When the Saudi Arabia-backed Esports Foundation announced that the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) would relocate from Riyadh to Paris with barely two months’ notice, the headlines focused on logistics, travel, and venue availability. But behind the scenes, the most dramatic pivot was happening inside the broadcast engineering department. Hundreds of technicians, operators, and systems specialists were suddenly tasked with rebuilding one of the world’s largest esports production environments from scratch.

“Moving an event of this scale is complicated,” admits Ralf Reichert, CEO, Esports Foundation. “The principle guiding us was simple – to put players and clubs first. Our job was to elevate the competition, protect the integrity of play, and make sure fans get the experience they deserve. The competition remains unchanged — what changes is the city.”

The EWC format is more Olympics than World Cup given there are 24 different games being played, many of them simultaneously. These include Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Dota 2 and EA’s FC Pro. Together they represent a mix of genres, including first-person shooters, multiplayer online battle arenas, fighting games, and strategy games.

“Esports is fragmented like most other sports,” Reichert explains. “Every game has its own language, heroes and traditions. EWC respects this and brings it together. No single game can unite esports – but EWC can.”

Running from 6 July to 23 August, the event brings together more than 2,000 players and 200 clubs from over 100 countries competing for a $75 million+ prize pool. Individual players can win cash prizes, while the winning club – which last year was Saudi team Falcons – shares a $7 million bonus.

“It was really, really hard to move such a big show in such a short time,” says Sebastian Fjellström, technical manager for the EWC at ESL FACEIT Group (EFG), which is also owned by Saudi’s public investment fund (as part of Savvy Group). “But it’s been amazing to see everything come together and see how talented the crew are at adapting to all these issues.”

The result is a temporary control room built almost entirely from flypacks accommodated on about a quarter of the floorspace inside the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Its production footprint spans four main broadcast stages for finals, three smaller stages for group rounds, and another area for public gameplay. Every one of those stages feeds into a central engineering hub.

“Every event we do is a mix of our own gear, rental gear, and partner gear,” Fjellström explains. “We don’t have a fixed control room building. It’s a modular kit we transport with us. A lot of our equipment is purpose‑built for us, but it lives in flight cases because we need to be flexible.”

That flexibility was essential when the foundation made the call to leave Riyadh as a result of the region’s current instability. The engineering team had already shipped some equipment to the Middle East, and some en route had to be turned around immediately.

“It was an eleventh‑hour decision,” he says. “If we had waited another two or three days, more equipment would have been in transit. We had to reverse shipments, rebuild racks, and redesign the entire layout for a completely different venue.”

The Paris venue is packed with simultaneous productions and dense with RF. For this, the EWC relies heavily on Riedel networking.

“We have around 300 Bolero beltpacks deployed at this venue,” Fjellström says. “That’s quite insane. We needed additional frequency licences approved by the government to deploy this amount in such a small venue.”

Another coup for Riedel and Arri 

One of the biggest upgrades for 2026 is the introduction of Arri Alexa 35 Live cameras with the intent of bringing a cinematic aesthetic to esports coverage.

“It gives us a completely different look in terms of colour and image quality,” Fjellström says. “We’re testing different lenses to improve further.”

The Alexa 35 Live systems were first deployed at scale by the EBU at the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year, where there were some integration challenges. The EWC team benefited from that experience.

“We had the luxury of getting some of the experts who handled Eurovision’s Arri integration to help us,” he says. “There were challenges — especially power systems and RF congestion — but we’ve made it work.”

There’s no HDR which was considered too great a leap for this edition in the time available.

“The game capture is already amazing from the publisher. We work on frame rate improvements, super slow‑mo, and stage LED colour control to ensure everything looks good both on camera and in the arena.”

Fighting game Fatal Fury, for example, is being captured in 120Hz and broadcast at 60Hz with options for replay and super-slo.

Each stage has to be reconfigured from the proposed plans for Riyadh given the different height, weight load, and space of the Paris venue. Partly because of that, and also to provide presentational diversity, each of the stages here are designed differently with a unique set of camera gear, though they all share player POV cameras on each gamer PC. These are PTZ units from Chinese firm Obsbot.

The Alexa 35’s feature mainly on stage one. There are 11 of them; only four are cabled. One is on a winch camera — top‑down in the middle of the stage for effect shots. Another is mounted on a four‑point wire-cam to capture the audience.

“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want to see and what mainstream audiences can understand. We want to create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before”

Some compromises were necessary due to the accelerated move from Riyadh. “We wanted to fly more systems in Stage 1, but we needed additional screens installed [for audience view]. Maybe not the ideal workflow, but together with the RF cameras we have here, we can still capture the whole venue. We can film all the way up to the top when players walk onto the stage.”

Stage 4 uses a mix of Sony systems cameras and handheld RF units. “It’s easier to have long shots on the gamers so we don’t interfere with play,” he explains. “Operators usually have both options – the handhelds can rest on tripods or they can take them off when needed.

 “On Stage 2 we’re using rail cameras to get different footage because the stage design is very different. You don’t want everything looking the same. It’s really about choosing the best tool for the presentation.”

Four cameras with RF links are roaming the entire area doing studio segments or interviews inside and outside the building encoded with Haivision. For some games, EFG also has a full vertical video production line. 

Balancing core gamers and mainstream audiences

The media strategy behind the EWC is to create a product that can generate interest worldwide for hardcore gamers and mainstream sports enthusiasts. It has signed more than 100 media partners broadcasting in more than 160 countries, spanning 40 languages.

In France, that includes daily segments on France Télévisions and partnerships with L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio station. Since the French interest is so high, EFG is running a French-language production on top of the main feed.

“Not only are we broadcasting it in French, we also have a local team working with us to make sure that we do everything with the right wording in the French language,” Fjellström says.

In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia, Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China, meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyin, Bilibili, and Kuaishou. Eurosport, DAZN and TNT Sports are covering in Europe.

That’s on top of 5,000+ co-streamers who are permitted to take live streams, apply their own commentary and stream on their own Twitch, YouTube or TikTok channels.

“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want to see and what mainstream audiences can understand,” he says. “We want to create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before.”

Read more Live from the Esports World Cup: Inside the production gallery