Saudi Arabia expands gaming footprint through acquisitions and education

Saudi Arabia has spent the past four years assembling what is now inarguably the most aggressive sovereign gaming strategy in the world, and the scale of the numbers involved keeps outpacing whatever expectation was set the year before. Through Savvy Games Group, its Public Investment Fund-backed National Champion for gaming and esports, the Kingdom has built a portfolio spanning ownership stakes, full acquisitions, and strategic partnerships that now touches nearly every major segment of the global games industry, from mobile publishing to competitive esports infrastructure to AAA console development. The capital commitment underpinning this strategy is 142 billion riyals, or $37.8 billion, allocated across four distinct investment tracks. Seventy billion riyals is earmarked for minority stakes in companies supporting Savvy's game development agenda. Fifty billion riyals is directed toward acquiring a leading game publisher to serve as a strategic development partner. Twenty billion riyals targets mature industry partners bringing specialized expertise into Savvy's portfolio, and 2 billion riyals is reserved for backing early-stage games and esports disruptors. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who chairs Savvy Games, has described the strategy as harnessing untapped potential across esports and gaming to diversify the Kingdom's economy while scaling entertainment and competition offerings domestically. The acquisition record shows how deliberately that capital has been deployed. Scopely, Savvy's mobile gaming subsidiary, ranks second globally among gaming companies, with its title Monopoly Go! generating $3 billion in revenue and winning Game of the Year at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards. Scopely's total revenue has reached $10 billion since its founding in 2011. ESL FACEIT Group operates as the world's number one esports company under the same portfolio. In 2026 alone, Scopely moved to acquire a majority stake in Turkish studio Loom Games in a deal worth up to $1 billion, while Savvy itself is negotiating the acquisition of ByteDance's Moonton, the studio behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, in a deal reportedly valued between $5 billion and $7 billion. The parent PIF is separately leading a $55 billion bid to take Electronic Arts private, and recently transferred approximately $12 billion in gaming stocks, including holdings in Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive, and Bandai Namco, directly into Savvy's portfolio structure. What distinguishes Saudi Arabia's gaming strategy from a pure financial investment play is the domestic capacity-building running alongside the acquisitions. Savvy Games recently signed a memorandum of understanding with King Salman Science Oasis to launch the Next Gen Games Camp, an initiative teaching young Saudis practical game development skills through an intensive STEM-integrated curriculum. That effort builds on agreements signed with the Saudi Ministry of Education in February 2026 to integrate electronic games into general, university, technical, and vocational school curricula, complete with dedicated teacher training. The rationale is straightforward given the country's demographics: Saudi Arabia is home to more than 21 million self-identified gamers, representing over 70% of the population, giving the Kingdom one of the most gaming-engaged populations of any country in the world. The National Gaming and Esports Strategy, launched in 2022 as one of 13 strategic priority industries under Vision 2030, targets the creation of 39,000 local jobs and a $13.3 billion contribution to GDP by 2030, alongside establishing 250 gaming companies domestically. Saudi Arabia already captures 20% of MENA's total gaming revenues according to Savvy's own reporting, and the global gaming market itself is projected to grow from $269 billion in 2025 to $435 billion by 2030, a trajectory that gives the Kingdom's early positioning considerable long-term upside if the growth forecasts hold. For the broader MENA region, Saudi Arabia's gaming buildout is setting a scale benchmark that no other regional market is currently positioned to match. The combination of sovereign capital depth, a demographically young and digitally engaged population, and a coordinated policy push spanning education, infrastructure, and acquisitions has made the Kingdom the undisputed anchor of MENA gaming investment. Countries like Morocco are building gaming ecosystems from a startup and workforce development angle precisely because competing with Saudi Arabia on capital deployment is not realistic. The two strategies, sovereign-scale acquisition in the Gulf and organic ecosystem-building in North Africa, are shaping into complementary rather than competing models for how the region participates in the global gaming economy.