EWC is here to stay, but sportswashing hasn't won.
Ignoring the event may only benefit the propagandists.
Marc "Caedrel" Lamont is the biggest streamer in the world — during major League of Legends events, at least. During the MSI Grand Finals in Vancouver this weekend, his stream peaked at a staggering 257k viewers, and most major esports will never get within a rounding error of his viewership during the average Los Ratones game in the NLC. He’s one of the most watched, influential, and beloved figures in esports.
Caedrel’s final MSI sign-off, caught only by eager fans at the time, set social media on fire over the coming days. After avoiding the event last year, he’s costreaming this year’s Esports World Cup (EWC), a decision that enraged and alienated many of his fans, prompting staunch supporters to lash out in turn.
For fans critical of the Saudi regime’s investment in esports over the last several years, it felt like a clear sign: The EWC has won. It’s here to stay. In the end, waves of backlash, controversy, and boycotts over the last two years were ineffective.
Caedrel's announcement, dropped off-the-cuff, seemingly without concern, was a stark contrast to fellow costreamer Christian "IWDominate" Rivera’s statement on covering the Saudi Arabian tournament. On Sunday, IWDominate tweeted that, though he was "offered an ungodly amount of money" to costream the week-long event, he "didn’t feel good about taking the offer."
For the last several years, Caedrel, as a brand and as a streamer, has been far less controversial — and far more popular — than IWDominate. To some, it's unthinkable that, despite being far wealthier, he was the one who capitulated to the Saudi government’s lucrative offer.
"The reason I never talk about politics on stream is because I never went to university — I dropped out of school. Half of my adult life has been being a pro player or being a streamer. [...] I don’t use my platform for politics."
"A lot of people criticize me for not having a stance, but that's intentional — I'm just trying to entertain, cover games, watch, play, and invest my life into League."
"[I took the money because] I worked my ass off for many years, from being completely failed to being in [this] position. [...] I don’t know what my future looks like, as a career, after League ends or streaming disappears."
"I feel like I’ve earned my own position [to decide] whether I want to take a bag or not — to decide whether or not I want to do something."
— Caedrel’s response to the controversy
In Caedrel’s eyes, beyond his financials and his position as a team owner, it was a question of whether or not to cover a competition between the best League of Legends teams in the world. As he pointed out in his response, all the biggest teams would be in attendance — ignoring an event where T1 is set to compete is no easy feat.
Given enough money, enough gentle assurances that the event would be apolitical, and enough time to stew on the decision, he cracked. For the biggest costreamer in the world — a man who loves LoL esports more than almost anyone — it's an almost understandable decision. It’s also a terrible mistake.
The EWC is a sportswashing effort funded by the Saudi Arabian government designed to launder the kingdom's reputation in the West; the biggest problem isn't covering or discussing the event, it's the fact that paid costreamers are functionally propagandists. Especially after the wave of advertisements for the tournament — from teams, publishers, and players — in the last several months, the EWC has passed the point where boycotts are meaningful, since many will watch regardless.
It may be time for a new approach: instead of ignoring the tournament, subvert its messaging directly.
The aptly-named "Blood Money Cup"
In all the fuss, a host of early-onset nihilists have rallied around an apparent contradiction: The United States and China don’t have clean records either — if every host city, corporation, and individual involved in esports was tested for moral purity, we wouldn’t have a scene left at all. Why bother?
The problem with the Esports World Cup, though, isn’t the mere fact that it’s hosted in Riyadh. The problem is why: The EWC is funded and hosted directly by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in an unambiguous effort to launder the reputation of a fascist regime.
Saudi Arabia, with its penchant for conducting extrajudicial assassinations, committing war crimes, and manufacturing human rights crises, has earned a grisly reputation in the West. An oppressive, religious-fundamentalist kingdom — no matter how rich — feels too alien to people in democratic nations with protected free speech, even if those protections aren't always effective. Led by Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the kingdom, a new generation of Saudi royals is desperate to change that global perception — even if it remains accurate.
In a set of polls by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a majority of the American public saw Saudi Arabia as a necessary partner, not an ally, with a favorability rating of 37/100. Consequently, only 23% of respondents said they would support U.S. arms sales to the country, making Saudi Arabia the least popular weapons-trading ally on the poll’s list, behind nations like Israel, Taiwan, and Turkey.
