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RIYADH: Emmy Award-winning director R.J. Cutler is no stranger to esports.

As part of the inaugural Esports World Cup in Riyadh in 2024, the American filmmaker showcased the competition’s athletes and their stories in the five-part documentary “Esports World Cup: Level Up,” streaming on Prime Video.

Cutler’s series delves deep into the lives of these elite players, revealing the dedication, skill and passion that drive them, offering a platform to connect with a global audience. 

During his visit to Riyadh, Cutler discussed the significance of the Esports World Cup.

“The Esports World Cup is incredibly impactful because esports is still new and emerging on the global stage,” Cutler said. “To see the way ����ֱ�� and the Saudi people have gathered around the Esports World Cup is amazing, to see the infrastructure that’s been built is extraordinary, and everything around it is mind-blowing.”

By highlighting the human stories and showcasing Esports World Cup Foundation’s significant investment in the gaming and esports industry, Cutler believes the series is able to reach new audiences and showcase how the Esports World Cup is changing people’s lives.

“One of the things we hoped to do, and we were successful in doing, was making the show accessible to everybody whether you were a fan of esports, or not.

“It’s a human sport and that’s what we wanted to show (the audience), we wanted to reflect exactly what we experienced ourselves first-hand in Riyadh.”

Growing from a niche sport to a global phenomenon, the Esports World Cup had elevated the esports and gaming industry, added prestige, provided a global platform for teams and players to thrive, while fostering a community of passionate fans from across the world. 

“The cliche of what a gamer is, is totally defined by the Esports World Cup, it’s as broad a sport as any sport there is and with every single player you have a different extraordinary story, that’s what we see in Level Up,” Cutler said.

“Humanizing the esports industry was our whole objective, we tell human stories and we’re making real films. We want the audience to connect with other people and to project themselves into the scenario so that anybody playing games at home can think that ‘I could be there, that could be me.’

“The series showcases a full range of human stories, it’s character-driven, it’s emotional, it’s dramatic; we want you to laugh, cry and stomp your feet and in season one that was definitely happening.”

The Esports World Cup is a key pillar of ����ֱ��’s Vision 2030 initiative, and a significant part of the Kingdom’s national gaming and esports strategy, which aims to foster talent development, establish a world-class gaming and esports ecosystem, and support economic diversification. The goal is to create 39,000 jobs and contribute $13.3 billion to ����ֱ��’s economy by 2030.

The inaugural Esports World Cup was a watershed moment, as the world’s best players converged in Riyadh to compete across the most popular games and win their share of a record-breaking prize pool, but in 2025 things are bigger, better and bolder.

Competing for a $70-plus million prize pool, the largest in esports history, more than 2,000 players, from 200 clubs, representing more than 100 countries, have returned for the Esports World Cup 2025, competing across 25 tournaments and 24 games including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, League of Legends, EA FC 25, Rocket League, and PUBG Battlegrounds.

The event runs until Aug. 24, and is held alongside the Esports World Cup Festival, a celebration of esports and gaming culture that features interactive experiences, live performances, competitions and global cuisine, facilitating cultural exchange and showcasing ����ֱ��’s cultural heritage to global visitors.

For 2025, the prize pool has grown, ticket sales and visitor numbers have swelled, and its global appeal has increased exponentially, bolstered by the addition of Cristiano Ronaldo as the global ambassador and a live performance from Post Malone at the opening ceremony.

“There was a $60 million prize pool last year, more than $70 million this year, this incredible infrastructure has sprouted up around it, the passion of the audiences and those following all of the teams is amazing,” Cutler said.

“The Esports World Cup is something that you really have to experience to believe it.”

BERBER, Sudan: In the Sudanese town of Berber, hundreds of kilometers away from the frontlines of war, a modest stadium seems to shake with the roar of football fans jumping to their feet.

“It’s a wonderful feeling, it’s indescribable, to see this beautiful return,” football fan Ahmed Taj told AFP from the sidelines of the penultimate league match between newly-crowned champions Al-Hilal and Hay Al-Wadi.

“We’re so happy to see Al-Hilal come back, to see Sudanese football come back, after everything we’ve lost in the past two years,” he added.

Since April 2023, war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed tens of thousands and made Sudan the scene of the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.

But for a few hours each week in July, the country seemed to pause during match time, a welcome respite for a population buffeted between mass displacement, starvation and death.

The first Sudan Elite League in two years was held in River Nile state, about 300 kilometers (185 miles) northeast of the war-ravaged capital Khartoum.

In small stadiums in the cities of Atbara, Berber and Al-Damer, teams faced off on pitches streaked with massive brown patches as dozens of fans cheered from the bleachers.

Despite Atbara’s power stations and army bases coming under drone strikes — most recently last month — the area is still considered safer than Khartoum.

The season reached its climax on Tuesday as the country’s favorite teams — rivals Al-Hilal and Al-Merrikh — met in a title-deciding match-up.

Al-Hilal claimed victory and finished top of the table, with second-placed Al-Merrikh also qualifying for the African Champions League.

For Al-Hilal’s celebrated captain and national team striker Mohamed Abdel Rahman, playing on Sudanese soil, even if not on his home turf in the capital, was thrilling.

“We’re so happy to be home, playing in front of our fans,” he told AFP on the pitch before kick-off in the crucial encounter with Hay Al-Wadi last Wednesday.

Both Al-Hilal and Al-Merrikh had been forced to compete abroad, participating in the Mauritanian league last season.

Al-Hilal reached the quarter-finals of this year’s African Champions League, cheered on from afar by street celebrations back home.

“We’re giving our all to make our fans happy, to offer some joy,” the forward added.

But not everyone can go home.

All but one of this year’s eight competing teams — down from the usual 24 — are based in cities under army control.

Hay Al-Wadi hail from the South Darfur state capital Nyala, under paramilitary control and regularly targeted by military air strikes.

Sudan’s vast western Darfur region has witnessed some of the war’s worst violence, with entire displacement camps besieged, bombed and burned to the ground.

For captain Jibril Mohamed Nour, the league has been bittersweet.

“I can’t even believe it... it’s an indescribable feeling to play again,” the Darfur native told AFP before taking on Al-Hilal.

“But we miss our fans, we miss our hometown, we can only hope we’ll be able to go back soon.”

Since the war began, his team has trained in ����ֱ��, only returning weeks before the championship kicked off.

Even with some of the players out of practice and facilities hardly top-tier, Sudanese football is on the rise, according to the league’s only foreign coach, the Egyptian Shawky Gharib who helms Al-Merrikh.

“The fans are here, the players are here... as long as we can play and there’s a system in place, the infrastructure, everything can be fixed,” he told AFP.

For his part, Sudan Football Association board member Mohamed Abdel Samee beams with pride that the association “insisted on holding the championship.”

“As soon as it wraps, we’re planning next season, when we hope every team will be able to play in their hometown.”

Yet there is no end in sight to the war, and even in army-controlled areas millions suffer hunger and lack of services.