Evo France Leaves Nice for Paris as Entries Fall in Its Anchor Games

Evo France will leave Nice for Paris for its third edition on Oct. 22-24, 2027 , handing a French promoter that began operating in March the job of scaling the European stop of a fighting game circuit now fully owned by Saudi Arabia’s Qiddiya.

New Esports Org. (NEO) announced the move on Sunday as the 2026 edition closed at Nice’s Palais des Expositions. NEO said Evo France “is expanding in 2027 and will bring together even more fans and surprises in Paris, in an event proudly organized by NEO NEW ESPORTS ORG. for RTS,” the Qiddiya-owned company that owns Evo. A Paris venue has not been announced.

The stated reason is space. “We need a bigger venue because we are currently at the maximum capacity of the Palais des Expositions,” NEO President Bertrand Amar told Nice-Matin . The Palais is the largest hall Nice has, and the exhibition and congress center the city plans to build on its wholesale market site is years away; the previous administration targeted 2032 . Amar told the paper there is no multiyear deal with Paris, and Nice-Matin noted there had been none with Nice either. (Quotes from French-language sources are TEA’s translation.)

According to a joint release from NEO and RTS, Amar said Evo France was about to “change dimension” in 2027 and that the goal was to make it “one of the biggest esports and community events in the world.” RTS CEO Stuart Saw said the company wanted to offer “something that has never been offered in Europe before and that fits into the international development of the Evo circuit.”

The departure ends a two-year arrangement that Nice had folded into its pitch as an esports city.

The city’s 2025 and 2026 budget reports list Evo among its major events. The Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur describes itself as a “major partner” of the event for the second year. Neither document gives an amount. TEA reviewed the titles of city council, metropolitan council and metropolitan bureau deliberations from June 2024 to June 2026 and found none naming Evo, Webedia or NEO. The Palais des Expositions is a city venue, so any rent the organizer paid is city revenue and any discount on it would be support in kind.

Nice’s politics changed between the two editions. Éric Ciotti unseated Mayor Christian Estrosi in March. In April he cut €2.65 million EUR ($3.0 million USD) in city subsidies for the Ironman 70.3, an ultra-trail race and an international pétanque tournament. Evo was not on the list. “I have waged war on the cost of events funded by the taxpayer, but EVO is organized by a private structure that rents the Palais des Expos. It is an event that earns us money. As long as the city’s involvement is much more modest, that suits me,” Ciotti told Nice-Matin . Pierre Ippolito, the deputy mayor for cultural and creative industries, told the paper an event like Evo brings in “roughly €10 million” ($11.2 million) across the region, the city and the Métropole. He did not say how that figure was calculated.

The company taking Evo to Paris is new, and so is its ownership.

Amar ran Webedia’s esports operations from 2016 and launched the Ligue Française de League of Legends (LFL) there. He co-founded NEO with Matthieu Dallon, who created the Electronic Sports World Cup. Webedia organized Evo France 2025 in partnership with Sony and RTS , and Amar led it as Webedia’s head of esports. The 2026 edition was NEO’s first. French company records show NEO was registered in Paris in December 2024 as a dormant company and began operating on March 1, 2026. It raised its share capital from €42,000 ($47,000) to €61,000 ($68,000) this year and filed its 2025 accounts under a confidentiality election. Amar’s holding company serves as president and Dallon’s as managing director. TEA found no outside investor.

Amar has said NEO pays for much of what it runs. “We are in partnership with Riot, but we provide the majority of the funding ourselves,” he told Sheep Esports in March about the League of Legends EMEA Masters and Game Changers circuits NEO took over from Webedia. Dot Esports reported , citing an interview with the French business magazine Challenges, that Amar put a yearlong competition at €200,000 to €300,000 ($224,000 to $335,000) and the largest events at up to €3 million ($3.4 million). As previously reported by The Esports Advocate, NEO is also the company most often named as the LFL’s next operator , although it said in August that it had not planned to invest in the league.

Evo’s ownership has been restructured three times since August 2025. Sony Interactive Entertainment and RTS bought the event in 2021. In August 2025, NODWIN Gaming bought Sony’s stake and Qiddiya invested in RTS. Qiddiya completed its acquisition of RTS in September 2025, and, as previously reported by The Esports Advocate, RTS bought out NODWIN in February . No price was disclosed at any step. The release names new Evo events in Singapore, Morocco and Brazil. It does not say whether NEO or RTS carries the financial risk of the Paris edition.

NEO and RTS said in their release that the Nice edition drew nearly 20,000 visitors this year, with competitors from 95 countries. TEA could not independently verify the figure.

The registration data complicates the growth story. Total registrations on the start.gg bracket platform rose 15%, from 3,498 in 2025 to 4,010 this year. Entries fell in all five games that ran both years. Street Fighter 6 , the anchor title, dropped 36%. The growth came from games added in 2026, including 2XKO , which Riot Games has since stopped developing .

Still unknown are the Paris venue and its capacity, whether the City of Paris or the Île-de-France region is contributing, what Nice, the Métropole and the Région Sud provided in cash or in kind for the two Nice editions, the event’s budget, and how revenue and risk are split between NEO and RTS.

Evo France has outgrown its first host city. The larger question is whether a self-funded promoter can turn a bigger venue into a bigger event when entries in its anchor games fell this year.