A Saudi fund buys a German company – for a billion

A Saudi sovereign wealth fund has bought esports company ESL Gaming for $1 billion. ESL Gaming is the world’s premier organizer of esports tournaments.

Aspiring computer gamers in particular know the name ESL Gaming: the Cologne-based company has been organizing international competitions in various video games since 2007, including Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Star Craft II and Dota 2.

EFL is aimed at professional players, and international competition has been at the highest level for years. Accordingly, winners of major ESL tournaments, such as ESL Intel Extreme Masters, can look forward to prize money of up to $1 million.

German ESL parent company Turtle Entertainment was sold to Swedish entertainment group MTG in 2015. He has now stated in a press release that the company is selling shares of its ESL Games (MTG owns a good 91 percent of the company) for US$960 million. for the Savvy Gaming Group (SGG).

The world’s leading gaming platform

At the same time, SGG also bought British gaming rival Faceit, ESL, and had already merged both companies to form ESL Faceit Group. On the company’s website, which has already been launched, the executive team states that they have created the world’s leading gaming platform, with which they aim to bring developers, the gaming community and the esports ecosystem closer together.

SGG is a newcomer to the gaming world. It was founded just last year and describes itself as a company founded to drive long-term developments in the field of video games and esports. Esports is just one of a total of five areas in which SGG intends to invest money in the future.

The company wrote on its website that it intends to spend about $30 billion within the next five years. The capital comes from Saudi Arabia, SGG is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund PIF, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.