From Hosting to Authorship: Saudi Press Coverage of the Esports World Cup 2025

Saudi Arabia has made esports a centerpiece of its Vision 2030 transformation. In 2025, it hosted the Esports World Cup, the largest event in the sport's history, in Riyadh. This article asks how the Saudi press constructs the Kingdom through its coverage of that event. Using constructivist grounded theory, we analyzed 57 Arabic-language newspaper articles published during the tournament. We find that the coverage does not simply report the competition. It repositions the Kingdom from the host that receives the world to the author and leader of a global field. A process we call “ hosting as authorship ,” built by magnifying the event, nationalizing it through the leader and the nation, and reframing esports as a field worth leading. The construction is genre-bound and addressed inward, to a domestic public. We relate this inward narration to debates on nation branding, soft power and political legitimacy, showing how esports hosting can be narrated as a source of domestic legitimacy and not only external image-building.