Who owns what: PIF, Savvy Games Group and Qiddiya in esports

Saudi money reaches esports through several doors at once. A fan watching a Counter-Strike event, a Mobile Legends: Bang Bang final, a fighting game bracket in Las Vegas or an Apex Legends match can be looking at a company held, funded or co-owned by a Saudi entity, and the names on the screen rarely say which one. The tournament organizer, the event's sponsor, the game's publisher and the body that pays clubs to take part can each sit in a different branch of the same tree.

This guide maps that tree as it stood in early October 2026. It starts with the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund at the top, then follows each branch that touches esports: Savvy Games Group and its companies, Qiddiya and the Evo tournaments, the Esports Foundation and its Esports World Cup, and the take-private of Electronic Arts. For each one it separates three things that are easy to confuse: what is owned outright, what is a minority investment or a partnership, and what has been agreed but not yet completed. It reports ownership as the companies and their filings state it, and leaves the reasons behind the strategy to the parties themselves.

The Esports Advocate, August 5, 2026, on the Electronic Arts closing of August 4; Esports Foundation release, May 27, 2026; Savvy Games Group company page.

The fund at the top of the tree

The Public Investment Fund, known everywhere as PIF, is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia: a state-owned investment vehicle that buys and builds companies at home and abroad. Its chairman is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the fund's own release of January 2022 states.

PIF does not appear on a tournament poster. It works through companies it creates or backs, and each of them carries its own name. In the boilerplate attached to Electronic Arts' closing announcement of August 4, 2026, PIF describes the gaming and esports industry as one of its priority sectors.

That priority sits inside a national plan. According to a PIF article of January 30, 2025, the National Gaming and Esports Strategy was launched in 2022 by the Crown Prince with targets that include incubating 250 companies and creating 39,000 jobs. The same article presents Savvy Games Group as a company created by PIF to drive the long-term growth of the global games and esports industry.

Four branches of that effort reach the competitive scene directly. The table sets them side by side before each one is taken in turn.

Savvy Games Group, the main holding

Savvy Games Group is the branch that owns the most of the scene. PIF launched it on January 25, 2022, in a release that also announced the acquisition of two esports companies, ESL and FACEIT, and their merger into one. The release named the Crown Prince as Savvy's chairman and said the closing of those transactions was subject to regulatory approvals.

Savvy's own homepage describes the company as backed by its shareholder, the Public Investment Fund, and Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Education called it a wholly owned subsidiary of PIF in its release of February 9, 2026. Savvy's company page carries the PIF logo but gives no percentage of ownership. Savvy calls itself a global games and esports company and says it pursues its aims through acquisitions, investments and commercial ventures.

The company page groups its holdings into business units, which it controls, and investments, in which it holds a stake. The units are three.

• ESL FACEIT Group, the tournament organizer and competition platform described in the next section.
• Scopely, a mobile games company whose franchises include Monopoly Go, Stumble Guys, Star Trek Fleet Command and Yahtzee With Buddies. Savvy's page says Scopely acquired Niantic's games business in 2025, including Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now. Savvy bought Scopely itself in 2023 for US$4.9 billion, The Esports Advocate reported in February 2026.
• Steer Studios, a game development company based in Riyadh, led by Yannick Theler.

The investments listed are two. Savvy put US$1 billion into Embracer Group, the Swedish games and media holding company, in 2022. And it lists a US$265 million investment in Hero Esports, which its page describes as the largest esports company in Asia and as formerly known as VSPO.

Savvy also lists a sponsorship rather than a stake: it was a partner of Al Hilal, the Saudi football club, for three seasons from 2023 to 2026. The company page says Savvy operates from 29 offices in 22 countries.

ESL FACEIT Group, the organizer in the family

For a fan of competitive games, ESL FACEIT Group is the Savvy company with the most visible footprint. It names three brands on its own homepage: ESL, the tournament organizer behind the Intel Extreme Masters events; FACEIT, a platform where players find matches and run competitions online; and DreamHack, a festival that mixes tournaments with gaming culture. Savvy's company page names its chief executive, Niccolo Maisto, a co-founder of FACEIT, and credits the platform with more than 30 million users.

The organizer gives its own figures for 2025: a social reach of 287 million fans and 266 million hours of its content watched, China included. Savvy's page credits the group with more than 2.1 billion content hours watched since it was formed.

Its events give a sense of scale. The IEM Cologne Major in June 2026 drew 67,000 fans from more than 75 countries over nine days, the organizer said after the event. ESL FACEIT Group also works on events beyond its own circuits: in February 2026 it was named official production partner of the Call of Duty League Championship, the season finale of the league that belongs to Activision Blizzard.

