‘A fat L for people who care about sportswashing’

A recent town hall for North American League of Legends and Valorant broadcast talent¹ hosted by Riot Games — during which the developer previewed to the assembled casters and analysts its decision to enter a three-year partnership with the Saudi-owned and run Esports World Cup — raised major questions about the deal, said several attendees.

Chief among those questions:

First: How Riot intends to handle apparent Saudi interest in hosting a Valorant Game Changers event. Game Changers is Valorant’s competitive circuit for women and marginalized genders. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is considered hostile to LGBTQ+ people by reputable human rights groups, and women in the country are subject to onerous legal restrictions. Though Game Changers will not be a part of the 2025 Esports World Cup, Saudi interest in the event — in the form of an internal ESL FACEIT Group document listing Game Changers as an expected part of the 2025 Esports World Cup lineup — was first reported in this newsletter. (The ESL FACEIT Group, a tournament organizer also owned by the Saudis, is the “official operating partner” of the Esports World Cup.) That interest does not appear to have waned, and several attendees at the town hall described Riot’s answers to questions about the future of Game Changers as evasive and laden with jargon.

In a statement Tuesday, a Riot Games spokesperson reaffirmed that the company does “not have immediate plans for Game Changers. However, if we see a strong demand for Game Changers participants and stakeholders in multiple regions we would take it under consideration for future planning.”

And also: Whether talent will be penalized for speaking out against or creating content critical of the Esports World Cup or Saudi Arabia. On the call, Riot’s representatives stressed that broadcast talent would not be compelled to participate in the new partnership. Advertisements for the EWC will run during commercial breaks and won’t involve on-air callouts from casters or analysts. Likewise, Riot’s representatives said participation in the Esports World Cup is entirely optional and won’t impact hiring decisions around official Riot-run Valorant events. However, some of the town hall attendees noted with alarm that Riot had introduced clauses to their contracts in 2025 prohibiting the creation of content with social or political commentary² , or content that disparages Riot’s sponsors (which now appears to include the Esports World Cup).³

A Riot Games spokesperson told ReaderGrev Tuesday that “talent contracts are related to their work during broadcast. How they choose to engage on their channels outside of their work with Riot is completely up to them.”

Since that call, talent have privately expressed their frustration, characterizing the decision as driven by “greed.” But whether and in what form a response comes together remains to be seen.

On Monday, Feb. 10, the day of the town hall, Riot announced that it would be licensing League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics and Valorant to the Esports World Cup for three years. In addition, Riot will advertise the Saudi-run tournament series during its broadcasts for international events, starting with the Masters Bangkok Valorant tournament that kicks off Thursday. The advertisements will include “rotating logo placements during play and video ads between matches,” according to Riot’s statement about the deal.

The town hall began with a discussion of Riot’s statement, and then opened up for a Q&A. People on the Zoom call asked about (among other things) whether the ads would require direct participation from talent; whether Riot believed the addition of a tournament in the middle of the official competitive calendar might exacerbate burnout; and whether money from the advertising portion of the deal with the EWC would be funneled back toward the broadcast, teams or players.

“A lot of questions were being asked to understand how we could not be involved at all with the advertisements about EWC,” one attendee said of the town hall.

Another person on the call described the back-and-forth as professional — while noting that as independent contractors, the people present weren’t in a position to be argumentative.

Privately, after the town hall, some attendees were more forthright. “Disappointed” was a word that came up frequently. (The sources who spoke with me for this story were granted anonymity to speak candidly about private and ongoing conversations with Riot Games.)

It was an “eye roll session,” said one person, describing the call as “bogged down by corporate lingo justifications for [Riot’s] greed, feigning that it’s all for the betterment of the league circuit, orgs, players, and fans.”

“I think it's rank greed, frankly, that’s driving this decision,” said another. “Not just from Riot, but from the teams as well, because the teams are some of the largest beneficiaries of this kind of stuff.”

“I would describe this entire situation,” they added, “as a fat L for people who care about sportswashing.”

The answers around Game Changers⁴ were particularly dispiriting, said several attendees. Riot’s representatives on the call repeatedly used what two attendees described as insensitive phrasing when answering questions about the circuit.

“Out of touch to an unbelievable degree,” said one of those attendees.

An aside:

Maybe you’re reading this and wondering: What is sportswashing and why should I gaf? Sportswashing is a practice by which companies or states distract from internal controversies or bad behavior by investing in sports. This benefits them in several ways: A bad actor can effectively buy positive media coverage by hosting a successful sporting event or sponsoring a winning team. They also integrate over time into whatever sporting ecosystem they’ve entered, making them harder to purge if they transgress. It’s difficult to isolate and punish a bad actor if they own a soccer team, a golf league, an airline, are invested in dozens of major international companies, etc.

