Riot Games ends partnership with Saudi city Neom for a League of Legends tournament, after criticism of the deal due to the country's poor human rights record
Nicole Carpenter / Polygon :
Context & Ripple Effects
In July 2020, Riot Games walked away from a League of Legends tournament partnership with Neom, the flagship Saudi megacity project, after players and staff criticized the deal over the kingdom's human rights record. At that point, Saudi Arabia was still courting Western game companies one partnership at a time.
The related coverage shows what happened next: rather than depending on publishers like Riot, the kingdom committed $38B to becoming a global gaming and esports hub by 2030, bought into major game companies through its PIF, and launched its own Riyadh-based Esports World Cup with a record prize pool — a scale critics now frame as sportswashing through hosting rather than partnering.
First-order effects
- Riot forfeits the Neom sponsorship revenue and branding for the tournament, while the player and employee backlash that forced the exit sets an internal precedent that community pressure can kill such deals.
- Neom loses a marquee Western esports brand association at a moment when the megacity project was using gaming events to build international legitimacy.
Second-order effects
- Other publishers considering Saudi sponsorship face the same litmus test — any deal now carries a predictable backlash risk that pricing must account for.
- Saudi Arabia's response, visible in the later coverage, is to stop renting legitimacy from Western tournament operators and instead fund its own events and acquire equity in gaming companies directly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, influence in esports shifts from partnership deals — which communities can veto — to ownership of teams, events, and infrastructure, where public backlash has less purchase.
- Esports governance becomes contested terrain between Western publishers guarding brand trust and sovereign wealth-funded organizers offering larger prize pools, forcing every publisher to choose which side of that line it stands on.
The trend: Saudi Arabia is moving from buying partnerships with Western game companies to building sovereign-owned esports infrastructure, with community backlash acting as the main check on each approach.