As a government that would love to buy more U.S. weapons and take advantage of U.S. diplomatic backing, Saudi Arabia needs to be seen as a modernized, friendly, progressive ally to the West. For a rentier state, it's easily worth spending hundreds of millions on an event like EWC to make that happen.
In response to backlash on the global stage, the kingdom has enacted limited reforms — marginal improvements for women’s rights and migrant labor protections, for example — while leaving many of its most damaging policies largely unchanged. The government, rife with corruption, has continued abusing its power for surveillance of and enforcement against dissidents, who often face the death penalty. Migrant workers remain exploitable as indentured servants, women retain little legal agency of their own, and queer people are criminalized across the board.
"In 2018, Saudi women were allowed to drive in the kingdom for the first time. Restrictions on travelling abroad were lightened a year later, allowing women over the age of 21 to apply for a passport and leave the kingdom without the permission of a male guardian.
And, since 2021, women have been permitted to go to Mecca to perform Hajj without a male relative, as long as they are travelling with other women."
Hosting an international esports tournament in a country where women have had the right to drive for less than a decade already feels unethical. The fact that the EWC is a sportswashing effort, a PR stunt explicitly designed to help paper over Saudi Arabia’s abhorrent civil rights record, only makes it worse.
The pet project of Crown Prince bin Salman
In 2023, Crown Prince bin Salman — dubbed "MBS" as part of his relatable millennial appeal — personally announced the inaugural Esports World Cup. Last year, he handed the tournament winners, Team Falcons, their EWC trophy on stage, in person. He’s not just the ruler of the country that happens to host EWC, he’s a key face at the heart of the event's propagandized message.
As a reminder, this is the same man who, in 2018, ordered the assassination and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. In 2023, a lengthy U.S. State Department analysis cited credible reports of "arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture [...] by government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; [and] enforced disappearance" by the Saudi Arabian government.
Saudi Arabia might’ve opened its borders to camera crews, but its tyrannical repression of its citizens remains undeterred, slightly out of frame.
When he isn’t busy violently silencing dissidents, MBS loves to wax poetic about the hypermodern future of Saudi Arabia — futuristic cities, grand sporting events, and technological advancements are all part of his grand vision. That vision is to be realized, in large part, by the $690 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund that bankrolls Saudi sportswashing everywhere from F1 and soccer to chess and golf. NEOM, the Saudi company that would’ve partnered with the LEC before a wave of backlash in 2020, is a PIF company working on an infamous megaproject: "The Line."
"[The PIF], controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has facilitated and benefited from human rights abuses."
"The crown prince has used the fund’s economic power to commit serious human rights violations and investments in foreign sporting events to whitewash the reputational harm."
"Businesses should conduct human rights due diligence before engaging with the fund and refrain from activities that would bolster the reputation of government entities or officials credibly accused of serious abuses."
— Excerpt, Human Rights Watch 2024
Though the EWC is exactly the kind of initiative that the PIF would usually fund, the tournament is instead funded by a direct grant from the Saudi Arabian government — functionally the same as receiving PIF funding — as well as a number of contracts with government-owned corporations. The tournament’s operating partner, ESL, is owned by the Savvy Games Group, which is in turn owned by the PIF outright.
On the surface, EWC does its best to minimize culture shock on air, creating an image of a progressive, modernized Riyadh that’s welcoming and safe for foreigners. There are, however, clear lines in the sand.
Though Team Liquid CEO Steve Arhancet did talk about being gay in Esports World Cup: Level Up, a documentary produced and released by the EWC, the segment was censored — and Pride logos on jerseys blurred — before the episode’s release in Saudi Arabia. When TL first announced that they’d participate in the tournament, TL co-owner Victor "Nazgul" Goossens said that they hoped to be a voice for change and progress in Saudi Arabia. That only makes the censorship sting more.
Though TL players are wearing their Pride jerseys on stage, it’s clear that the tournament organizers and the Saudi government have no intention of allowing progressive values to seep into the country. All that’s necessary is the appearance that those values are being adopted in Riyadh. The truth at EWC is, as always, immaterial.
This isn’t just a tournament that happens to take place in Riyadh, it’s a PR stunt — one of many — designed to slowly, steadily normalize perception of Saudi Arabia. These days, Dubai’s name evokes hypermodern opulence and splendor; hardly anyone’s first thought is that a homosexual relationship carries a prison sentence in the UAE.
