[Credit: ChatGPT]

Saudi Arabia hosted the Esports World Cup (EWC) for the second consecutive year.

The tournament commenced on July 8 in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, once again drawing esports competitors from all over the world.

This year's tournament boasts an extraordinary prize pool totalling $70 million.

In 2025, the EWC features a total of 24 events, including famous events such as League of Legends, PUBG, StarCraft II, and Overwatch.

There are four more events than last year.

One of the most intriguing additions to  this year’s lineup is chess.

Chess, a strategy board game dating back to  the 6th century, may initially seem far unrelated to Esports.

The reason why Chess could be an event in EWC is that people now play chess on the internet.

Chess has successfully migrated online via platforms such as Chess.com and Lichess, where ten million people engage in daily matches  against opponents from  around the world, allowing people to play chess anywhere against anybody.

 Recognising this global trend,  the EWC has officially adopted chess as a legitimate part of the esports arena.

The players competing in this chess event are not just amateurs.

The chess participants competing in EWC are not just amateur online chess players.

These are chess grandmasters who officially signed to real Esports teams.

For example, former world chess champion Magnus Carlsen has joined Team Liquid, a popular 

European esports team. Arjun Erigaisi, an Indian chess grandmaster, joined Gen.G, a multinational Esports team run by the US, South Korea, and China.

This marks the beginning of a trend of traditional sports athletes being integrated into the esports ecosystem.

A new paradigm is emerging,  where chess players can wear the team jerseys and interact with fans through online platforms.

Meanwhile, this year's EWC League of Legends event will feature last year's champions, T1, along with Genji and Hanwha Life Esports, representing the Korean League, the LCK. They will once again fight for the cup.

As EWC is considered to be an event cup, they had added a creative way to dramatize the competition.

The Trophy System, introduced last year, is a symbolic device that dramatizes the meaning of victory and defeat.

Every team receives their own custom “key,” inscribed with its name on it, and if they lose a match and get eliminated, they hand it over to the winning team.

The winner can then crush the key with a giant press machine to complete the victory and give the losing team a sense of defeat.

Ultimately,  the eventual tournament champion  gets to choose three of the keys and keep them permanently at the bottom of their trophy.

More than just a symbolic gesture, the performance has been hailed as a device that conveys the weight and dramatic emotion of the game to fans.

Many people say there are two main reasons why Saudi Arabia is running EWC with a massive budget, resources.

It is widely  believed that Saudi Arabia is leveraging  its considerable budget to run EWC to strengthen its soft power and to move to a position as an emerging center for Esports.