Outrage As LEC And Blast Premier Sign Deals With Saudi Arabia Tech City

Both the LEC League of Legends competition and the Blast Premier esports tournament organizer have signed sponsorship deals with the Saudi Arabian tech city project NEOM and fans are not happy. 

The LEC deal was announced today, with NEOM becoming a main partner of the LEC for the rest of Summer 2020. The deal will see NEOM sponsor the Oracle Lens during live broadcasts, which is a key part of the broadcast and will give the brand a lot of exposure. 

Meanwhile, the Blast Premier deal was announced yesterday, with NEOM sponsoring upcoming events from the tournament organizer that has recently hosted major competitions in both CS:GO and Dota 2. The deal will also see a NEOM themed CS:GO map be created, and educational work placements to take place at Blast events. 

NEOM is a project spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and will see an entire region of futuristic tech cities and communities being built near the Red Sea in northwest Saudi Arabia. The goal is to build a city larger than New York that will house the biggest tech companies and entrepreneurs in the world, with more than a million people expected to live there eventually. 

However, the announcement has been met with widespread criticism from fans of the LEC. Just a few days ago the LEC had a pride focused broadcast, with talent wearing LGBTQ+ merchandise and colors, and the LEC logo being changed into pride colors. Now the league has signed a deal with NEOM, which will be based in Saudi Arabia, a county infamous for its draconian LGBTQ+ rights and laws.

The country also has a poor record in other areas, such as women’s rights and of course was allegedly involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in 2018. 

While the backlash from LEC fans, and even those working within the LEC ecosystem, has been strong, there has been little backlash to the Blast deal. However, esports fans around the world are unimpressed that their favorite leagues would support NEOM in this way, especially given that traveling to the location where NEOM will be built would put many of them in legal danger. 

Even Trevor “QuickShot” Henry, a caster for the LEC competition and long term Riot employee, tweeted a link to an investigation from The Guardian into the NEOM project that states that the Huwaitat tribe is being forced from its homelands because of the project. 

Riot Games and Blast did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.