2024 iQOO Cup: Witnessing the Two-Way Journey Between Esports and Cities

2024 iQOO Cup: Witnessing the Two-Way Journey Between Esports and CitiesThe 2024 iQOO Cup National Finals and iQOO Esports Game Carnival concluded at Jing'an Sports Center Stadium in Jing'an District, Shanghai. This highly anticipated esports event attracted over 40,000 participants, with the "Chongqing Luoyi" team from the Southwest region ultimately lifting the 2024 iQOO Cup championship trophy

2024 iQOO Cup: Witnessing the Two-Way Journey Between Esports and Cities

The 2024 iQOO Cup National Finals and iQOO Esports Game Carnival concluded at Jing'an Sports Center Stadium in Jing'an District, Shanghai. This highly anticipated esports event attracted over 40,000 participants, with the "Chongqing Luoyi" team from the Southwest region ultimately lifting the 2024 iQOO Cup championship trophy. However, this summer mobile game extravaganza was far more than just a championship battle. The iQOO Esports Game Carnival, co-hosted by over ten mobile game partners outside the arena, also attracted numerous players, showcasing the vibrant "Universe Esports Center" to its fullest.

The ability of the 2024 iQOO Cup to attract so many players online and offline is inseparable from the booming development of the mobile game and esports industry. QuestMobile data shows that as of February 2024, China's mobile game users have reached 659 million, representing a year-on-year growth rate exceeding 12%. The "2023 Annual Report on China's Electronic Sports Industry" points out that China's esports user base has reached 488 million, making it the country with the most esports users globally. The massive user base of gamers has given rise to an increasing demand for esports events, propelling the integration of the esports industry with local economies.

As the "Global Esports Capital," Shanghai had already set its goal in 2019 and has promoted the implementation of multiple esports events in Shanghai over the past five years. The city has been working to transform Jing'an District into the "Universe Esports Center." The exceeding expectations garnered by the 2024 iQOO Cup National Finals and iQOO Esports Game Carnival both online and offline undoubtedly serves as a fresh model for industry integration.

Shanghai's passion for esports is undeniable. It was the first city in China to issue supporting policies related to esports, attracting companies like Tencent and NetEase to increase their investment and build various esports facilities. Currently, Shanghai has become the "Global Esports Capital" in the eyes of many players, with winning a championship in Shanghai becoming a dream for many professional players.

However, esports has always faced challenges such as "high organizational difficulty, high barriers to entry, and high costs," leaving many ordinary players as mere spectators with limited actual participation. To change this, iQOO initiated the first iQOO Cup in 2023, leveraging the widespread vivo and iQOO stores nationwide to hold offline selections, allowing every player to participate in the competition. This inclusive design attracted the attention of many ordinary players, transmitting the esports culture to a broader audience. In just a few days of the finals, the iQOO Cup drew over 1,000 spectators to the venue and over 3,000 visitors to the iQOO Esports Game Carnival.

Jing'an District's well-developed esports ecosystem makes it the ideal location for hosting large-scale esports events, attracting major events like the iQOO Cup National Finals to choose Jing'an as their home. With support from multiple parties, including the China Audiovisual and Digital Association Esports Working Committee and the Jing'an District Culture and Tourism Bureau, the iQOO Cup has become the largest and most participant-heavy King of Glory non-professional brand competition in China, drawing in a vast number of players and emerging as a flagship project for the collaboration between esports and local cultural tourism.

The reliance of esports events on technology cannot be overlooked, and high-performance equipment is indispensable. As both the organizer and equipment provider for this event, iQOO provided players with the flagship iQOO 12 phone, featuring the third-generation Snapdragon 8 and the company's self-developed Q1 esports chip. Coupled with iQOO's self-developed technology in networking, performance tuning, and graphics, it ensures that players are not hindered by equipment limitations during matches, empowering them to deliver even more thrilling battles.

Beyond demanding stringent requirements for esports equipment, there's a need for support from a range of companies encompassing server setup, network maintenance, and contestant equipment debugging. These projects involve multiple high-tech industries, including semiconductors and the internet. The demand for cutting-edge technology in esports drives companies like iQOO to innovate their technology, build more competitive products, and in turn, support and propel the development of the digital economy.

