Invited teams for Esports World Cup 2024 have been announced
9 April 2024
At the moment of writing, the opening day of the upcoming 2024 Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is just a bit over three months away. The organization of the event, which has the ambition to become a major returning event on the international esports calendar, has taken this moment to reveal the names of the seven teams that have been invited to compete. They will join Spirit and Natus Vincere, who qualified through victories at IEM Katowice and the PGL Major Copenhagen respectively. At a later point, another six teams from the remaining qualifiers will be added to the roster to bring the total number of participating esports organizations to fifteen.
FaZe Clan among the invitees
The idea behind the upcoming first edition of the Esports World Cup is to gather the best esports organizations in the world and have them compete against each other in different popular titles. These include Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2, just to name two of them. The tournament will take place from July 10th, 2024, to July 14th, 2024 in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, with the Grand Finals set to be played on July 13th and 14th.
Two teams managed to qualify for the 2024 Esports World Cup already: Belgrade-based Russian organization Team Spirit after winning IEM Katowice and Ukrainian side Natus Vincere after winning the recent PGL Major Copenhagen. There are also seven spots for invited teams available and the names of those teams have now been revealed:
FaZe Clan (USA) |
Team Vitality (France) |
G2 Esports (Germany) |
Virtus.pro (Russia) |
MOUZ (Germany) |
Furia Esports (Brazil) |
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Complexity Gaming (USA) |
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“With a mix of storied PC games and some of the biggest mobile esports titles in the world, Esports World Cup captures the past, present, and future of esports”, says Ralf Reichert, CEO at the Esports World Cup Foundation, the organization behind the 2024 Esports World Cup, “StarCraft II, Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Honor of Kings are all outstanding titles for the Esports World Cup. From the games that foundationally defined this industry, to the premier mobile titles beloved by a new wave of gamers, we are building the World Cup to connect with and elevate clubs, players, fans, and the entire esports community.”
Total prize pool worth $ 45 million
With the direct need for Saudi Arabia to diversify its income away from oil, as the world looks to move away from fossil fuels, the country has identified international esports as a promising industry for the future. That is why the local government announced a prize pool of no less than $ 45 million for the 2024 Esports World Cup. At the same time, the country will also need to work on its democratic and human rights issues, as violations in both areas are still very common in the Middle Eastern nation, including the carrying out of the death penalty, the criminalization of homosexuality and the consistent refusal to acknowledge women’s rights. It will require much more than a state-of-the-art World Cup and a big prize pool to improve in these areas.