During the last weekend of May, a quite unusual tournament was held on CS:GO: the Gamers Without Borders, a charity event organised on multiple games, aimed at helping non-governmental organizations fight in various ways against the current COVID-19 pandemic and its sanitary, economic and social consequences. Among these NGOs were the UNICEF, the International Telecommunication Union, or the International Medical Corps.

Ultimately, 2,000,000$ were distributed among the competing teams on CS:GO - for a total of 10,000,000$ on all different games - and each team got to choose between seven NGOs to give their cash prize to. On paper, this seems like a pretty nice idea: a friendly tournament with some of the best top 15 teams in the world, money that goes to a righteous cause, love, peace, hugs and kisses for everyone. But here comes the snag: where does all that money come from, considering this is quite a large amount for such a casual online tournament?

A rather unusual list of sponsors for the Gamers Without Borders event.

On the tournament’s official website, you won’t find any of the usual sponsors whose commercials you’re used to seeing in between two maps on CS:GO’s streams. When watching GWB’s live stream, you couldn’t hear about karrigan’s career’s history by Intel for the 100th time, and you didn’t get any promotion for another random skin betting/gambling site.

That is, because the very organizer and sponsor of this event is no one other than the Saudi Arabian government, through the Saudi Federation for Electronic and Intellectual Sports (SAFEIS) itself.

We could leave it at that, and conclude that, after all, it doesn’t matter where this money comes from so long as it goes to NGOs and serves to find solutions against COVID-19. This is a defensible position if you don’t pay too much attention to the ethical aspect of it. But even considering that, still one question remains: why would Saudi Arabia organize such an event? Why would one of the most conservative and repressive dictatorship in the world invest in CS:GO, Fortnite and DotA 2? Yep, we on VaKarM - you know, that news website specialized in CS:GO’s tournaments - are going to talk about Saudi Arabian reforms, geopolitics, and international soft power.

In order to understand the reasons behind a project such as Gamers Without Borders, we need to observe things from two different perspectives. First, on an internal level for Saudi Arabia, this kind of initiative is part of a large-scale strategy aimed at operating fast-paced changes within the Saudi Arabian society by the new crown Prince, Mohammed ben Salmane. On the other side, on an external level, this is part of a global movement aimed at giving a new image of the country to the rest of the world.

When Saudi Arabia discovered what a crisis was

As you may already know, more than anyone else in the world, Saudi Arabia is the country of black gold. With such a precious amount of oil, the state-owned company that manages the deposits, Aramco, is valued at more than 3,000 billions of dollars. Thus, the country’s internal economy relies heavily on the industry, and its system has become quite unique: very generous social welfare, almost no taxation and state annuities paid in the form of fictitious public jobs are at the heart of the socio-economic contract that binds Saudi citizens to their state.

Except that for the last few years, the barrel price has kept plummeting, and this phenomenon has been sped up with the recent pandemic and the drop in energy consumption that resulted. Such losses have already led to drastic measures, with the introduction of a 15% VAT1 on every good sold within the country - a revolution throughout Saudi Arabia. Moreover, as other governments are becoming more and more aware of climatic and environmental issues, they are starting - better late than never - to look for alternatives to oil in order to reduce their current consumption. For Saudi Arabia, whose political, social and economic power relies so much on black gold, this is an apocalyptic scenario.

To face this large-scale problem, a major transformation plan has been set in motion since 2015, head speared by the current Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman: Vision 2030. The main objectives are to diversify the country’s economy, to carry out in-depth reforms of the Saudi society and to transform political structures.

He’s young, he’s charming, he’s a reformer, he kills his opponents, it’s Mohammed bin Salman (Credits : ArtNet)

Our main focus here is the reformation of society. Since his takeover, Mohammed bin Salman multiplied gesture towards his young population, which overwhelms any other segment of Arabia’s demographics : he allowed women to drive, reopened movie theaters, organized live concerts and, of course, invested in esport.

More than an altruistic gesture, such an event must be understood, in terms of internal politics, as a move to reinforce the legitimacy of a government facing an unprecedented economic crisis. The necessary fiscal austerity plan, which included the creation and the increase of the VAT mentioned above, is a hard sell among a population used to live on oil money. Those “reforms” are part of a strategy to seduce large parts of the Saudi population.

Nevertheless, in any definition of power, legitimacy doesn’t go without coercition, an idea that ben Salman is no foreigner to. He seized power by forcibly locking up the biggest fortunes of the country and ransoming them. He also increased the repression on activists, artists, intellectuals, and multiplied imprisonments and executions. Rest assured, behind the veneer of selfless charity, Saudi Arabia still is Saudi Arabia, with its torture, corruption and secret imprisonments. By participating in Gamers Without Borders, teams involved helped NGOs like UNICEF as much as they helped legitimizing bin Salman’s brutal and repressive power.

