The retreat of the International Olympic Committee -IOC- from esports is not a rejection of gaming or its global potential. It is the rejection, conscious or not, of a fragmented system controlled by publishers and lacking a governance architecture capable of meeting the standards of Olympic sport. The IOC did not fail because it looked towards esports; it failed because it chose a path without sufficient institutional structure. The problem was not entering esports, but entering through the wrong door.

The IOC and Saudi Arabia ended in October 2025 a 12-year partnership to develop the Olympic Esports Games, just 14 months after announcing it during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Riyadh was due to host the first edition in 2027, but both parties decided to follow separate paths. The Olympic body then announced that it would work on a new approach and a new partnership model for the project, a diplomatic way of acknowledging that the first attempt had been left without a sufficiently solid base.

The real problem: a system without governance

The real problem is not that esports are digital, new or commercial. The problem is that the global ecosystem does not operate as an independent sport system. In many titles, publishers own the game, control licences, rules, calendars, competitions, access, formats and even integrity mechanisms. They are stakeholder and authority at the same time. The IOC did not destroy the Olympic esports project: it exposed its governance vacuum.

In traditional sport, federations do not own the ball, the field or the discipline as a closed commercial product. In esports, by contrast, the publisher often owns the game, controls the competitive ecosystem and decides how far external intervention is allowed to go. That model may work commercially, but it does not fit cleanly within an Olympic structure that requires independence, common rules, accountability, anti-doping, integrity, eligibility and national representation. Without independent regulatory oversight, harmonised international rules and recognised governance bodies, esports continue to function more as a commercial product than as a sport system.

The Saudi model revealed the problem

The partnership with Saudi Arabia was supposed to accelerate everything: funding, host city, infrastructure, execution and visibility. But its early end showed that the project did not have a sufficiently solid backbone. When the strategic partner disappeared, so did the illusion that there was a global structure ready to sustain the Olympic Esports Games. When the funding disappeared, so did the illusion of structure.

That ending does not mean Saudi Arabia has lost interest in esports. On the contrary, the country continues to invest heavily in the sector as part of its strategy for sport, entertainment and economic diversification. The Esports World Cup in Riyadh announced in 2025 a record prize pool of 70 million dollars, with 24 games and a clear ambition to turn the country into a global hub for competitive gaming. That shows the problem was not only money. It was governance. Capital can create events, buy visibility and attract publishers, but it cannot replace a recognisable, independent and stable institutional architecture.

Why IESF is the only viable path

The alternative the IOC ignored, or did not integrate sufficiently, at least from a fully federated logic, is the International Esports Federation -IESF-. Its model does not solve every conflict in the sector, because publishers still hold decisive power, but it does start from a logic more compatible with international sport: national federations, territorial representation, regulated competitions and a common framework. If esports want the Olympic Games, they need governance, not publishers.

The Global Esports Federation -GEF- is, in practice, out of the game when it comes to leading a credible reconstruction of the Olympic project. The IOC’s strategic error was not entering esports. That move made sense: Olympism needs to connect with young audiences, and gaming is one of the largest cultural communities in the world. The mistake was trying to build an Olympic product on a commercial and geopolitical base before answering the institutional question: who governs, who regulates, who represents the athletes, who guarantees integrity and who decides the rules.

The IOC’s retreat should be understood as a reset, not as a definitive verdict against esports. The Olympic future of the sector requires structure before scale, independence before spectacle and governance before money. The Olympic Esports Games did not fail because the concept made no sense. The global esports model failed as it is currently built. And until that changes, esports will have to adapt to the standards of sport, not expect sport to lower its own