The organizer's ties to the other Saudi-backed branches are stated by Savvy itself. Savvy's homepage says ESL FACEIT Group operates the Esports World Cup, and the organizer's own homepage carries the event's figures among its achievements: more than US$70 million in prize pools, about 2,500 players and staff and 25 tournaments over seven weeks. The Esports World Cup is organized by a separate body, the Esports Foundation, described further down.

Moonton, an agreement signed in March

The largest esports-related deal Savvy has announced in 2026 concerns a publisher. On March 20, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Savvy had agreed to buy Moonton, the studio behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, from ByteDance, the Chinese group best known for TikTok. People familiar with the terms told the agency the deal values the studio at US$6 billion; Reuters' own source put the valuation at more than US$6 billion. ByteDance had bought Moonton in 2021 at a value of US$4 billion.

Brian Ward, Savvy's chief executive at the time, said, according to Reuters, the deal would strengthen the group's position in mobile games. Moonton's chief executive, Zhang Yunfan, told staff in an internal memo, reviewed by Bloomberg, that the transaction was expected to be finalized in the near future and that the management team would stay in place.

The esports weight of the deal comes from one game. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a mobile MOBA, a multiplayer online battle arena in which two teams of five fight over one map, and Moonton runs its own circuit: national leagues called MPL, the Mid Season Cup, and the M World Championship. The M7 final in January 2026 peaked at 5.6 million viewers, Esports Insider reported, quoting the data firm Esports Charts.

Until a closing is announced, Moonton belongs to ByteDance. The difference matters for the map: if the deal closes, the same fund would stand behind the publisher of a game, the organizer of several of the scene's main circuits and the body that funds the event where that game's Mid Season Cup is played.

Who runs Savvy

Leadership is part of the map, because the person at the top of Savvy also holds a role at PIF. On September 1, 2026, Sheep Esports reported, citing Bloomberg, that Brian Ward was stepping down as Savvy's chief executive after joining the company in 2021, and that Turqi Alnowaiser would serve as interim acting chief executive. Savvy's company page lists him in that role and gives his other one: deputy governor and head of international investments at PIF.

The rest of the executive team listed on the page includes Jesse Meschuk, chief operating officer, who previously worked at Blizzard and Activision; Amr Sager, group chief of staff; and David Phipps, chief internal audit officer. The heads of the units sit on the same page: Walter Driver and Javier Ferreira as co-chief executives of Scopely, Niccolo Maisto for ESL FACEIT Group and Yannick Theler for Steer Studios.

At board level, Savvy's vice chairman, Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, represented the company when it signed three education agreements with the Ministry of Education in February 2026, according to the ministry's release.

Savvy at home: schools, talent and partnerships

Besides the Moonton agreement, Savvy's announcements in 2026 have been mostly domestic agreements. On February 9, 2026, it signed three memoranda of understanding with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Education and two education bodies, covering game design in curricula, esports training for teachers and esports activities in schools. A memorandum of understanding states what two parties intend to do together; none of the three carried a budget or a timetable.

The company's news page shows how the year went on. On May 6, Savvy announced a partnership with Roblox to support the Saudi games ecosystem. On May 14, it said its Play to Learn competition, a national game-design contest for high school students run with the ministry, had closed with more than 719,000 participants. Partnerships on artificial intelligence tools followed on June 29, a memorandum with King Salman Science Oasis and a games camp on July 2, a memorandum with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on August 31, and memoranda with Gosu Academy and Warpzone AI Labs on September 3.

None of these is an ownership change: each is a partnership or a memorandum, and none moves a company into or out of the group.

Qiddiya, RTS and the Evo tournaments

The second branch runs through a place rather than a holding company. Qiddiya is a mega-city project backed by PIF, The Esports Advocate writes, planned around theme parks, race tracks, sports and esports venues, concert halls and hotels. PIF's article of January 2025 describes its Esports and Gaming District as part of a plan for the world's first gaming city, with targets of 10 million visitors a year by 2030 and 30 leading game development companies incubated there.

Qiddiya's route into competition is the Evolution Championship Series, the fighting game tournament known as Evo. The chain was built in steps over five years.

The last step was reported by The Esports Advocate on February 19, 2026. NODWIN Gaming, the India-based esports and festival company, sold its stake to RTS for an undisclosed amount and kept a marketing role. The outlet's editor's note makes the legal point that matters here: the equity was bought by RTS, not by Qiddiya directly. Evo is therefore owned by RTS, which is owned by Qiddiya, which is backed by PIF.