As I mentioned earlier, Saudi Arabia is considered unsafe for LGBTQ+ people, and women in the country are subject to entirely different and more burdensome laws than men. That said, it flatters the reputation of a country like Saudi Arabia to host events like the Esports World Cup, which are designed to be broadly safe and attractive to foreign tourists. Multiple people have told me that they enjoyed their stay in Riyadh for the 2024 Esports World Cup, and while I don’t doubt them, I also don’t particularly trust their perspective. They’ve been fooled by Saudi Disney World. How much insight can the cossetted, catered-to guest really have into working conditions at the park?

As I’ve written before, hosting events that feature best in class accommodations — and even some compromises to liberal sensibilities — are exactly the sorts of things that launder the Kingdom’s reputation. And in the end, the people who suffer aren’t Westerners. Consider just this most recent example: A week ago, the BBC revealed that a Saudi trans woman who died by suicide in 2023 was effectively tricked by a Saudi lawyer linked to the Kingdom’s embassy in Washington DC into leaving the United States and returning to Saudi Arabia. The plot, the BBC notes, was facilitated by a collaborator in DC: an American private investigator who, under false pretenses, introduced the woman to the Saudi lawyer whose handiwork would eventually lead to her death.

If you want to learn more about sportswashing, I put together a short reading list, linked below, with some articles that might be helpful. I did all the Googling for you. To read it, just subscribe. (It’s free!)

Ok, back to the reporting.

With Masters Bangkok drawing nearer, conversations with global talent suggest an organized response isn’t imminent. Attitudes toward the EWC partnership differ between regions and even on an individual basis within regions, multiple people said.

“It seems there are not enough people interested in making a stand,” said one person. Though a “majority” dislikes what’s happening, they added, people are “hesitant to do anything without more support.”

Riot’s insistence that all EWC-related work would be optional likely assuaged some people’s immediate concerns.

“I just zoned out the whole conversation,” said one town hall attendee. “When they said that it was fully optional for casters to participate … it was good enough for me to just shut off whatever they were trying to sell to me. I didn’t need to hear any of the shilling.”

“I just wanna compartmentalize everything from KSA,” the attendee added, “and focus on what little is still alright to work in this industry.”

The door remains open for a response in the longer term — though what form it takes and where it originates remains to be seen.

“There is an appetite for organization,” one person said. “But it's not strong enough yet.”

Thanks for reading ReaderGrev! If you have a tip related to the Esports World Cup, Riot Games or something else entirely, I can be reached at mikhail (at) readergrev (dot) com.

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1. A similar town hall was held for EMEA talent at a different time.

2. One source called this clause “particularly pernicious,” adding that if they “wanted to speak on stream advocating for pro-trans sentiment because of people harassing a [trans] player … that would be against this clause.”

3. Wow! The rare double footnote! I was looking at some old coverage of Saudi acquisitions in the video game and esports industries; this story by Lewis Gordon in The Verge is a great primer (and not just because I’m quoted in it). There’s a pertinent quote toward the end from Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He tells Gordon, referring to non-disparagement clauses and self-censorship: “Anywhere that Saudi Arabia is spending any amount of money lately, there are always strings attached. It’s never just a pure business investment. … It’s hard for me to imagine that gaming is any different … At the very least, they’re buying silence. … If you’re a mid-level manager, or a programmer, you’re probably going to self-censor because you want to avoid an awkward conversation with your boss.”

4. In December, Riot Games flatly denied that the 2025 Esports World Cup would include a Game Changers event in a statement to this newsletter. Before this public denial, however, several sources told ReaderGrev that rumors had been circulating among staff at major esports organizations involved in the Valorant ecosystem that there would be a women’s Valorant event at the Esports World Cup in 2025. Some of those sources expressed concern that the prospect of a women’s event hosted in Riyadh might dissuade some organizations from hiring trans players. I want to be clear about what I’m saying: There is no public proof that this actually happened. But even the presence of these rumors is important to point out here, because it offers an interesting test of the degree to which Riot is actually committed to the advancement of women and players of marginalized genders in esports. Hypothetically: If a team’s general manager hears enough rumors that there’s going to be a women’s event at the Esports World Cup, and attending the event is a priority for their organization, that GM may consider it prudent to avoid trialing trans athletes for their Game Changers roster. Could Riot rule-and-regulate its way out of a situation like this one if they can’t commit to withholding the Game Changers license from Saudi Arabia?