Their final reply was there's not much they could do. They would look into it next time," another national team coach explained.

Scheduled to run for nearly four weeks and featuring 16 different disciplines, the inaugural Esports Nations Cup is naturally a major technical and organizational challenge for the Esports Foundation. On top of organizing the event itself, it is also responsible for the Esports World Cup, which begins this July in Riyadh. Alongside planning 16 competitions and hundreds of qualifiers across the globe, the Saudi organizer also had to coordinate with national partners responsible for assembling their respective national teams, a process carried out under tight deadlines while handling hundreds of applications from around a hundred countries.

Nevertheless, despite the excitement surrounding an event that brings together such a large number of national competitions for the first time, the tournament has already been overshadowed by numerous issues. Beyond the fact that it is being held in Saudi Arabia and is widely viewed as an example of sportswashing, the event's competitive integrity itself has also come under scrutiny with all these stories.