🎮 The Platform Play: Why the Esports World Cup Is Reshaping Global Sport Business
With a $70M prize pool and platform-native infrastructure, esports is writing its next business model in real time.
The Esports World Cup 2025, set to take place between July 7 and August 24 in Riyadh, isn’t just a tournament—it’s a global-scale platform strategy where capital, content, and competitive culture converge.
With a record-setting $70 million prize pool, this six-week event signals more than growth—it affirms esports as a commercially structured, investor-aligned, and globally scalable sport. This is esports engineered for return:
Sovereign-backed
Platform-native
Revenue-layered
Think LIV Golf meets Formula 1—with gaming IP, multi-game formats, and club partnerships forming the economic spine. This isn’t just a tech play—it’s a working model for long-term value creation in digital sport.
📍 Riyadh’s Moment: The Numbers
🗓️ Dates: July 7 – August 24, 2025
📍 Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
🌍 Scope:
2,000+ players representing 200 global clubs
25+ tournaments across 24 titles—from Valorant and Apex Legends to Counter-Strike 2
2.6 million in-person attendees in 2024
500M+ online viewers (Yahoo Sports, 2024 benchmark)
This isn’t a seasonal event. It’s a platform-scale asset calibrated for global fan acquisition, IP leverage, and year-round commercial activity.
Historical Context:
This prize pool dwarfs traditional esports tournaments such as The International ($40M in 2021), underlining the accelerating investment appetite for scalable digital sports platforms.
💸 Prize Structure: Capital Logic Meets Competitive Format
The $70M prize pool isn’t just headline bait—it’s designed like an investor-backed operating model:
$27M: Club Championship – $7M to the winner, top 16 share the pot
$38M+: Game-specific prize pools—incentivizing deep engagement across genres
$5M: Road to EWC Qualifiers—early-stage player development + narrative scaffolding
$450K: MVP & performance-based awards
The structure rewards scale and stickiness, anchoring clubs, retaining talent, and sustaining multi-season story arcs across IP.
🧱 Structural Shifts: Esports as Platform, Not Just Play
The Esports World Cup is a blueprint for platform-native sport ecosystems built on content, IP, data, and distribution.
Investor-Backed Architecture:
Partners like Riot Games, Activision, and Capcom reflect infrastructure alignment, much like capital-backed builds seen in LIV Golf and the PFL.
Club Partner Program:
40+ top-tier teams—including Team Liquid, Fnatic, and FaZe Clan—are financially supported by the Esports World Cup Foundation to scale content, IP, and international audience reach (VentureBeat). This isn't endorsement—it’s co-investment.
Multi-Game Format = Multi-Vertical Business:
By spanning 24 games, the format mitigates genre risk while enabling cross-platform monetisation—from streaming rights and digital merch to branded content and event IP.
Riyadh’s Role:
Strategic state backing positions Riyadh as a global entertainment investment hub, with esports as the flagship. This isn’t soft power—it’s growth capital meeting global fan infrastructure.
Overcoming Esports' Monetisation Challenge:
Historically, esports monetisation strongly favoured top game publishers and developers such as Riot Games and Activision Blizzard, due to their ownership of IP, data, and distribution channels. Conversely, esports teams have faced significant challenges achieving sustainable profitability, typically relying on sponsorships, merchandise, and limited revenue-sharing arrangements.
The Esports World Cup’s innovative structure directly addresses this imbalance, offering teams meaningful equity alignment, financial support through its Club Partner Program, and diversified revenue streams—from platform-native activations to IP-driven monetisation opportunities. By integrating teams into the broader platform strategy, the model transforms traditionally fragmented esports franchises into viable, long-term investment assets.
Risk & Mitigation:
Rapid scaling carries inherent risks—market fragmentation, regulatory scrutiny, and geopolitical sensitivity around state-backed investments. However, the multi-title format, distributed club ownership, and global streaming infrastructure act as deliberate mitigants, providing diversified risk exposure and resilience.
🏗️ Business Playbook: Capital-Scaled, Platform-Led
For executives, the model is increasingly clear—and replicable:
Own the Platform: Control over revenue flows—rights, advertising, creator economy, audience data.
Anchor the Community: Capturing entire ecosystems, embedding across titles, regions, fanbases.
Power the Supply Chain: Teams, creators, players as equity-aligned growth partners.
Specific Revenue Opportunities:
Projected advertising revenues alone could surpass traditional benchmarks, given esports' digitally native audience—70% under the age of 35—who spend disproportionately on digital goods and services.
💼 Immediate Investor Opportunities:
VCs & Private Equity: Target platform infrastructure, media tech innovators, IP-focused franchises.
Family Offices & Strategic Investors: Co-invest alongside sovereign or institutional capital, particularly within MENA esports initiatives.
Brands & Sponsors: Engage via platform-native activations and digital asset partnerships beyond traditional sponsorship.
🧠 The Berkida Take
The Esports World Cup 2025 marks a structural shift—where platforms, not leagues, become the center of gravity. Esports is a tested investment class: scalable IP, creator-driven media, vertically integrated monetisation. From prize economics to platform control, it’s designed for capital efficiency and digital-native reach.
📩 Building a strategy around creator IP, platform-native sport, or digital fandom? Let’s connect—we’re tracking it closely.
What's your take—will the Esports World Cup reshape how investors view sport, or is this merely another chapter in esports' evolving story? Comment below or reach out directly—we’d love your insights as we track esports' rapid ascent.