Restoring its image abroad

To understand Saudi Arabia’s communication strategy, one can look at what its hated neighbour, Qatar, did. Once a small, non-influential entity, the emirati embarked on a soft power strategy which granted them impressive international recognition. By soft power, we mean the ability of an actor (State, NGO, association, etc.) to influence other actors through non-coercive means, ie cultural, ideological or structural.

That’s exactly what Qatar has done for several years. Unable to weigh-in on the international scene through military power, the emirati invested massively, with the clear goal of acquiring influence in different sectors, such as tourism, entertainment or sports. The most obvious example is the acquisition of the Paris Saint-Germain in 2011, but we could also mention Qatar Airways sponsorships or the infamous 2022 World Cup.

Qatar’s acquisition of the PSG, an extremely efficient soft power operation (Crédits : VIPSG.fr)

So how does this relate to Saudi Arabia? Well, it’s getting there, albeit a bit later than its neighbour. One of the main goals of the Vision 2030 plan is to normalize the country’s image, which suffers from a disastrous reputation, whether it’s because of the oil price manipulation or the recurrent human rights violations.

Recently, two events attracted the world’s attention. The murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi, in which the Saudi State responsibility is now established, outraged the international community. But, above all, Saudi Arabia's direct involvement in the bloody bombardement of Houthis separatists in Yemen has been widely denounced. Convinced that the Houthis are being funded by Saudi’s arch enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, ben Salman has fully committed into massive air attacks, using recently bought western military equipment. As of today, 18 million people in Yemen lack access to water and basic health services, while 2 million children are malnourished, because of the conflict.

CS:GO, soft power and flexible ethics

For example, you could try to buy a football club as well. Rumours about a Manchester United buy-out were going around a few months ago, and, today, Saudis are very close to Newcastle. Whispers have also been talking about an Olympique de Marseille acquisition. You could even get involved in the global struggle against the current pandemic, because no one is against medical charity, right? No one would ever accuse you of being machiavellian when you’re bringing huge amounts of money to associations of general interests, only cynical and haters would oppose that.

This strategy is particularly relevant since we now know how influential gamers can be in setting political agendas and legitimizing them. Ensuring their support or, at least, their indifference, also participates in the redefinition of legitimate issues in local political contexts. It was, after all, one of the pillars of the american alt-right strategy during the Gamergate. So how about starting by organizing a massive esport competition, with commendable ambitions? We’d call it Gamers Without Borders, to remind people of well-known NGOs, that’d be a good first step.

In 2015, a similar tournament, played on LAN and invite-only, was organized on an outside setting, in Dubaï

As obvious as such a conclusion is, it’s not surprising. Between US Air Force sponsorship contracts and tournaments organized in countries like Dubaï or China, it’s been a long time since esport, and CS:GO, was identified as a potential tool of whitewashing by authoritarian regimes. Some people even talked about “esportwashing” during last year’s BLAST Pro Series that took place in Bahrain.

Same goes for the teams and tournaments organizers: one just has to look at the share of revenues coming from often shady, or even criminal, betting and trading websites to understand how they weren’t exactly bothered by ethical consideration before they accepted SAFEIS’s invitation. In other words, Saudi Arabia alone couldn’t use esports to restore its image: it is the active collaboration of the whole ecosystem (casters, streamers, paid YouTubers, players and teams) which allows the Kingdom to enact such a strategy.

Sources :

1. The "New" Saudi Arabia, Where Taxes Triple and Benefits Get Cut. Forbes. 13 mai 2020. Lien 
2. Saudi Arabia announces plan to end its "addiction" to oil. The Washington Post. 25 avril 2016. Lien
3. The paradox of Saudi Arabia social reforms. PBS. 1 octobre 2019. Lien
4. The high cost of change. Human Rights Watch. 4 novembre 2019. Lien
5. Jamal Khashoggi: All you need to know about Saudi's journalist death. BBC. 19 juin 2019. Lien
6. Yemen crisis: Why is there a war ? BBC. 10 février 2020. Lien
7. Romain Molina - Le rachat de Newcastle : choc diplomatique entre l'Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar. YouTube. 19 mai 2020. Lien
8. Steve Bannon learned to harness troll army from World of Warcraft. USA Today. 18 juillet 2017. Lien
9. BLAST Pro, Bahrain and "esportswashing". Rivalry. 13 décembre 2019. Lien