The Esports World Cup took place from 6 July to 23 August. This epic seven week long event saw thousands of competitors seeking glory and millions in prize money, with player AG.AL, the Club Championship winner, taking the cup in front of president of France Emmanuel Macron and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and prime minister of Saudi Arabia.

Up until now the Esports World Cup took place in Riyadh. However just two months out from the start it was moved to Paris due to instability in the Middle East. For Gravity Media, that meant a lot of flights and readjustments for the production, which was due to begin rigging less than four weeks from the announcement of the new location.

Martyn Edwards, managing director for the Middle East at Gravity Media, was in charge of the event overall, including the switch to a different continent.

“Our first rig day was on the 14 June, so it was around about that the move was announced. We had a bit of insight and we had some sort of steer that [the original location] was potentially going to be a problem, but the official email saying “we’re moving” was a month out.”

He continues: “We knew what was happening in the Middle East; we could see it and we could see other events were being moved or postponed, so we were aware that it might happen and we’d started to lay plans for it. But until we got the official nod, we had to assume it was still going to be in Riyadh and that’s what we were aiming for.

“We’d started our prep in the UK in early May; the kit and everything was designed and prepared in the UK so we were well down the road with what we were doing in Saudi, and we knew what we were going to do. Then this announcement officially came that mean we had to up-sticks and move to Paris.”

Upping-sticks

The new location was the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles Accor Arena. This is a huge exhibition space, not a purpose-built sports arena. It therefore presented challenges for Gravity Media.

Explains Edwards: “There were massive logistical challenges for us. In Riyadh, the venue was purpose-built really for this event. EWC is now in its sixth season, and this building was built three years ago. We know the building, most of us had worked there, and we knew the infrastructure that was there. To move from one venue to another on a project of this size is tough, but to move from continent is even bigger for us.

“We went from a venue we knew to a venue that hardly any of us had worked in. There was a site survey arranged, but there was actually a big exhibition in the venue at that time so access was really limited, which meant we had limited information about what we needed.

“We didn’t have full access to everything that we wanted and everything that we needed to see for that site visit, so there was a bit of broad guesswork that went on with what we needed to take and the people we needed there to get the initial cable ring in,” he adds.

The team had to source additional fibre to do the interconnections between the various areas, as well l as find a new rigging crew, create fresh rigging plans, and arrange for the core team on the production to get to and stay in Paris.

Says Edwards: “We planned to be in Saudi Arabia, and part of our business model in Saudi Arabia is to use local crew as much as we can; it’s just not sustainable to keep bringing crew from Europe and wherever else into Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t work for anyone. We’re a Saudi company so we want to build up a strong pool of freelancers in Saudi, so we’d crewed with as many Saudi and Middle Eastern crew as we could. The decision when the move happened was between us and [Esports Foundation, the non-profit behind the Esports World Cup] was that we wanted to keep that same crew for consistency.”

Also in Europe with the World Cup in full swing, additional freelancers were thin on the ground being already engaged, adding to the argument to bring the Middle East-based crew to Paris.

“We then had to provide visas and flights to get these people from the Middle East and from some complicated countries in the Middle East as well to move to get visas into Paris. Plus we then had to find, I think it was nearly 11,000 room nights in Paris in the middle of summer with four weeks notice. So it was a massive challenge to get people over and in place and get the venue set for us.”

As Gravity has been involved with Esports World Cup as it has evolved to its current size and stature, its local crew are well experienced.

“We’ve always tried to keep some consistent crew because it’s a large project. There’s a lot of knowledge of how things happen that’s maybe slightly different to the way other events would work,” says Edwards. “There are a good number of the crew that have worked on the project from the start, on every single iteration of Esports World Cup. It’s key to giving the client the confidence they’ve got people they know. There’s always going to be a turnaround, there’s always going to be new people, but if [the client] comes on site knowing that they can speak to certain people, at least it gives everybody a starting point, and then slowly the team evolves into a closer team.”

Frenzied activity

With the short notice move, the site in Paris was a frenzy of activity as everyone involved worked to get the site rigged prior to the first day of the tournament.

Edwards says: “When I first arrived, it was just trying to work out how to get our cables and our resources where we needed, while everybody else was trying to do the same thing. It was a really movable feast. So a massive challenge to move over to Paris in that short space of time.”

While some resources were flown over from Riyadh, the flypacks used for this event came over from the UK. However, some of that had already been flown from the UK to Saudi Arabia, meaning it then had to be shipped to Paris.

“Again, as part of that logistics process, we suddenly had to move the equipment from Saudi back out to Paris because it was committed and it was already in Riyadh. So it was a bit of a shuffle,” he notes.

The Gravity Media team continued with business as usual, as the same flypack was set to be used regardless of location. “Whether it was in Riyadh or Paris or anywhere else, it didn’t matter. We just carried on doing the prep, the tech build, and getting ourselves organised,” says Edwards. “It was really just the logistics of where it had to end up.”