Chinese cities buy into US$5.5m ‘Olympic Games for esports’ as Alibaba strengthens partnerships

Alibaba will seek to break even with their second World Electronic Sports Games tournament after the e-commerce giant pumped in around 150 million yuan into the inaugural series, which aspires to becoming the Olympic Games for esports.

Wang Guan, esports general manager at Alisports, which is the sports arm of Alibaba, said the preliminary phase of the second World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) was already under way in 20 cities across China ahead of the finals which are set to take place early next year.

Wang said the first tournament, which claims to have involved players from over 120 countries, cost the company in the region of 150 million yuan (HK$173 million) after culminating with the finals in Shanghai in January 2017.

“We lost about 60 to 70 per cent of that lump of money,” he said. “But we reached about four million players.”

He said the cost this year had been reduced by around 73 per cent because, rather than organising the championship itself, Alisports has switched to partnering with host cities.

“We had over 30 applicant cities and we ended up with 20 cities for this year,” he said. “We provide the prize money and most of the working staff. The cities chip in to host their local games.”