That’s the kind of change MBS wants for Riyadh — a reinvention of perception, not of policy. As every modern superpower has learned, the consequences for war crimes and civil rights violations only matter if people know enough to hold you accountable.
If you’re interested in reading more about Saudi Arabia’s "esports-washing" efforts, the specific demographics that it targets, and its geopolitical goals, this piece by Jonathan Hofer is terrific.
How can you fight this?
At its core, the Esports World Cup is a PR stunt: More than viewership, sponsors, and, certainly, love for esports competition, the government wants the event to change how people think about Saudi Arabia. It’s a dishonest lens into a progressive, modernized Riyadh that brushes repression and bigotry temporarily out of sight.
To launder its reputation, the Saudi government can easily justify sinking hundreds of millions into something like the EWC, even if it’s a financial black hole. Any source of revenue from EWC pales in comparison to the tournament’s unbelievable prize pools, production costs, and pay rates.
Right now, an endless well of money is one of the only things capable of keeping esports afloat — it’s a match made in heaven. That means EWC is here to stay.
Already, the EWC has become a core part of circuits in a host of major titles, from DOTA 2 and Starcraft II to COD and chess. At this point, boycotts and ignorance won’t do much, because the demographic most vulnerable to sportswashing — the most politically disengaged — will continue to watch. In the past, people have argued that avoiding conversation about, coverage of, and participation in the tournament would make it go away.
At this point, with millions of viewers already having tuned into the tournament even before the League of Legends segment began, the strategy has to change. Rather than avoiding the topic outright, which only fragments people aware of Saudi Arabia’s horrific government away from those susceptible to the EWC’s implicit propaganda, there’s an argument that the most effective way to deal with it is to make all coverage incessantly critical of the Saudi regime.
If Caedrel, for example, costreamed — or live-viewed, more likely — the EWC by calling it the "Blood Money Cup," he’d have more net impact on the government’s propaganda machine than he would if he ignored the event entirely.
Even without Caedrel, it’d still jump to the top of YouTube’s algorithm, stick to the Twitch frontpage, and dominate conversations (especially in non-English-speaking circles) about esports; most people who’d otherwise tune in for a Caedrel stream will end up watching the show elsewhere without him. So, if his coverage of the tournament is unavoidably critical, it’d have a real impact.
That said, Caedrel accepted the offer to costream EWC in part because of the money he was offered — in this case, he’d have to be willing to cover the event for free. On the other hand, for those who turned down the devil’s deal, actively critical coverage may be the most ethical, effective use of their platforms.
If the average viewer or content creator ties the EWC to a conversation about Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations, oppressive domestic policies, and war crimes, they’d certainly create a marginal increase in conversation, cultural relevance, and viewership for the event. On the other hand, that’ll easily be balanced out by mitigating the event’s core goal.
Of course, this standard is absurdly idealistic — but even IWDominate’s tweet about feeling uncomfortable costreaming the event lines up with this, at least directionally. A sizable portion of his audience was introduced to the idea that EWC is immoral by a creator they trust. That effect can be replicated by anyone in esports.
At MSI, League of Legends fans saw an ad for EWC every few seconds during games, with dedicated sponsored segments between matches. Concerns about raising awareness, though valid, lose their weight once an event features the best teams in the world, gains prestige among fans, and gets promoted for months by every game publisher at the event.
In terms of viewership, EWC's LoL event could be on track to match or exceed the viewership of First Stand — clearly, a large portion of the community has no intention to ignore the tournament this year. Why not try to accomplish the next best thing?
There are a lot of reasons to oppose the Esports World Cup, but if you’re tempted to watch it anyway, if you're in communities that are discussing it, or if you have friends looking forward to the competition, you may have more of an impact by just referring to it, unceasingly, as the "Blood Money Cup." At some point, actively engaging the propaganda is worth the tradeoff of building awareness.
There’s no stopping the tide, but working to redirect it is meaningful. At the very least, it’s far better than sitting on the beach and complaining about erosion.
Love it! This is impactful article with clear unapologetic/ courageous moral stand against sports washing by KSA and the ethical dilemma of content creators who are offered 'ungodly amounts of money'.
how does it feel to be braindead