Plans to create and stage an Olympic Esports Games to be initially hosted in Saudi Arabia in 2027 are now off the table after a 12-year deal between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Saudi Olympic Committee was abandoned, the IOC announced Thursday. The Games were to be held every two years following launch, but the inaugural event was already postponed from this year.
An IOC statement said the two parties “mutually agreed that they will end their cooperation on the Olympic Esports Games. At the same time, both parties are committed to pursuing their own esports ambitions on separate paths.”
The decision comes just months after former IOC President Thomas Bach – a key proponent of the deal – was replaced by Kirsty Coventry after his term term limit was reached. One of Coventry’s first actions as president was to initiate a “pause and reflect” period when commissions are asked to evaluate the current status and suggest new ways to move forward. The highly controversial deal that was inked last year just ahead of the Paris Olympics gave The Kingdom massive control of Olympic Esports in exchange for bankrolling the launch of the specialized Games.
IOC to launch Olympic Esports Games as an autonomous, standalone event
Saudi Arabia already hosts the popular Esports World Cup known for such violent first person shooter Games such as Call of Duty, Valorant and Overwatch and offers tens of millions of dollars prize money. The IOC’s vision of Olympic Esports is to stage non-violent (and less popular) titles that simulate sports that have been teased to include eBaseball, Gran Turismo and Chess.com – but also modified versions of the popular Fortnite games. The titles are to be endorsed and overseen by the relevant International Sport Federations as an electronic version of their sports.
“The IOC, for its part, will develop a new approach to the Olympic Esports Games, taking the feedback from the ‘Pause and Reflect’ process into account, and pursue a new partnership model,” the IOC statement read, adding that they have “the objective of having the inaugural Games as soon as possible.”
Ahead of the deal, the IOC had been studying Esports for a few years, experimenting with their Olympic Esports Series and forming an Esports Commission led by French IOC member David Lappartient who last year mounted an unsuccessful bid for the IOC presidency. The most recent event was held in Singapore in 2023 where the initiative received solid support, and that city state could be a top candidate to replace Saudi Arabia. Singapore’s IOC member Ser Miang Ng helped orchestrate the initial deal with the Saudi’s.
The IOC stopped short of integrating Esports with the traditional Olympic Games and have created a separate structure intended to protect the financial benefits that are distributed to the member sports federations – up to USD $4.2 million daily according to the IOC.
“The structure will be within the IOC there will be no outsourcing of this structure. It is also clear that the IOC is the exclusive owner of these Games but for organizational and logistical reasons we have to separate this from the model of the Olympic Games because not all of the International Federations are governing their Esports,” Bach said last year when the deal was signed.
