Esports World Cup uses projection and LED to deliver an opening ceremony to remember

In 2025, the Esports World Cup returned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for its second year - and this time organisers were looking to go even bigger than before. The Esports World Cup opening ceremony offered an opportunity to make a statement and demonstrate the scope that the tournament offered to gamers around the world, housed inside Boulevard City’s ANB Arena in the heart of the city.

The show was an unprecedented spectacle, complete with an indoor mountain towering over audiences, dramatic reveals of the tournament’s major players, and standout performances from international artists, including Post Malone and Swedish DJ Alesso. CT Middle East and Visual Noise came together to deliver the ambitious and awe-inspiring production, choosing Disguise hardware and software to bring their projection and LED content to life.

The challenge

From the outset, the ambition of the project was clear: the opening ceremony would be a live event on a cinematic scale, with production filling the venue. “The entire design was a challenge” admits Carlos Aguilar, Head of Video at CT Middle East. “The tournament itself is huge. Screens were moving, we had projection mapping to factor in, all in an environment where there was no room for error. It was crucial that we got this right.”

With the tournament itself only entering its second year, the team had an opportunity to design an innovative new approach and build lore that could come to define the Esports World Cup for years to come. The mountain that sat at the heart of the set design reflected this. Incumbent winners would be introduced standing at the top of the structure, with the challengers positioned at the base in an operatic gesture that set the stakes for the tournament ahead.

But this symbolism created one of the team’s biggest challenges: video and lighting would need to bring this towering man-made mountain to life, both reliably and realistically. With many stakeholders and a global audience to impress, the pressure to deliver an event of the highest quality was immense. The team needed technology that could handle the sheer volume of data required to deliver the visuals flawlessly, while also ensuring they perfectly fit the stage's awkward angles.

The solution

The technical foundation of the Esports World Cup 2025 rested on three core elements: an expansive LED installation, sophisticated projection mapping, and an intricate lighting system that worked in perfect harmony to create an immersive experience for audiences.

Disguise was the perfect solution to help the team achieve their goal, with seven Disguise VX4+ media servers acting as the technical backbone of the production.

“We wanted to execute on the creative vision through ultra reliable playback, but equally important was the workflow itself” explains Trevor Burk, Visual Noise’s Creative Producer. The team were working to an aggressive schedule, and needed the ability to previsualise how everything would look before the rehearsal process began. “Designer has been a pivotal tool for me for over a decade - it helped us previz and figure out how we could combine all that moving scenery with projection” Burk continues. 

At the very centre of the team’s work was Disguise’s projection mapping tool, Mapping Matter. The complex shapes of the stage design and the sheer size of the central mountain made previsualisation far more complicated than in most productions. The intuitive interface of Mapping Matter enabled the team to quickly create a digital twin of the staging within Disguise’s software and rapidly prototype different projection layouts. 

Dirk Sanders, Screens Director at Visual Noise, credits the speed of the Disguise workflow with helping his team quickly and easily determine feasibility and identify the project’s unique and complex challenges. “We were projecting on a range of surfaces plus we also had large moving scenic LED elements, as well as a rigged LED floor. At times the ceiling LED and floor were used as a lighting service, and sometimes integrated with the choreography. This meant we were able to get a lot of different looks across both scenic and lighting which really helped bring the vision together.”

The result

The 2025 Esports World Cup in Riyadh drew around 750 million viewers worldwide across its entire broadcast footprint, making it one of the most-watched esports events ever. The seamless integration of moving LED, projection mapping and lighting ensured the opening ceremony matched the magnitude and ambition of the tournament itself.

Artists performed on a dramatic stage featuring 195 metres of LED panels extending from the projection-mapped, man-made mountain, with the dynamic overhead LED installation rising up and down throughout the performance. Every visual element worked in harmony, transforming the arena into an immersive storytelling venue rooted in esports lore. The result was a ceremony that matched the global scale and cultural momentum of competitive gaming, delivered with the precision and reliability demanded by a worldwide audience.