Insider Gaming spoke to Fabian Scheuermann, Chief Games Officer at the Esports Foundation, at the Opening Press Conference of the Esports World Cup 2026.
Scheuermann discusses how the Esports Foundation selects titles for EWC, how the Esports Foundation works with publishers, and what future Esports World Cups may look like.
Insider Gaming interview with Esports Foundation Chief Games Officer Fabian Scheurmann (Originally recorded July 8 2026)
How did you build the list of games initially for the first Esports World Cup?
So our ambition was to really bring the best games together and really respect the global nature of what we’re trying to achieve here., and while you might know that different games have different regional strengths, we really tried to build up this mix.
In the end, how we are looking at different games is we look at how big the game is in terms of the esports presence, so how strong it is in terms of viewership and attendance.
The second thing is how strong the existing ecosystems are, right? Like certain games are stronger when it comes to their ecosystem presence and how many esports events they have a year, because the more players you have, the more they engage throughout the year, usually the better the ecosystem.
So what we’ve tried to do is look at this second factor as well: how strong is the ecosystem?
And last but not least, the publisher support. Some publishers are a little bit more laid back; some are super invested. And so with those three criteria, we built this initial list, went to the publishers, and started talking about it.
Some of them we’ve already partnered with for Gamers8, the predecessors of the Esports World Cup. When we tested it, most of them were on board quite quickly. So we started out with 22 tournaments.
Now we are at 25, and we are very, very happy with the partnerships, and we’ve been integrating and deepening those over the past few years.
“What we’re doing is we’re actually building deep partnerships together with them, and they support us on the marketing efforts. They integrate us deeper in-game.”
Fabian Scheuermann on how the Esports Foundation works with Publishers for the Esports World Cup
How would you identify further games to be added, and is there scope for more games?
Yes, there’s always the option to expand into more games, but in general, when we look at the 25 tournaments, what is super important to us is that every game we add really adds value to the overall tournament.
That’s why, for example, from last year to this year, we did not increase the amount of games. What we did instead was we switched out certain games that we felt were a better fit for the overall tournament.
Again, we look at those three KPIs and see how they work out, and then go into discussions with the publishers.
If you think about how to increase those more and more, what is super important is that they also, so the publishers and the players, feel like it’s something that is growing. So we look at the past year, evaluate it, and then say, OK, do we keep it?
How do you think a publisher benefits from being part of EWC? We know the incentive structure for organisations to be part of the Esports World Cup, but what does that look like from a publisher’s point of view?
So if you think about licence fees and things like that, we don’t pay them to be straight up. What we’re doing is we’re actually building deep partnerships together with them, and they support us on the marketing efforts. They integrate us deeper in-game.
And then there are, of course, some incentive structures that help them make the internal argument to ensure that we get more visibility.
But overall, I mean, they are getting a huge event. They are getting a real addition to the ecosystem, and that’s also how they perceived it, and how we perceived it straight from the start.
So the majority actually comes from the value that we create, the content that we create as a partnership together, and making this part of their circuit.
We are not taking any events away and trying to fit EWC in. No. Actually, we have 16 co-hosted events this year out of the 25 tournaments.
That means what we are doing together with them is building a joint circuit where the Esports World Cup is basically one stop and very comparable to their worlds or world championships.
So best teams, best players, life-changing prize money. So they see a lot of value just in the esports event itself.
Something I’ve noticed over the years is that more events are becoming integrated into the circuits. Is that something which is incentivised in terms of you encouraging them to make EWC part of their circuits?
Yeah. It’s actually one of the philosophies that I started out with, or the team started out with, when we did this. Why? Because it aligns interests, right?
If it’s a third-party tournament where they just give us a licence, they’re very hands-off. But what we’re actually trying to do here is to bring the esports world together, the different games, and create something bigger for the overall industry. Make it leapfrog, make it grow.
We can only do that if they are truly invested. So the thought was, how do we get them more invested? Well, by giving them stakes in the tournament.
“Similar to an Olympic framework, you can always have host city titles or host country titles.”
Fabian Scheuermann on potential additional games for International EWC iterations
There are certain events, for example, the Riot Games events, which aren’t part of that circuit. Do you have any reflections on the effect of that in terms of the ongoing discussions about the prestige of the events? And is that integration something you want to achieve in the future?
