Inside MENA's fast-growing gaming industry as Saudi Arabia's Esports World Cup takes the world stage

What do you do when you’re a young, ambitious video game fanatic who just happens to be the crown prince of one of the world’s richest countries? You turn your passion into one of the soft-power cornerstones of an ambitious economic development policy — one the outside world will get a taste of when the Esports World Cup formally kicks in Paris this coming Wednesday. The event, which runs through the end of August, is the creation of the Riyadh-based Esports Foundation, a global organization backed by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund.

Video games aren’t just a pastime in MENA — they’re a fast-growing industry where ambitious people can build careers and businesses thanks to a “cultural shift,” says Farah Tamer, senior director of strategy at the Esports Foundation. “Five years ago, if a young Saudi kid told his parents he wanted to go work in the games industry, they would have laughed at it — like, ‘No, of course not.’ Today, it’s encouraged.” (You can read more about Tamer’s odyssey to the games industry here and check him out on LinkedIn here.)

The MENA video games industry — once a sleeping giant — has woken up. The games market generated revenues of c. USD 5.62 bn in 2024 and is on track to be worth USD 6.94 bn by 2027. And that figure includes only direct spending on software and games — it doesn’t factor-in add-ons or event spending like the Esports World Cup or last week’s B2B-focused Global Games Show.

Annual video game and content sales in the so-called MENA-3 (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) grew at a CAGR of 9.9% from 2019-2025, according to data from games analyst Matthew Ball’s Epyllion. That’s sharply faster than the Mature Market 8 (spanning the United States and Canada to Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea), which had a 1.4% CAGR in the same period.

Three revenue streams drive spending in the industry, Tamer says, pointing to hardware (“the console, the VR goggles, the Steam Deck, the controller. All that fun stuff”), software (the games themselves, including single-purchase titles as well as free-to-play games that make money on microtransactions such as the purchase of in-game skins and objects), and “adjacencies” — revenues from merchandise, television deals, brand partnerships, esports, and in-person events (which include sponsorships and ticket revenues).

MENA players have long been avid consumers — now, we’re investing, Tamer says, pointing to Saudi, where for the longest time there were “only two games companies worth talking about in the Kingdom.” Now, one of the key targets of Saudi’s National Gaming and Esports Strategy (part of Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Saudi Vision 2030) is to establish 250 games companies in the Kingdom and create 39k new jobs in the industry by 2030.

In-person events are a cornerstone of that strategy, but they’re also a risk: Games events are sputtering globally. Industry-leading events have shut down (the Electronic Entertainment Expo, where landmarks including PlayStation, GameCube, and XBox were launched) or are now online-only (Minecon). Even physical video game stores — from hundreds of GameStops in the United States to the remaining standalone Game stores in Britain — are being shut in favour of online sales. Fans blame the rise of downloads and what Tamer calls the “Esports winter” prompted by covid-19.

MENA is bucking that trend, with each of the region’s “big three” gaming markets home to a tier-one event: Egypt’s Insomnia Gaming Festival takes place annually (the 2026 event was this past spring). The Dubai Esports and Games Festival wrapped last month, while Saudi is home to the Esports World Cup.

“Read the press today and it sounds like events are coming out of that Esports winter after the announcement of the Esports World Cup. There’s a correlation — maybe not causation — with EWC and Saudi’s commitment to this reinvigorated sector.”

Tamer likens the Esports World Cup in Paris to the Olympics — in format, at least, calling the EWC a “first-of-a-kind, multi-genre, multi-title competition,” where international games clubs go head-to-head. Where the Olympics has national teams competing in multiple sports, the Esports World Cup has world-class club teams competing in multiple titles. (Many teams are made up of competitors from multiple countries, but some — like the Falcons from Saudi — are all from a single country.)

What’s unique, for our fellow games nerds, is that the EWC is “a club championship, which has never been done before. What we’re saying is, ‘It isn’t enough for a club to be world-class in Counter Strike. They need to be great at Counter Strike, really good at League of Legends, and really good at a couple of other titles so that they can rise to the top.’”

At stake: A prize purse of USD 75 mn. “That’s the EWC’s unique selling proposition,” Tamer notes. “It’s the best clubs in the world, playing the most popular titles, for the biggest prize money out there, on a global stage.”

The Esports World Cup’s home is Riyadh, but because of the US-Iran conflict, organizers moved this year’s round to Paris. Tamer states the Esports Foundation sees that as an opportunity to “show the world that this is [intellectual property] that can travel.” From Shanghai to New York, Tamer says that the EWC is “something that should go around the world,” like the FIFA World Cup.

Paris “is a different beast entirely. Expectations are higher in Paris,” he says.

What’s with that Saudi commitment to games as an industry? It doesn’t hurt, Tamer says, that “the Crown Prince is a huge gamer.” And he’s not alone: Saudi is a nation of gamers, with the communications and IT ministry estimating that 89% of Saudis play games. It’s a stat that rings true for Tamer: Saudis once had limited entertainment options, “but there were plenty of games around.” MbS and the kingdom’s leadership picked up on the popular hobby and asked, “How do you take a consumption passion and turn it into a productive capacity,” Tamer explains. The answer was Savvy Games (the PIF-backed gaming platform) and investments in organizations like the Esports Foundation.

The aim in Riyadh is to see the Arab world not just consuming Western IP, but exporting games to the world. How that happens is ultimately in the hands of the studios, Tamer says, but he thinks that where there’s a strong player base, more studios will sprout. PIF-backed Savvy is on track to become a key player in the global games industry, he argues, pointing to its investments in existing studios, developing games and events, and supporting young people with interests in the games industry. Savvy is home to USD 12 bn in games stocks transferred from PIF; it bought earlier this year mobile developer Moonton Games for an estimated USD 6 bn and acquired mobile publisher Scopely for USD 4.9 bn in 2023.

“The original studios that were in the region were always producing games, but they never really gained much traction. Now, we’re seeing more and more content being produced in the region, and in particular from Saudi. It’s a waiting game, really. It’s a hit-driven industry,” Tamer notes. “My hope would be that the existing studios in the Middle East see Savvy as a partner to collaborate with, to co-develop titles and co-promote each other’s titles. Beyond that, I hope the existence of something like Savvy spurs the creation of other studios.”

Homegrown studios in MENA may have a unique competitive advantage beyond the deep pockets of sovereign backers, he suggests. “We’re the middle. We’ve been here, between the East and the West, as far as what our preferences are.” MENA players enjoy Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty (distinctly Western games), but will also devour Eastern series like Final Fantasy. Tamer would like to see more MENA-developed games that cater to the preferences of MENA gamers — and that can be exported globally.

A hit of our own? Tamer is optimistic that the MENA games industry of the future will see studios developing titles that reflect the Arab world’s diverse games palette, preferred mechanics, stories, and game styles. He imagines “a title that comes out of Saudi and explodes — that people are talking about all over the world — and it’s one of those games that gets a mn monthly active users and maintains that. That’s the big milestone.”

Until then, you won’t catch Tamer on stage at the EWC, but “if anyone wants to challenge me in Street Fighter… I’m open. Drop me a message.” Like a true gamer, Farah Tamer is always competing.