00:00Now, the eSports World Cup is held every year during the summer months.
00:04A pretty good time, I'd have thought, to escape the outdoor heat by being indoors.
00:08And we talked about that event on this program, especially that 70 million US dollar prize pool.
00:14I just wonder if we could start by just asking you how that event went and what it brought to the kingdom in terms of revenue and visitor numbers.
00:21Sure. I mean, look, we had a show this summer, right, where we talked about the run of the competition itself.
00:29So the most important thing is obviously who's going to win the club championship.
00:33And this year it was again Falcon, the local Saudi team.
00:35But it was a very close call. They won in 2024. They won by a land mile.
00:40So it was a little bit surprised. This year was very close to the last week.
00:43And they were, you know, the runners up were Team Liquid and Vitality.
00:47So it was a very good competition to start with. In terms of numbers and economy, it was very successful as well.
00:52We had 750 million viewers in 2025 versus 500 million in 2024.
01:01We had over 3 million visitors to the boulevard city, growing from 2.6 million in 2024.
01:08So it was super successful on its own while growing clearly year over year.
01:13OK, so as you say, super successful. Now, gaming and e-sports strategy, a really big part of Vision 2030.
01:21And I just wondered what you think the reason for that is and what's the role of your foundation in meeting that particular goal of Vision 2030?
01:30So if you look at the impact of gaming and e-sports, right, I think it's twofold.
01:34It's number one, a fast growing, large global business. It's digital, so it's very scalable.
01:41And it's kind of built on the Internet. So it's a 21st century business and therefore very interesting from an economic perspective.
01:50But that's not all. It has a huge social part of it as well.
01:55If you look at almost everywhere in the world, you know, kids or young adults, there is almost no one who has not grown up with video games.
02:05So it's it's almost the other question around is not who plays video games, but who doesn't.
02:10And how does it translate into numbers?
02:12If you look at Saudi Arabia, 70 percent of the population play video games and of that 70 percent, right, a lot of them are looking at it competitively and then are are actually the core target group to attend something like the e-sports World Cup.
02:29So, again, it has two components, a global business future perspective and then just a perspective on how does it have a social impact on Saudi Arabia as a consumer market.
02:42But then across the whole world and the numbers with 750 million viewers, you speak for itself.
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