On May 20, the Beijing Municipality hosted an official press conference in the city, announcing the plans for “Esports Beijing 2021” series of events. Shaojian Liu, secretary of the Party Committee of State-owned Cultural Assets Management Center, announced that the Honor of Kings annual international competition, the Honor of Kings World Champion Cup (KCC), will feature a prize pool of up to ￥50M RMB ($7.77M USD) and will be hosted at National Olympic Sports Center on Aug. 28. The KCC will be co-hosted by Tencent and tournament organizer VSPN, and the stadium where it will take place will be able to accommodate 6,300 people.
In August 2020, the KCC was the world’s first international esports competition with limited live audiences during the pandemic. In January, Honor of Kings developer TiMi Studios announced that the company would invest ￥1B ($154M) in the Honor of Kings esports ecosystem. The KCC will feature $7.77M, which marks a 56% increase from the previous year’s prize pool, ￥32M ($4.9M).
In addition, Liu also stated that Tencent’s Call of Duty Masters Season 2 Finals, Perfect World and Valve’s top Chinese Dota 2 and CS: GO competition Perfect World League (PWL), ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), Funspark’s console esports competition Spark Championships, and VR Esports International Championship will also take place in Beijing, as a part of Esports Beijing 2021 series event. Details on those events were not disclosed.
It should be noted that in the “Esports Beijing 2020” plan, the Beijing government also stated that IEM was supposed to be hosted in Beijing last year, but was canceled due to the pandemic.
Apart from plans for esports competitions, Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) and Shunyi District also announced their supportive policies for the esports company and organizations in venue construction, organization development, rent subsidies, and financial services. Beijing-based esports organization JingDong Gaming (JDG) will also have its home venue in BDA, becoming Beijing’s first home venue team in the League of Legends Pro League (LPL).
