As Gulf countries continue to pursue plans to diversify their economies and unlock job creation for their relatively young populations, they are increasingly investing in the growing industry around competitive video games known as e-sports. The MENA gaming market is expected to expand by some 19% by 2025 compared to 2019, according to a June 2022 analysis by strategic consultancy RedSeer, reaching a value of $5bn. The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre estimated in a June 2023 report that the market size could reach $6bn by 2027. These projections are in line with the expansion in gaming seen in the region in 2020-21 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a trend expected to continue as existing gamers increase their spending and time spent playing, in turn bolstering ad revenue.
Deal Pipeline
Several recent deals point to the sizeable growth potential of the e-sports segment in the Gulf, as well as the region’s ambitions for harnessing its rapidly expanding popularity on the global stage to achieve domestic goals. In February 2023 Savvy Games Group, the gaming unit of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, purchased a $265m stake in China’s Tencent Holdings-backed e-sports company VSPO, becoming its largest equity holder. In February 2023 the PIF increased its share in Japanese gaming entity Nintendo from 7.08% to 8.26%, making it the largest outside shareholder in the company. These recent deals speak to the Kingdom’s broader ambitions to become a global centre for gaming and e-sports in the coming years. In September 2022 Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud launched the National Gaming and E-sports Strategy, in line with the broader Vision 2030 development roadmap, which aims to create 40,000 new jobs in the sector, have 30 games reach the top 300 and contribute $13.3bn to GDP.
Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi is looking to explore growth potential in the e-sports industry through its initiative Abu Dhabi Gaming (AD Gaming). In February 2023 Abu Dhabi signed a partnership agreement with Chinese game publishing and e-sports company SAWA Group, which specialises in the localisation of global video games. SAWA Group is set to bring its established gaming library to Arabic speakers across the MENA region through its new collaboration with AD Gaming. In addition, in December 2022 Abu Dhabi-based e-sports organisation Nigma Galaxy partnered with local real estate developer Aldar to build a training facility for the team in one of the emirate’s malls.
Oman, for its part, established the Oman Committee for Games and Electronic Sports in 2021 to advance the sultanate’s international standing in the field and regulate the industry domestically. The committee hosted the country’s inaugural games and e-sports championship event in late 2021.
Building Synergies & Local Talent
Collaboration and education are at the core of many GCC countries’ recent push into the e-sports segment. In 2017 the Saudi E-sports Federation established an academy to train professional players and develop the industry. Bahrain has also been investing in game development through regional accelerators such as Flat6Labs, which has partnered with local gaming community Unreal Bahrain to offer a bootcamp to train local talent. In addition, Bahrain Polytechnic offers a game development course to support sector growth.
AD Gaming, for example, has partnered with US company Unity Technologies, whose software has been used to develop more than 70% of the top-1000 mobile games and over 60% of all available augmented reality and virtual reality content. AD Gaming has also established a Train the Trainer programme, offering standalone courses that have instructed more than 50 professors and 500 students across universities and other academic institutions in the UAE in an attempt to develop the next generation of game developers, players and professionals. Notably, many of these training initiatives in the Gulf predate the pandemic.
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