Over the last couple months, Saudi Arabia has put large investments into the gaming sphere. The biggest example of this was early this year, when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund increased its stake in Nintendo by over three percent over the course of the January and February from 5.01% to 8.26%. This increase made Saudi Arabia’s PIF the largest outside shareholder in Nintendo, however this was not their final goal. According to Bloomberg article posted earlier today, the Saudi Arabian government has now spent $38 billion to become one of the gaming hubs of the world.
Savvy Gaming Group, the fund’s subsidiary, has split their attention on two primary areas of gaming, with companies that create the games and the esports teams that draw more attention to those games. When it comes to creating games, Savvy Chief Executive Officer Brian Ward stated:
“We would like to use those investments to begin to work with these companies and ask how we can work together on publishing in (the Middle East and North Africa), run their esports businesses or develop new IP together… Part of our mandate is to help partners and other companies come to Saudi and choose Riyadh over some other place to establish a publishing business or distribution business to serve the region,”
Through this market expansion, it seems as though they are trying to spread the outreach of video games to more countries. According to analysts at Niko Partners, there are 21 million gamers in the country and the overall market is expected to grow in the Middle East and North Africa by 56% within the next few years. There is substantial interest that the Saudi Arabian government wishes to tap into while the iron is still hot.
In addition to this, they are also working towards trying to improve the esports scene of gaming through these investments. While the esports scene has suffered financial issues after 2022 with many investor and sponsorship funds drying up, Ward viewed the issue with a more optimistic lens:
“The engagement in esports is still off the hook,” Ward said. “It’s fantastic. It’s just that the monetization doesn’t match the engagement.”
Ward also hopes that there will be more areas where esports can shine in the Middle East. While there will not be any big esports acquisitions in Savvy’s future, there is something to be said about the effort they are putting in to publish and push games in the Middle East to keep them on top of the gaming market.