Warmer Waters for the Esports World Cup? It increasingly feels as though the Esports World Cup (EWC) is beginning to break the ice.
The announcement of Trackmania as the final title in the Esports World Cup’s 24-game roster is telling, and not just because of the game itself. A confirmed three-year agreement with Ubisoft Nadeo provides teams with a degree of stability, making long-term investment in Trackmania rosters more viable — a recurring concern for emerging or niche esports.
The ripple effects elsewhere are equally significant. RENNSPORT’s exclusion appears to represent a significant setback for its competitive ecosystem. Virtus.pro has since released its RENNSPORT roster, publicly citing the game’s absence from the EWC as a decisive factor.
Meanwhile, with StarCraft II no longer included, real-time strategy (RTS) games have lost their representative within the EWC framework.
From a purely data-driven perspective, these decisions are defensible. RENNSPORT was the least-watched title at EWC 2025, while StarCraft II ranked amongst the five lowest. During a press briefing attended by The Esports Radar in January 2026, the Esports World Cup Foundation has also reiterated that some inclusions are driven by strategic regional importance, as is the case with Crossfire and its relevance to the Chinese market, even if viewership may lag behind other titles.
What has changed, however, is the tone of the reaction. In previous years, EWC announcements often triggered predictable backlash across Western social media: outrage when titles were added, celebration when they were removed. The GeoGuessr situation in 2025 — where the game was ultimately withdrawn following community opposition — remains a clear example of that dynamic.
This time, the response has been notably different. Sim racing and RTS communities have expressed disappointment at the removals, while the Trackmania community, though comparatively small, has openly celebrated its inclusion. The discourse has been less reactionary and more reflective — a subtle but meaningful shift.
Social platforms such as X should never be treated as a definitive barometer of public opinion. They represent a narrow and often highly charged slice of the wider audience. Still, as I used to tell players during my time as Head of Public Relations at FURIA, this is where esports’ equivalent of “pub conversations” happens. You may not overhear debates about Fnatic, G2 or Vitality in a pub in Manchester — those conversations still belong to Manchester United and Manchester City — but in esports, X and similar platforms fill that role.
Both express a feeling from their audiences and communities, the key difference is permanence: what is said in a pub, as absurd as it can be, fades in space and time; what is posted online remains.
That brings us to today’s Heat Map takeaway: it feels like the temperature is rising — in a good way — for the Esports World Cup Foundation. For perhaps the first time, criticism has focused less on the existence of the event itself and more on specific competitive decisions.
This also intersects with a broader question of openness. If Saudi Arabia aims to host a truly global event and attract international talent, it must continue addressing long-standing concerns around inclusion — particularly for LGBTQ+ participants — through clearer safeguards, consistent event standards and visible protections for attendees.
Encouragingly, during the same press briefing, EWC COO Mike McCabe, when asked on the theme, stated that “everybody is welcome” and expressed his perception that the Kingdom is in a kind of cultural “shift” process.
Whether that shift will be felt consistently across the ecosystem remains to be seen. But for now, the reception suggests that the Esports World Cup is no longer being discussed solely as a provocation — and that, in itself, marks a notable change.
This analysis was first published in the Heat Map newsletter on 28 January 2026. For early access to our analysis and more exclusive content, subscribe to The Esports Radar’s newsletters via this link.
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