The head of a new multibillion-dollar gaming conglomerate backed by the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund says it’s a real business — and not a reputation booster for the controversial kingdom.
Driving the news: The Savvy Gaming Group burst into public view in January with an announcement from the country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) that the new entity had purchased esports organizations ESL and Faceit for $1.5 billion.
“I'm not over there on an image makeover project,” Savvy’s CEO Brian Ward, a former top executive at EA and Activision, told Axios in an in-person interview on Wednesday, waving off the idea that the project was the gaming equivalent of so-called “sportswashing.”
The Savvy project was developed over the last two years and incorporated this past November, Ward says, with “keen interest from the Crown Prince” Mohammed Bin Salman, who chairs the company’s board.
The group’s sprawling ambitions, as described by Ward, span a range of gaming sectors, including building gaming venues, a studio to make games, an incubator for developing gaming in Saudi Arabia, an esports company and an investment fund.
The enterprise is inherently controversial, given its ties to Saudi Arabia and its close affiliation with the Crown Prince.
Savvy got a grilling from employees of the esports companies they recently acquired, Ward says.
Many American companies that had shunned the kingdom after Khashoggi’s killing have warmed to it again, perhaps emboldened by the U.S. government’s refusal to sanction the Saudis. The PIF invests in numerous U.S. firms.
The bottom line: Savvy has the money to make big moves, allowing Ward to describe ambitions that include building 300 gaming venues in Saudi Arabia in five years.
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