2023-11-17 05:45:12
Spectators at Gamers8, video game competition, in Riyadh, July 9, 2023. AHMED YOSRI / REUTERS
After the clientele of luxury hotels and football stars, it’s time for gamers. Saudi Arabia is a player that we will have to count on in the video game sector in the coming years. For several months, the Wahhabi kingdom has no longer concealed its ambition to become one of the world’s strongholds in this industry.
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The latest manifestation of these intentions, Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”, announced in person, on October 24, the holding, from 2024 in Riyadh, of an e-World Cup. sport, which will see the most talented players compete around popular games. For him, it is about “the natural next step [visant à permettre à l’Arabie saoudite] to become the leading global hub for video games and e-sport”. In 2023, the country on the Arab-Persian peninsula was the first to offer a video game competition (Gamers8, in summer), offering a record total winnings of 45 million dollars (41.4 million euros).
Buy studios around the world
Already in September 2022, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) – the Saudi sovereign fund – declared that it would release $38 billion to invest in this sector. A project which is part of the Vision 2030 plan, which consists of reducing the kingdom’s dependence on oil revenues. By the end of the decade, Riyadh intends to attract or create 250 companies in the video game sector and, in doing so, create nearly 40,000 jobs. The sector could thus generate 1% of the national gross domestic product.
Bridgehead of this strategy: the Savvy group, owned by the PIF and whose chairman of the board of directors is “MBS” himself – who has a reputation for being fond of video games. To take control of the company, Brian Ward, an industry veteran, who previously held senior positions at the biggest names in the sector (Activision, EA, Xbox), was poached.
The company aims to buy studios around the world. To date, its largest acquisition is that of Scopely (Monopoly Go! Scrabble Go), for $4.9 billion, in April. It also acquired $1 billion worth of shares in the Swedish conglomerate Embracer.
Read the analysis (in 2020): Article reserved for our subscribers In Saudi Arabia, economic diversification is stalled
The PIF has also taken shares in the elite of global video games: it owns more than 8% of the Japanese Nintendo, invested massively in Activision Blizzard (for a stake estimated at the end of March at 3.2 billion dollars), Electronic Arts (3.2 billion) or Take-Two (1.7 billion). Only its stakes in the luxury electric car manufacturer Lucid (9.4 billion) and in Uber (3.1 billion) can compete with these amounts.
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