NIP Group, digital entertainment company, said it has partnered with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) to drive gaming, media and entertainment growth in Abu Dhabi.
The five-year agreement will see ADIO support NIP Group’s expansion in the region. Under the agreement, ADIO will support the Company with access to financial and non-financial growth opportunities valued at up to $40 million over a four-year period. The news was announced last week and I just did an interview with Hicham Chahine, co-CEO of NIP Group, to talk about the details.
The NIP Group will establish its global headquarters in Abu Dhabi and will contribute to local employment in the esports and gaming sector. The company will also increase its capacity across key business verticals in the region, including esports operations, creative studios and game publishing, alongside events and talent management.
Through the partnership, NIP Group will work directly with ADIO to advise on its gaming and esports strategy, leveraging Abu Dhabi’s location and resources to build a thriving local gaming ecosystem and deliver innovative digital entertainment solutions worldwide. NIP Group raised $20.5 million in an initial public offering on NASDAQ in July 2024. It has done a few acquisition deals since then. Mario Ho is co-CEO and chairman of NIP Group.
H.E. Badr Al-Olama, director general of ADIO, said in a statement, “ADIO’s partnership with NIP Group reflects our shared ambition to lead in innovative industries of the future at the cutting edge of entertainment and technology. Welcoming NIP Group to Abu Dhabi represents an important addition to this endeavour, and we look forward to collaborating to ensure a dynamic future for Abu Dhabi’s esports and gaming industries.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) is the government vehicle responsible for accelerating Abu Dhabi’s growth and enabling the emirate’s economic transformation so it is less dependent on physical resources and can adapt to the digital world.
Through the partnership, NIP Group will have support from the broader Abu Dhabi ecosystem, which will help the Company expand its business in the Middle East and globally.
Building a big company
Ninjas in Pyjamas (often abbreviated to NIP and NiP) is perhaps the oldest esports brand as it was the name of a Swedish esports organization founded in Stockholm in 2000. The team competed in Counter-Strike until their dissolution in 2007. In 2012, the team returned with a now heavily renowned Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad.
“I joined and acquired it 2016 and that’s when we started scaling it,” he said. “About 25 years ago, the brand was created, but when you consider it as a company, it” started in 2106.
NIP Group was formed in 2023 in a merger of esports organization Ninjas in Pyjamas and digital sports group ESV5, which includes mobile esports firm eStar Gaming. NIP Group currently has operations in Sweden, China, Abu Dhabi and Brazil, and its esports rosters participate across multiple game titles at the biggest events around the world. In 2024, the company went public.
“The company today has seven offices around the world. Stockholm Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, and we are consolidating the global HQ in Abu Dhabi,” Chahine said.
About 400 people work at the company now, compared to four back in 2016. And with $83 million in revenue in 2024, Chahine said that NIP Group is one of the biggest esports companies in the world in terms of revenue. It lost money, but losses in 2024 were 60% lower than in 2023, he said.
“That’s been a bit of a journey,” Chahine said.
Esports is about 25% of the business, and the company targets roughly 600 million people in the world who are esports fans. It also has a talent management agency for 36,000 livestreamers and content creators. And it operates League of Legends and Honor of Kings esports teams in China. And it has its own events in arenas in places like Shenzhen and Wuhan. And now it is publishing games too.
The competition is plentiful. NIP Group competes with esports teams, talent management firms for creators, hotels, event production companies like ESL, and game publishers as well.
“We have verticals and each one has different kinds of peers,” he said. “The closest peer you can find to us is Garena,” the Singapore company that owns Free Fire.
Expanding in Abu Dhabi
In Abu Dhabi, he hopes to created a hub with about 200 to 250 people, many of them new hires. Abu Dhabi is enticing businesses with money in order to create more jobs of the future in the digital realm, and video games are a priority industry in that regard. Beam Ventures recently raised $150 million to invest in game startups that set up shop in Abu Dhabi. Those who agree to take money and incentives must create jobs in the local ecosystem and have to meet KPIs, Chahine said.
Chahine did a lot of thinking before committing to Abu Dhabi. He relocated to the city in the United Arab Emirates a year ago to create a regional headquarters. It reminded him, who speaks and writes Arabic, of his home country of Lebanon as there are many Lebanese living there. The Middle East is also a fast-growing esports and gaming market. And he liked how it had a central time zone and no travel visa requirement.
“The Middle East is the next frontier for esports growth and gaming growth,” he said. “You see it with Saudi Arabia leading the way, but Abu Dhabi and UAE have been extremely active. It’s extremely efficient to operate out of this location. Our small agreement we had with the Department of Culture and Tourism turned out to be this full-blown global HQ.”
This year Chahine said the company is trying to hit the $100 million revenue mark and it aims to be profitable. The company has moved into interesting gaming verticals like the hotel business. It will open its first hotel in 2025 in a bid to create a place for gamers to stay.
He noted that gaming cafes that started in Asia are a kind of “dying concept.” The places are noisy, the equipment is old, and now the world has something like 30,000 gaming-focused hotels that are a better way to play games. Each room has five beds, five computers, room service and games to play.
Chahine said Abu Dhabi established its gaming ambitions five years ago, before Saudi Arabia did, and the city has been growing its local ecosystem in a more grassroots way.
“They’ve been focusing a lot on game development and organically bringing smaller game devs and building them up from here with a lot of support structures,” he said. “This is one of the first large-scale esports deals they have done.”
He noted that Abu Dhabi and other places in the Middle East have a high density of young people, with 70% of them under 30 or 35. And that population has grown up with gaming as a primary form of entertainment.
“The engagement is very large here,” he said. “It is what people want to engage with, consume, watch for tomorrow.”
As for the IPO, he said the company kept the amount low at $20.5 million and the reason for going public was more to raise the public profile of the company and to show that esports can be profitable and sustainable.
“We have a lot of investment and resources going in towards this. But again, we are approaching profitability, which means that everything that we have received this capital and most of it is used for future growth initiatives, not to cover capital burns.”
The company is listed in the U.S. on NASDAQ, but it is not yet active in the U.S. The costs are high in the U.S. But he said, “We are constantly looking at it, and we’re feeling that we’re getting to a point where it’s becoming relevant to do something in the U.S.”
