SAFEIS sought to bring upon a new sporting experience with the Gamers Without Borders campaign, uniting gamers worldwide as a force for good against the battle of COVID-19.

Bringing together gaming tournaments, influencers, footballers, and music superstars, SAFEIS hosted a one of a kind esports charity event to fight against COVID-19 with gamers united to raise money.

The results confirmed our belief that GWB had become an unrivalled gaming phenomenon event and put SAFEIS and Saudi Arabia e-sports on the map. Our communications strategy helped draw more than 200,000 participating gamers from 82 countries, who together played 200,000+ online matches.

At the beginning of March, COVID-19 had brought the world to a near halt and indefinitely postponed all sporting live events. This included a new international gaming initiative organized SAFEIS, set to take place in the Kingdom.

How could we still showcase the thrill of live sport in the virtual world? We developed an unrivalled virtual esports season with a global cause at its heart – an opportunity for Saudi to unite all global gamers together from home lockdown and inspire them to play their part fighting the pandemic.

In a time when live international sport was on hold due to COVID-19, it truly offered a new type of sporting experience for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world. Our objective was simple: build a campaign to unite gamers worldwide as a switched-on, savvy, compassionate force for good.

Amid the pandemic, gamers were coming to the forefront as one socially-distant community, catalyzed by SAFEIS, to do their part in the fight against COVID-19.

We gained a full understanding of the media consumption and online habits of a global gaming audience. We spoke to the key gaming operators such as ESL (the biggest gaming operator in the world) and publishers to get a better understanding of how to communicate with the audience and the tone that would appeal to them in these unique times. This allowed us to plan two different strands that would work in tandem to achieve our dual objectives:

• To gain international recognition for GWB and SAFEIS

• To utilize online influencers on Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and a host of other web-based platforms to reach our gaming audience, who our research proved relied very little on offline media.

A clear strategy was outlined via our campaign pillars:

1. Watch - The biggest names in esports playing to win a share of $10 million for charity via a world-first dedicated virtual studio that was developed to bring commentators, gamers, and influencers from around the globe together for the live broadcasts

2. Game - A series of open for all global tournaments where everyone could challenge themselves in non-stop community tournaments

3. Learn - A free opportunity to learn more from the experts in a series of free-to-all training programs, prized hackathons, and webinars

4. Donate - Anyone who games, watches, or learns can support the cause by donating to the organizations at any time

We would preview all of our biggest tournaments, report on how they played out, hype all key involvement and events, and constantly communicate how gamers were fighting together against one shared enemy: COVID-19.

In seven weeks, we delivered 1,000+ social posts and issued 66 pieces of press and media content. We engaged major influencers: gaming-lovers Dele Alli, Paulo Dybala, Trent Alexander-Arnold, plus Liam Payne and Snoop Dogg, all played and donated to the charities of their choice. They appeared on the tournament livestreams, shared and promoted clips on their channels, with highlights of their appearance distributed far and wide.

Esports microinfluencers penetrated the communities of global games such as Fortnite, FIFA, PUGB Mobile. We ensured the powerful elite gaming teams and brands, such as FaZe Clan, spread the message, converting sign-ups in the wider community and in the mainstream. We established partnerships with titles including Wall Street Journal, LadBible and 443, providing bespoke content for each. Global charities such as UNICEF and Gavi used their reach to post, engage and thank the influencers for their part in driving support to their relief effort.

We drew more than 200,000 participating gamers from 82 countries, who together played 200,000+ online matches. We had 1.9million hours of stream views from fans in 100+ countries and generated 1.14 billion digital impressions, 75.6 million social video views, and 28.9 million digital engagements through social channels we launched, and grew to 562,000 followers in less than a month-and-a-half.

The esports event won 1,687 articles worldwide from mainstream, gaming and sports outlets, reaching 2.7 billion people with a media value of $100 million. Online and live gaming streams generated $405million worth of brand exposure.

More importantly was the social impact. The money raised helped to combat COVID-19 on the front line. Charities such as UNICEF provided first-hand accounts on a GWB Twitch live stream to millions of viewers, about their efforts as first responders in Wuhan, China, and around the gargantuan efforts of their medical and logistics teams.