Esports Awards take place in Riyadh as Esports World Cup concludes

The Esports Awards took place last night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the first time last night during the concluding weekend for the Esports World Cup.

Samantha “Rivers” Rivera Treviño won for Streamer of the Year. Personality of the Year went to Seth “Scump” Abner, who was also one of the emcees for the evening. And the first Lifetime Achievement award went to Jens Hilgers, founder of Bitkraft Ventures, Bayes, G2 Esports and ESL.

I attended the Esports Awards at the conclusion of the first day of the New Global Sport Conference (NGSC), which brought together leaders from esports, gaming, business, sports, and entertainment to explore The Future of Fandom. NGSC said it drew more than 1,400 people to the Riyadh event just as the eight-week Esports World Cup was coming to a close.

The Esports Awards was more sparsely attended, though I didn’t get an estimate on the crowd size. It started at 10 p.m. and ran onwards, with a few hiccups in the program where things didn’t start as expected. As the program went on toward midnight on Saturday, the crowd thinned out.

The Esports Awards took place in Riyadh amid concerns that it was part of the kingdom’s attempt at “sportwashing,” or associating itself with sports events for the sake of masking the country’s issues with human rights and other issues such as the lack of acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

That was balanced against the need for gaming to find new sources of capital at a time when layoffs have been rampant throughout the industry. Those who attended or sponsored the event made the reputational calculation that the benefits of attending outweighed the risks, even as the region saw a flare up in violence between Israel and Lebanon.

In an interview, I asked Mike Milanov, chairman of Qiddiya Gaming and former COO of Team Liquid, about the sportwashing issue.

“We point out the positive. I think the amount of progress made in the last seven years since a change in the ruler of the kingdom, since the Crown Prince became the [leader] has been kind of equivalent to 50 years [of change] in other parts of the world. That is very positive for me, seeing that very similar to how we talked about governments couldn’t make quick decisions in other parts of the world to build something or to fund something. The same thing happens with these types of modernization initiatives.”

He added, “The number one thing we can do to break the ice is bring people here. We’re at the New Global Sports Conference, and there are 1400 attendees, and bringing executives and CEOs and CMOs and media such as yourself. So the kingdom really helps everybody make their own opinion. Saudi does a good job of not launching these expensive campaigTns about what your opinion should be about the kingdom. I think opinions get formed naturally. he best thing is for all of the Arabic countries not to be grouped together when you think about your opinion, and for you to come check it out personally. That’s what I did. And then right afterwards, I started at Qiddiya.”

As for the growth of esports, he said, “There is still a steady growth. There are two things happening. So the total gaming population is increasing, and the percent of that total population that watches competitive gaming is also increasing. There will be these moments where there’s like three years of surge, and then that kind of calms down.”

The rest of the winners included:

• Malr1ne won for Esports Breakthrough Player of the Year.
• Teamfight Tactics won for Breakthrough Game of the Year.
• Ones to Watch winners included Zip Creative, Alti Agency, Gaming Gladiators, the Philippines, S8ul Esports, Full Squad Gaming and Nobru.
• S8UL Esports won for Content Group of the Year.
• Valorant won for Esports Game of the Year.
• Gods Ft. Newjeans won for Esports Content of the Year for Worlds 2023 Anthem — League of Legends.
• Riot Games won for Esports Game Publisher of the Year.
• Liquipedia won for Esports Coverage and Content Platform of the Year.
• Team Liquid won for Creative Team of the Year.
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang won for Mobile Esports Game of the Year.
• Red Bull won for Esports Commercial Partner of the Year.

GamesBeat is a media partner for the NGSC,which paid my way to Riyadh.