The reason Jing'an District is hailed as the "Universe Esports Center" lies not only in policy support and numerous esports companies but also in being home to Shanghai's sole national-level big data industry base, backed by a massive domestic esports user base. Ultimately, it has forged this "Esports Holy Land," propelling the new integration of local cultural tourism with esports, providing players with richer esports events and activities.

As one of the earliest domestic mobile phone brands to venture into esports, iQOO has consistently been a key driver of the domestic mobile game esports industry. Since the brand's inception in 2019, iQOO has fostered a deep partnership with the King of Glory top-tier professional league KPL (KingProLeague), becoming the official esports phone for the KPL League. This marked the first time an Android phone became the official device for a top mobile esports competition.

Beyond sponsoring top-tier leagues like KPL, the first iQOO Cup attracted 23,000 participants, with the finals ultimately crafted to KPL specifications, becoming a nationwide event for King of Glory enthusiasts during the summer, propelling it to become one of the most watched non-professional tournaments.

This year, the second iQOO Cup, held as promised, attracted even more players. From sponsoring official events to hosting the largest non-professional brand competition, iQOO's continuous efforts in mobile esports are propelling the brand to greater heights.

iQOO's brand attributes align closely with the esports spirit: faster, stronger, courageous, and constantly striving to surpass. It's this spirit that has propelled iQOO to become a leading domestic mobile phone brand in just a few years. Esports has shaped and nurtured iQOO, making it an integral part of China's mobile esports culture.

For phone manufacturers, esports is not an easy path. After all, the core of esports lies in the relentless pursuit of technology and innovation. Whether for PCs or mobile phones, the latest and most powerful technologies are first applied in the gaming realm. Players' unwavering pursuit of game performance has driven Nvidia to develop the world's most powerful GPU chips, opening the door to the AI domain. On mobile devices, Qualcomm, Apple, and MediaTek all use game testing results to demonstrate the superior performance of their chips.

Therefore, to deliver a superior experience for players, iQOO must build a powerful mobile phone system from the ground up, ensuring players receive the optimal experience in games. To this end, iQOO has self-developed the Multi-Turbo technology, achieving a strong synergy between hardware and software through multidimensional optimization of network, cooling, AI, game, and underlying central core resources, unleashing every ounce of hardware performance. Simultaneously, iQOO has incorporated a dedicated graphics chip into phones, leveraging distributed computing to enhance the phone's capabilities in MEMC motion compensation, super-resolution technology, and ultra-frame concurrency, enabling phones to achieve high-frame-rate gameplay while maintaining clear and smooth visuals. It's the application of these technologies that allows iQOO phone users to enjoy a more immersive gaming experience and squeeze out every bit of performance from the processor.

From software to hardware, iQOO has crafted a technology platform centered around the mobile game ecosystem, continuously contributing back to the esports ecosystem and propelling it to greater heights. Performance is the foundation of everything. From King of Glory to Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile, the advancement of mobile phone performance has enabled many games that originally shined on PC to take center stage in the mobile gaming arena, offering players greater choices and expanding the reach of mobile esports competitions to a broader audience.

In the eyes of many players, iQOO has become synonymous with esports and performance. Driven by esports culture and the esports spirit, iQOO has successfully positioned itself as a brand that resonates with Gen Z users, boasting high user loyalty. Through initiatives like the iQOO Cup, the brand has elevated esports into a truly inclusive sport for all.

In 2020, esports became an official event at the Asian Games for the first time. It was subsequently unanimously approved by the International Olympic Committee at its 142nd session, and the first Olympic Electronic Sports Games will be held in Saudi Arabia in 2025. Today, esports is no longer simply definable by the word "game" but has become a new engine driving economic and technological development.

According to the Jing'an District Culture and Tourism Bureau, almost every time a major esports event or competition is held, sales in the surrounding commercial districts of Jing'an Sports Center increase by 30% year-on-year, driving an overall increase in tourism revenue for the city. The "2024 First Half-Year Report on China's Game Industry" reveals that in just six months, China's esports industry generated revenue of 12.027 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.43%, solidifying the industry's top spot globally in terms of revenue generated.

By introducing inclusive non-professional brand competitions like the