Esports World Cup Docuseries Returns to Prime Video
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- Prime Video drops all five episodes of "Esports World Cup: Level Up" Season 2 on June 26, with R.J. Cutler directing the vérité-style series shot across seven weeks in Riyadh during the 2025 Esports World Cup
- The series profiles players including Jake "Boaster" Howlett (Fnatic/VALORANT), Vivi "Vivian" Indrawaty (Team Vitality/MLBB), Kasimili "Soka" Tongamoa (Team Falcons/Call of Duty: Warzone), Xiao Hai (KuaiShou Gaming/Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves), and Garidmagnai "bLitz" Byambasuren (Mongolz/Counter-Strike), with crew traveling to the U.K., U.S., and Indonesia for at-home segments
- Post Malone headlined the opening ceremony, Magnus Carlsen won his first chess esports event, and Cristiano Ronaldo carried the Club Championship trophy to the stage during the closing ceremony
- Other featured guests include F1's Lando Norris, football legends Ronaldo Nazario and Kaká in an EA FC showmatch, footballer Alisha Lehmann, skateboarder Tony Hawk, and tennis star Nick Kyrgios
- The 2025 Esports World Cup reached 750 million viewers worldwide, generated 350 million hours watched, and peaked at nearly 8 million concurrent viewers during the League of Legends tournament, distributed across 28 platforms in 35 languages
- The event featured 25 tournaments spanning 24 games, 2,000+ players from approximately 200 clubs across 100+ countries competing for a $70 million prize pool
- The 2026 Esports World Cup moves to Paris from July 6 through Aug. 23 with the prize pool climbing to $75 million, while This Machine (part of Sony Pictures Television) returns as producer with showrunner John Dorsey and executive producers Jane Cha Cutler, Trevor Smith, Elise Pearlstein, and Mark Blatty
Why it matters: Prime Video secures exclusive documentary access to an event that reached 750 million viewers in its second year and is scaling to a $75 million prize pool for Paris 2026, betting that crossover moments with Cristiano Ronaldo and Post Malone convert esports' global audience into streaming subscribers.