Evo answered with a plan on February 23. Its existing events in the United States, Japan and France, and the one announced for Singapore, would keep their format and investment level; new events would come from 2027 in Brazil, Morocco, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and China; and a Fighting Game World Championship across several games would be held in the United States or Japan. Sony, which sold its stake in August 2025, remains a global sponsor of Evo through 2028 under the agreement announced then.

The Esports Foundation and its World Cup

The third branch does not own a team, a game or an organizer. It funds and organizes. The Esports Foundation is the body behind the Esports World Cup, the multi-game summer event, and PIF funds it, The Esports Advocate reported in August 2026. The same outlet said the body was renamed from the Esports World Cup Foundation in February 2026 by a decision of the Saudi cabinet. Its chief executive is Ralf Reichert.

The 2026 edition shows the size of the program. The event moved from Riyadh to Paris, a change the foundation confirmed on May 20, and on May 27 it named Paris Expo Porte de Versailles as its venue, from July 6 to August 23, with a prize pool of US$75 million across 25 competitions.

The foundation also pays clubs directly. Its Club Partner Program, in its third edition in 2026, puts US$20 million behind 40 clubs, with up to US$1 million for a single club, under a funding and marketing agreement tied to the event. A club, in the foundation's vocabulary, is an organization that fields teams in several games. Its second competition, the Esports Nations Cup for national teams, was due to start in Riyadh in November 2026; on August 18 the foundation postponed the first edition to November 2027.

This is the branch most fans meet, and the one where ownership is least direct. The Club Partner Program is a funding and marketing agreement under which a club is paid to grow and activate its audience around the event, and no club holds a permanent place: every participating club has to apply again each year.

Electronic Arts, the buyout that closed

The fourth branch is the newest and the largest in money. On August 4, 2026, Electronic Arts announced that its acquisition by PIF, the investment firm Silver Lake and Affinity Partners had closed. Each EA share was converted into US$210 in cash, and the stock stopped trading on the Nasdaq exchange. The Esports Advocate put the deal at about US$55 billion and reported that stockholders had approved it on December 22, 2025, at a price that was a 24.8% premium to the close of September 25, 2025.

PIF did not arrive as a newcomer. In the closing announcement, Turqi Alnowaiser, the fund's deputy governor, recalled that PIF had been a minority investor in the company for more than five years. Rather than selling those shares, PIF contributed 24,807,932 of them, worth roughly US$5.21 billion at US$210 each, to an indirect parent of the acquiring company in exchange for equity, according to an amended ownership filing of August 5 reported by The Esports Advocate. This exchange is called a rollover: the holder keeps its position and moves it into the new owner.

The closing announcement names three buyers, so EA is described here as owned by a consortium in which PIF is one of three members. EA is also not a Savvy company: it sits beside Savvy under PIF, not inside it.

For esports, EA's portfolio is what counts. Its closing announcement lists, among its brands, EA Sports FC and Apex Legends, two titles of the 2026 Esports World Cup.

Reading the map: owned, invested, funded, signed

Put together, the branches describe five different relationships, and each one carries different weight for a team, a player or a rival organizer.

Owned. ESL FACEIT Group, Scopely and Steer Studios, which Savvy lists as its business units, and Evo, fully owned by RTS and so by Qiddiya. Here the Saudi-backed entity holds the company itself.

Owned through a consortium. Electronic Arts, acquired by PIF together with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners.

Minority investment. Savvy's US$1 billion in Embracer and US$265 million in Hero Esports. A minority stake gives a seat at the table at most, not control of the company.

Funded under contract. The Esports Foundation's payments to clubs and its prize money, and sponsorships such as Savvy's partnership with Al Hilal. Money flows, but no ownership changes hands.

Agreed, not closed. Moonton, until a completion is announced.

The same caution applies to any new item on the map. A memorandum of understanding is a statement of intent; an agreement binds buyer and seller to terms; a closing transfers the company. The parties' own announcements say which of the three has happened, and a headline that says "buys" can describe any of them.

The scene's Saudi links are not one deal but five kinds of relationship, and each one has to be read for what it actually transfers.

What comes next on the calendar

Several dated steps already announced will change or confirm parts of this map. On the Moonton agreement, a closing announcement by Savvy or ByteDance would move the publisher from the signed column to the owned one. Evo has promised the details of its Fighting Game World Championship and of its support program for local organizers during 2026, and its new events in five countries from 2027.

For the Esports Foundation, the next fixed date is the first Esports Nations Cup in November 2027, and its Club Partner Program works on yearly applications, so the list of funded clubs is set again each year. ESL FACEIT Group has its own calendar published: IEM Beijing from November 2 to 8, 2026, and IEM Cologne 2027 from August 4 to 15, 2027.

At Savvy, the company page shows an interim acting chief executive; a permanent appointment would be announced by the company.

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