From Scandinavia to Abu Dhabi, Hicham Chahine shoots for esports dominance
As a child with Lebanese roots growing up in Norway, Hicham Chahine got hooked on esports and couldn’t get enough of Ninjas in Pyjamas, the cyberathletic world champions from across the border in Sweden. Then he discovered finance.
At 14, he secretly used his father’s passport to open a stock trading account. At 18, he was recruited by Oslo-based Formue, one of Scandinavia’s top asset management firms. Within a decade, he was managing a hedge fund and launching multiple startups in New York.
Now 36, Chahine is Co-founder and Co-CEO of NIP Group, which he formed two years ago by engineering a merger between his beloved, nearly bankrupt Ninjas in Pyjamas and Chinese gaming powerhouse ESV5.
The combined company – whose other co-founder from ESV5 is Mario Ho, son of the late Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho – went public on the Nasdaq in July and has a current market value of $119 million. Late last year, NIP launched Aetatis, now the tenth most downloaded title in MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) gaming.
In January, NIP signed a $40 million agreement with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) to move its headquarters to the UAE capital and help establish the emirate as a global center for esports, media and entertainment.
The deal comes amid Saudi Arabia’s ferocious drive to pour billions into gaming – a favorite activity of 39-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – and capture a chunk of the $220 billion industry.
“I started getting fatigued and annoyed that, in whatever conversations we had with industry stakeholders, it was always about North America, China, and Europe – the Middle East was never a topic,” Chahine said in an interview with The Circuit. “So, I thought, what if I took my brand, moved it to the Middle East, and used it to put the Middle East region on the map for competitive video games.”
On the horizon, Chahine looks at the world gaming market of 3.2 billion players and sees NIP reaching the top echelons.
“Ultimately,” he said, “I want to see a Middle Eastern pro player lift a world championship trophy – whatever the game – one day.”
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Circuit: How did this partnership with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office come about?
Hicham Chahine: This whole story started initially four, five years ago, where I was thinking a little bit about what to do next with the company, right? It was in Stockholm, it was in Sao Paulo, it was in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Wuhan. Felt a little bit like the company was operating in silos. We were lacking a consolidated global HQ. I met some people from Abu Dhabi Gaming at an event in Copenhagen in 2018. Also, I’m originally from the Middle East (Chahine’s mother is Lebanese). So, I always wanted to try and come back to the Middle East. So when we were ready to move on from Stockholm seven years ago, I reached out to the people I met in Abu Dhabi.
Through that year, we truly believed that the Middle East is the next frontier for esports and gaming growth. The agreement itself is very simple, even though it is complex in execution. NIP is to establish a consolidated global HQ and create 200 to 300 jobs out of the UAE, covering esports, talent management, publishing, creative studios, and events. The whole reason why they were so adamant that we take this little collaboration with Abu Dhabi Gaming and scale it to this massive initiative through ADIO is that they want to create local opportunities. In particular, 90% of the population here is interested in video games, and a large portion of the population is under 35. What happens with this young population is that they are no longer interested in working in government and traditional industries such as oil and gas. They want what Gen Z and millennials see as cooler jobs.
What are your key priorities as NIP scales up?
I’ve built one of the most iconic, legendary, largest brands in gaming, right? But I started getting fatigued and annoyed that whatever conversations we had with industry stakeholders were always about North America, China, and Europe. So, I thought, what if I took my brand, moved it to the Middle East, and used it to put the Middle East region on the map for competitive video games? We want to create opportunities and make gaming a viable career path. Ultimately, I want to see a Middle Eastern pro player lift a world championship trophy – regardless of the game – one day.
When we scouted locations before settling on Abu Dhabi, we realized that China was operating in silos as it grew, and so was the West. We needed to consolidate our global businesses. Abu Dhabi is one of the best cities in the world to live in, so the redeployment of talent is easy because the destination is attractive. While we work with Saudi Arabia and frequently travel there, their approach is very top-down – big, flashy, high-budget events. While we respect that, we align more with Abu Dhabi’s approach, which focuses on grassroots development, subsidies, and ecosystem-building from the ground up.
What inspired the launch of Aetatis?
We have 600 million eyeballs on us. The direct audience base of the NIP group is about 200 million people. We’re competing in other publishers’ games, we’re marketing other publishers’ games, we produce events for other publishers, our business produces for Tencent, for NetEase. Mobile games is arguably the largest growing gaming phenomenon around the world, right? Smartphone device penetration is ultra-high, and the mobile gaming user base just trumps the PC and console gaming user base.
We found in Aetatis a very promising game, one of the largest mobile game developments that has been done in recent years. Even before the game was launched, there were over 1 million downloads. On the first launch days, the game was triple-A rated across every single distribution platform there is. It was trending on the Apple Store and Android Store in Asia. League of Legends is very big on PC. You’re seeing other games such as Honor of Kings, and MOBA games are just what’s played in our initial market, which was the Asian market. So we went with a sci-fi, futuristic MOBA title.
What’s next?
We are looking to be publishing another title in 2025, potentially two. An area that we are looking at is we started our publishing venture in China and Asia, right? But as part of us establishing ourselves in the Middle East and putting our HQ here, that creates a natural bridge. We take concepts that work and are proven in the West and take them East and vice versa. What you’re seeing over the last couple of years is that the Middle East is this next emerging trend that is moving west. There is a demand. Arabic music, films and soap operas are making their way west.
When you live in Abu Dhabi or the UAE, a lot of the things we do here are native English. It’s already being produced in a language with localized cultural traits, which makes it easily exportable. There’s great quality, and a great amount of content is already available, which the rest of the world will have demand for. And let’s also not forget that the domestic markets are also quite large.