Nicolas Maurer can’t quite remember the name of the tournament. A small Call of Duty LAN – somewhere in Paris – the kind where the musk of stale energy drinks and hum of a room full of machines linger longer than the name – left its mark on the man who would go on to co-found France’s most storied esports organization.
“I think [it was] around 2012 or 2013, prior to founding Team Vitality,” he vaguely recalls.
“That was when I truly discovered my passion for esports, and it remains such a special memory for me.”
Nicolas Maurer, CSO, Team Vitality
He was there alongside Fabien “Neo” Devide, who at the time was managing Corentin “Gotaga” Houssein and Kevin “BrokyBrawks” Georges. “They were part of the legendary French Counter-Strike team that had also just opened a Call of Duty division.”
The accidental architects of French esports
Within a couple of years, Vitality was born, with Devide now serving as CEO and Maurer as CSO. Nobody at the nameless CoD LAN could have known that, over a decade later, the club they were building would be training out of the iconic Stade de France, competing for $75 million prize pools and preparing for a World Cup in the city where it all began.
For a long time after that, Maurer says, not much was happening in Paris from an esports perspective. There were a few small competitions at Paris Games Week each year, and Vitality hosted the French Call of Duty Championship in the early days, but events in the biggest titles simply weren’t coming to the city.
“Tournaments were happening, but not necessarily in the biggest titles,” he says. That couldn’t be further from the observable reality today, and Maurer points to the opening of Vitality’s headquarters, the V.Hive in 2019, as where things “really started to accelerate” – with V.Hive marking one of the first permanent esports presences in the city.
The Stade de France became Vitality’s official training base – major non-endemic sponsors such as Adidas and Renault started to follow as the institutional legitimacy of the club, and French esports more broadly, continued to grow.
Then came the events. Over the following years, the Counter-Strike Major arrived in Paris, then Rocket League, Valorant Champions, Rainbow Six, and EA FC. “Today,” Maurer says, “every publisher and tournament organizer realizes they need to bring their events to Paris, because the level of passion and excitement from fans is simply unmatched.”
Paris crowds have, time and time again, proven him right.
The moment everything changed for French esports
If you had to pick a key moment in Paris esports history, it would have to be May 2023 – the BLAST.tv Paris Major held at the Accor Arena. It was the final Major ever played in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive before the transition to CS2. Vitality, the home side didn’t just win it, they annihilated the competition, failing to drop a single map across the entire Champions Stage and defeating GamerLegion 2-0 in the Grand Final in front of 50,000 boisterous gamers.
The best player in the world at the time, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, was crowned MVP, and Maurer reaches for a comparison that will resonate with every French person of a certain age. “I often compare it to the French national football team winning the World Cup in 1998,” he says.
“When you’re playing at home, you’re expected to win. But at the same time, there are huge expectations and immense pressure. And then it just happened, almost like a dream.”
Nicolas Maurer, CSO, Team Vitality
“Winning at home, in front of all our fans, with everyone expecting us to win, while putting so much pressure on us to deliver – it was just the perfect moment,” he recounts when reflecting on the defining moment in the organization’s history.
Can esports have its own Zidane moment?
Most Brits of a certain age will reach for Panini sticker albums, Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping, or FIFA: Road to World Cup ’98 before they reach for Zidane’s name.
For Maurer, it’s not just an off-the-cuff comparison. The 1998 World Cup Final, which saw French talisman Zizou score two, drew a reported global audience of 1.3 billion.
Although he candidly admits that “esports is still not at the mainstream level of football,” he points out that the 1998 World Cup reached millions of French people who never previously cared about football. There are rare moments that unify countries around a shared cultural moment, and he says, “back then, even people who didn’t really care about football were completely hooked.”
“It was a mega event and a memory shared by almost all French people. I was 12 at the time, and I’m sure that every teenager, and really a large part of the population beyond just football fans, remembers it very fondly.”
Esports may not be there yet. But Maurer’s willingness to even reach for the comparison speaks volumes. Somewhere in Paris this summer, in front of a home crowd once again, the foundations for cultural phenomena are being laid. Whether or not it blossoms into something an entire generation remembers fondly remains to be seen, but the seed, at least, will have been planted.
The kid in the crowd
This summer, from 6 July to 23 August, the Esports World Cup will head to Paris Expo Porte de Versailles for seven weeks of competition across 25 tournaments and 24 titles, with $75 million on the line.
The opening ceremony is at La Seine Musicale on 8 July, featuring DJ Snake, Aya Nakamura, and Theodora. Beyond the main venue, pop-up entertainment zones and live screenings are planned across the neighborhoods of Greater Paris. Over 2,000 players from more than 200 clubs across 100 countries will compete.
The scale is genuinely unprecedented for an esports event in Europe, and serves as more of a ‘festival of esports’. Maurer is particularly alive to what it might mean at the grassroots level — the teenagers, or parents, who will walk into the Porte de Versailles for the first time this summer and watch competitive gaming live, in the same city where he once stood in a nameless room watching a barely traceable Call of Duty tournament.
“Those who have never attended a tournament before can experience, for the first time, what it’s like to watch in person,” he says.
He adds, “I expect people will fill the venues, maybe discovering some really niche games that aren’t very popular in Europe. I expect a lot of success when it comes to the crowds, and a lot of people enjoying esports tournaments in person for the first time.”
How politics and passion intertwine
When the Esports Foundation announced in May that geopolitical tensions in the Middle East had made hosting the event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, untenable for 2026, Paris was confirmed as the new host within days. President Emmanuel Macron marked the announcement publicly, photographed with Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports Foundation, and asserting, “We are ready to host this 2026 Esports World Cup. Very proud to welcome the world once again.”
Macron said as early as 2022 that esports was on the French government’s radar. In an interview with Video Games Industry Memo, Fabian Scheuermann, Chief Games Officer for the Esports Foundation, said the French government was eager to offer “help and support with all the important things.” He emphasized that the package offered by the French government was “unmatchable from our perspective.”
Maurer is more measured about how much government support actually means for the esports industry. “At the end of the day, esports is still very much driven by the private sector, notably publishers,” he says. “Sure, you can have governments that are supportive, but if the market itself isn’t that big or interesting, it’s kind of secondary.”
He is, however, very clear that the government support can have an overwhelmingly positive effect when political will meets strong fan engagement. He describes the French ecosystem as having “a lot of engagement, big teams, great players, and on top of that, a government that is very supportive,” and emphasizes the power in that combination.
Macron’s eagerness to be a part of it is clear. The President has consistently congratulated French teams when they perform well internationally and takes an active role in promoting the need for major esports events in Paris.
“It plays a big role for sure. When you look at France from the perspective of a publisher, you think: we know the event will be successful, we know there will be fans. We know it’ll be easy because there are great venues and support for visas,” he continues.
“In many ways, it’s kind of a no-brainer to come to France.”
Dreaming, despite the odds
Which leaves one last question: what does success look like for Team Vitality themselves?
Maurer’s answer is refreshingly honest. A third or fourth-place finish in the Club Championship is realistic and acceptable. Second would be exceptional. Winning the entire thing, when Team Falcons are involved with their vastly different resource allocation, is, he admits, “quite unlikely.”
Every great dream begins with a dreamer, and Maurer concedes that he, too, dares to dream:
“There’s a kind of secret dream that maybe, with extremely favorable circumstances, we could win it all. That would obviously be the ultimate success, but it remains unlikely. So we’ll see where we end up.”
Nicolas Maurer, CSO, Team Vitality
Unlikely. But then again, nobody remembers the name of that Call of Duty LAN either, and look at Team Vitality now.