Saudi Arabia will allegedly build $500 million esports city in Riyadh Casino.orgThe CEO of one of Saudi Arabia\u2019s biggest private equity firms has announced that an \u201cesports city\u201d is set to be built within the nation\u2019s capital, Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is upping its investment in the gaming industry, this time by building a city dedicated to esports. Mohammed AlQahtani, the CEO of Saudi Arabia Holding Co., announced the project, a $500 million city-within-a-city in Riyadh, in a post on LinkedIn. The project is scheduled to finish construction in 2024. \u201cThe esports city is expected to attract major esports teams and players from around the world,\u201d AlQahtani said. \u201cIt will also provide a platform for local talent to develop and compete on the global stage.\u201d AlQahtani said that the city will have a capacity of 20,000 spectators and will host several events, including the World Cyber Games, whose roots go back to the early 2000s. An esports city is coming to Riyadh in 2024 Saudi Arabia has been making ways in the esports ecosystem as it looks to become a major player in the gaming and esports space by 2023. Last year, Saudi Arabian government-backed Savvy Gaming Group spent $1.5 billion to purchase ESL and FACEIT. More recently, the Savvy Gaming Group invested over $250 million in VSPO, a Chinese tournament operator. This summer, Saudi Arabia will host multiple elite-level esports events as part of the Gamers8 festival. The event will $45 million on offer, making it the \u201clargest prize pool\u201d in esports history, according to the organizers. The Gamers8 festival, and much of Saudi Arabia\u2019s recent acquisitions in the esports space, has been criticized by the community because of its connections to the county\u2019s government and its record of human rights violations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia will allegedly build $500 million esports city in Riyadh Casino.orgThe CEO of one of Saudi Arabia\u2019s biggest private equity firms has announced that an \u201cesports city\u201d is set to be built within the nation\u2019s capital, Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is upping its investment in the gaming industry, this time by building a city dedicated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}