Q&A With Turki Alfawzan, CEO of the Saudi Esports Federation (SEF)

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The journey of the federation since it was established has been significant. I always had big dreams to do something great, but you’re never certain of the chances of that vision and ambition being fully realized – now what I’m seeing, however, is beyond my expectations. It’s perfect.

What challenges have you faced along the way?

The biggest challenge we faced in the beginning was how to fulfil the demands of basically two thirds of the Saudi Arabian population. The community is incredible. Whenever we do any tournaments, they sell out in a minute. The audience demand is significant.

So that’s why we started thinking about scaling up whatever we’re doing to fulfill that demand and need. And since then, we started with the real challenges, how to make this bigger and satisfy the players, the teams, the audience, the community, and the gaming and esports industry. It has been a period of exponential growth. Scaling up is the biggest challenge we faced since we started, and without the support from the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, we couldn’t have achieved what we are achieving today.

What key milestones and achievements has the federation reached since its formation?

If we look at the esports scene back in 2017, it was almost nothing. We had two teams, a single digit number of players, and almost zero tournaments a year. Now we have a very aggressive calendar. Almost every single weekend we have a minimum of one esports tournament. In Gamers8, we have the biggest gaming and esports festival worldwide. All the professional players are coming from all over the world to compete in Saudi Arabia and this positively is impacting the esports ecosystem significantly.

Do you believe that gaming and esports can bring the world together?

Absolutely. This is happening already. Look at the period during the pandemic. We came up with Gamers Without Borders, the largest charitable esports event worldwide, in the middle of the lockdown as an initiative to create content, to engage with the community, gamers, and fans all over the world. The donation and charity element supported people who were impacted by COVID19 – and you quite simply cannot do anything like that unless you have the gaming and esports industry right behind you. So, absolutely – we have proved that gaming and esports can bring the world together.

How do you see the role of the federation in the future? What’s next? What’s the vision?

We are lucky that we’re not only executing a SEF strategy, but we are also part of the National Gaming and Esports Strategy. We have 20 different entities participating and executing with us towards the future of gaming and esports, and not only in the Kingdom, but globally.

What’s cooking in the kitchen is much, much more than what we have today. And this is just the beginning.