If you just look at the KPIs, yes, Worlds is still bigger than the Esports World Cup in terms of viewership, but we are very happy with the traction, right? It has always been growing by 30 to 40% year over year when it comes to League of Legends and Valorant as well, and the communities also positively benefit from that.
So, while for third parties, right, it might not be this fast acceleration, we see the community starting to discuss more, follow their teams, and be really ingrained into the tournament.
Yes, it might take longer when it’s third party, but still, we are very happy with the results, and we’ll continue to see that traction.
The event was only moved to Paris close to the event. Is there anything you’d have liked to do with this event that you couldn’t do because of that timeframe?
In general, if you look at the overall timeframe, there have been complications sometimes with visas or other things, and of course, I mean, to be brutally honest, if we would have had more time, that would have helped a lot.
Overall, we are more than 95 percent of players that we get in, but sometimes time would have helped us to make things even better.
But we are extremely happy and extremely proud of what we have achieved over this very short timeframe, and the intent was always to travel. So we had a plan ready.
Otherwise, this would have been impossible to pull off, also with the help of the government over the past eight weeks.
“We, in general, believe that men and women can compete equally, and actually, we’ve seen that for the Nations Cup, right? For Valorant, you have mixed rosters, and that is our ultimate goal. But what we cannot do is just do a women’s competition if there’s no existing ecosystem.”
Fabian Scheuermann on women’s events at the Esports World Cup
Different host cities may appreciate different esports. Say, if you hosted in South Korea, could you bring back StarCraft? Was there any concept that you could emphasize different sports if you had time to plan those things?
If we had had more time, similar to an Olympic framework, you can always have host city titles or host country titles, and that is definitely a thought that we are following. You’re mentioning StarCraft for Korea. I think that would be a really strong one.
So, yes, we are definitely looking at those things. Overall, though, our global framework of best games needs to be followed through. But if for a certain country this is the best game, we would look at how to integrate it. Maybe not necessarily into the club championship, right?
But you would still have a tournament present because an additional title always means that the clubs need to get the players, get them on board, and build their rosters, and that would also mean that if you only have a single edition of a certain game, the year after it might be very difficult.
That’s what you’ve also seen with the current Esports World Cup, that the titles that we have are really intended to stay long-term. So we don’t want to put the burden on players and clubs to just be on, off, on, off. That’s not the intent we have.
We’ve seen in the past where players have signed short-term contracts to be part of EWC because of the incentive structure for organisations to have more titles. So that’s something that you don’t really want to encourage in the long term?
Well, we want to encourage them to keep them long-term because if we now announce, and you can see on the website, certain titles are there until 2028, and the rosters are there. So that also means that they will keep the rosters.
But that’s also, if you remember the three factors, the second one was looking at the existing ecosystem. We cannot provide an existing ecosystem throughout the year, right?
The title is here maybe for five to 10 days. That’s why it’s so incredibly important that there are tournaments for them to compete throughout the year until there’s the next Esports World Cup. For example, at the Esports Nations Cup.
On women’s participation, there are still a lot of events that may have enthusiastic female circuits, but aren’t at this event. Is there any possibility of having more female representation?
Absolutely. So we look at women’s tournaments pretty much the same way that we look at male competitions, and it’s super important to keep one thing in mind.
We, in general, believe that men and women can compete equally, and actually, we’ve seen that for the Nations Cup, right? For Valorant, you have mixed rosters, and that is our ultimate goal.
But what we cannot do is just do a women’s competition if there’s no existing ecosystem. That’s why we have, for example, MLBB with the MWI, and we’re incredibly proud to have that. And we actually hope that more publishers do this because they have a supportive ecosystem for the rest of the year.
So we are actively discussing with publishers how we can integrate more women. How can we create more diversity, and how can we make sure that everyone, no matter men or women, can actually compete at the highest level? So we are very open to this.
In terms of prize pool, for Dota 2, you’re now eclipsing the International this year. How is the prize pool decided for EWC events?
It’s very simple. We actually look at the Tier 1 events and try to compare them. So TI went down. So we also said we want to be at the same level as the Tier 1 events, and that’s how we compare ourselves.
So if TI actually reduces their prize money, we’ve also been looking at this because we don’t want to be three of four times the prize money TI. And that’s the rule we follow.
And that’s what we discussed with publishers as well, right? Comparing Worlds to our League of Legends tournament, comparing the MSC to their M7, M8, etc. So that’s how we go about comparing the Tier 1 prize pools to ours.
End of Interview
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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