China’s AG.AL wins first Esports World Cup title

China’s AG.AL has been crowned this year’s Esports World Cup (EWC) club champion in Paris on Sunday – a first for a Chinese team – earning US$7 million in prize money after winning or placing in multiple competitions across the 25-tournament series.

French President Emmanuel Macron presented the trophy to the team at Grand Palais at the heart of the French capital. Saudi Arabia’s Team Falcons came in second, while French team Vitality rounded out the top three after more than one month of intense competition.

Due to the conflict in the Middle East, the EWC was staged in Paris this summer – the first time it has been held outside Saudi Arabia.

The event was a reminder of the growing reach of the US$4.3 billion industry, with China among its biggest markets. Some insiders said the bulk of its growth was still to come as EWC looks to match the revenue and cultural pull of sports such as football.

“In football in Western markets, you have about US$50 to US$60 which the average fan spends per year. In esports, it’s about 10 per cent of that … so we have a 90 per cent pathway that we still have to unlock,” said Hans Jagnow, director of clubs, national teams and player relations at the EWC Foundation.

This year’s EWC saw more than 2,000 athletes compete in 25 tournaments across 24 games, with a total prize pool of more than US$75 million. The Saudi-based esports foundation invested €250 million (US$289 million) to organise the event in Paris, with the French government expecting indirect economic benefits of €600 million.

It was that figure that could help explain the enthusiastic response from Macron, who said in May that the chance to host the EWC in Paris was a “historic first and an honour for us”.

Scenes of excited fans and news of sold-out finals – the reason the EWC moved its Counter-Strike final from its initial venue to the larger Accor Arena – are crucial for a sector trying to emerge from what has become known as the “esports winter” over the past few years, especially in North America, where organisations have struggled and viewership has dropped sharply.

The League of Legends Champions Series peaked at 183,152 live viewers this year, marking an all-time low for North America’s top League of Legends competition, according to Esports Charts. Activision Blizzard warned back in 2023 that the Overwatch League – based on its popular shooting game Overwatch – was in danger of collapse.

However, Jagnow described these difficulties as “growing pains” and emphasised that while some organisations had struggled, other markets were growing.

“We had this over the last 20 years in several instances … it was a constant up and down, but it was more up than down,” he said.

One of the key markets that continued to grow was China, which reached 29.3 billion yuan (US$4.35 billion) in revenue and an audience of 495 million in 2025, according to an industry report published by Chinese authorities.

For China, further growth now depends on broader participation, with organisers outside the game industry getting involved in organising esports events with game publishers, according to Jackie Huang, head of the Honor of Kings global esports division at Tencent Games, the title’s publisher.

“I think the challenge is whether more of the broader ecosystem gets involved in this, whether more and more resources across the ecosystem get drawn in,” he said.

Local authorities and organisers in China are increasingly reaching out to Honor of Kings asking to host esports events because they recognise the economic benefits they can receive from them, which Huang said was the right path for them to take.

“It’s bright, and it’s big,” Huang said, referring to the future of esports. “And the big part is what I keep coming back to: opening it up to the broader ecosystem – because only then can this industry really develop, and the higher its ceiling goes.”

-South China Morning post