AFK Weekly: Paris Moves to the Capital of Second Chances

Hello everyone! Despite pushback from various stakeholders due to its human rights record, it looks like Saudi Arabia is going to be playing a pivotal role in shaping the esports industry over the next few years. After the Global Esports Federation appointed Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud as its vice president, in December 2021, Saudi Arabia has stepped up its efforts of being involved in the esports and gaming industry. Following the $1.5B USD acquisition of ESL Gaming and FACEIT, the Saudi government’s various investment groups continue to acquire  minor stakes in entities like Nintendo, Capcom, Nexon and most recently a $1B investment into Embracer Group this week.

It has also hosted various tournaments for titles including Dota 2, Valorant, League of Legends, CS:GO and mobile esports titles like PUBG Mobile and Wild Rift through its Gamers Without Borders charity program.

Following these series of charity tournaments, the Saudi Esports Federation has revealed that it will be hosting the Gamers8 Festival, an eight week event taking place in Riyadh from July 14 to Sept. 8, which boasts a total prize pool of $15M split over six esports titles. The silver lining of these initiatives is that the MENA region is inevitably going to grow into a significant entity in the overall ecosystem. 

In this edition of AFK Weekly, we also take a look at the Paris franchises from Activision Blizzard's leagues moving to Las Vegas, Fnatic’s all new esports facility built in collaboration with BMW, and more exciting developments in the industry. However, they are part of our paid offerings.

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— Vignesh Raghuram, Supervising Editor, AFK Gaming

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