For the thousands of ticketholders stepping into Paris’ Expo Porte de Versailles for this year’s Esports World Cup, a cacophonous sensory experience awaits. As a sea of fans, many donning Team Vitality jerseys in support of the French hometown club, make their way through the sprawling venue, it’s clear that the third iteration of the annual international tournament is gaming at its most maximalist. Wall-to-wall virtual and physical activations, demo kiosks, and shopping pop-ups fill the cavernous space, with roaring crowds and abrupt surges of gameplay audio coming from all directions.
The different scenes on the showroom floor feel endlessly shifting, which is by design — over the course of seven weeks, the venue will be refreshed many times to accommodate 24 individual tournaments, all in service to the Esports World Cup’s Club Championship.
But deeper into the oasis of fandom is another, more secret level that most attendees will never see. Here lies the players lounge, where hundreds of competitors, club managers, and event organizers commune in between the action. It’s a sanctuary for players to unwind and socialize before finding focus — sometime after a scheduled massage or manicure. It’s also here where you’ll likely find one of the key minds behind the experience, Hans Jagnow. As the Director of Clubs, National Teams and Player Relations, he and his team are working tirelessly to ensure competitors are operating in peak form and supported on a personal level.
“With EWC, what I try to understand is how we can emphasize elements of identity and make it truly about the players, and live up to that very high bar that everyone sets for themselves,” Jagnow tells Rolling Stone. “The core function of player hospitality is to enable them to be the best on stage, to support the performance, how safe and secure they feel, how much they can focus, and just going out there and doing the best damn job of their life. We want them to be rock stars.”
But building rock stars requires work. Jagnow and his peers at the Esports Foundation were also up against it this time around after pivoting the entire tournament from its original home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Paris in just a handful of weeks. Fortunately, Jagnow has built a career on that sort of pressure.
The uncharted path to esports
In his three years at the Esports Foundation, Jagnow is called on when a puzzle demands a swift, yet elegant solution. While not the first major challenge of his career, the inaugural Esports World Cup was definitely an eye-opener, necessitating a blind leap into a project that was then in early development.
“Very early on, I was basically asked by our CEO, Ralf Reichert, to support him with a project — undisclosed — and suddenly I was on a plane to Riyadh,” Jagnow recalls. “We had a couple of weeks to set everything up for the announcement of the first Esports World Cup. We announced it in the New Global Sport Conference. I feel like, sometimes, I’m the person that gets called when you have six weeks, and you need to bring something to life.”
The EWC wasn’t his first foray into esports, however. His passion for social gaming emerged early, as far back as 2000, when an 11-year-old Jagnow convinced his grandmother to accompany him to an age-restricted competitive event in his home country of Germany. “In Germany, we have strict laws around youth protection,” he explains. “There was a big Counter-Strike tournament — a game that, back then, was probably still in development as a fan [mod] for a game called Half-Life. The game was 16- or 18-plus, and so watching people play also required you to be a certain age. But if your guardian was with you, that would be waived. I was begging my grandma; [she] had no idea what this was.”
While esports was gaining traction in Europe through the 2000s, Jagnow didn’t pursue it as a career—at least, not directly. Instead, he studied law in Berlin, later taking on internships in Washington, D.C., visiting with the World Bank and German Embassy. It was there he learned a key element of what would define his career: diplomacy is everything.
“Working internationally is very important to me, and it’s something that my parents had, [but] my grandparents didn’t — being from the east of Germany, having a lot of travel restrictions back when the Socialist Republic was still a thing,” he says. “So, I’m in the privileged position to be able to travel the world and, coming from law to work eight years in politics, then to discover there is no political representation in esports. [I thought that] maybe I’d combine something that I really like with my engagement with society.”
Jagnow helped launch the German Esports Federation to build an infrastructure for international cooperation in competitive gaming across borders. Starting as a representative for players and esports stakeholders in Germany, he then took an opportunity at ESL (now ESL FACEIT Group), establishing international partnerships in Counter-Strike, before his big leap into the Esports World Cup to level up his work building esports ecosystems.
All this brings him to his job today, helping support Clubs and players at esports’ biggest spectacle.
The art of player hospitality
If building rock stars is Jagnow’s goal, he’s certainly nailed the luxurious aspect of upper echelon celebrity life at the Paris venue. Inside the player hospitality center, which itself feels almost like a remote retreat from the esports coliseum of the expo floor, there’s basically any amenity you can imagine. Private chefs cater food and baristas carefully prepare wonderfully pungent espresso. There are rows of couches and day beds where players splay, laughing amid relaxed chatter. There’s even noise-dampening quiet rooms exclusively for meditative moments of peace away from the crowds.
“How we looked at the space is, we didn’t want to create something over-designed that no one uses,” Jagnow says. “This is unfortunately how it is, not necessarily in esports, but across different sports. Everything in here has a function, a role, an intent. Designing with intent and with player requirements is a really fundamental principle to how we build athletes’ hospitality overall.”
Mateusz Slodkowski
Jagnow acknowledges that, while much of the gaming industry purports itself to be “player-first,” not enough attention is paid to the mental and physical demands of an esports player’s lifestyle. It’s a broad misconception that playing video games professionally is easy. True to the rock star label, or perhaps more aptly, traditional athletes, pro gamers are often under extreme duress before, during, and after their performance. Their travel schedule is intense, and exhaustion is a real possibility.
“The energy that is needed to go for hours on stage — especially if you have a grand finals, which can be five or six hours — you are constantly under pressure,” Jagnow says. “You don’t have time to think about anything else. You need to be well-nutritioned; you need to be in good physical shape. I think the most important thing is travel fatigue. You come in on Sunday; you have media day on Monday; you have practice on Tuesday; the tournament starts on Wednesday. You go all the way? Then, on Sunday, the next flight goes out to the next tournament. This is a lifestyle that is very demanding.”
It’s safe to say that not every player’s routine is equally grueling, but for top competitors in games like Counter-Strike, Jagnow says that some people travel up to 270 days per year. That means perpetually acclimating to different time zones, managing jet lag, and the basic stress of travel that everyone is familiar with to some degree. When they’re not flying or being bussed around, players are ultimately bound to monitors and mobile screens for extended periods of time — after all, it’s where they train and compete for a living. To combat these issues, Jagnow’s team has developed a full-service facility where all needs can be met.
“What we want to do is create a dedicated counterbalance where you can be active, playing pool, ping pong, or darts,” he explains. “Mental focus is really exhausting. It’s like doing pull-ups for hours and hours; the same thing happens in your brain. So we create distractions that help activate the brain in different ways, and physical activities as a good stress balance.”
Beyond taking players’ minds off stress or giving them something else to focus on, a huge aspect of EWC’s hospitality initiative is taking care of seemingly basic needs they shouldn’t have to think about. The team provides massages and physiotherapy to help ease nerves and manage travel fatigue, but often it’s the little details that make the most impact. After all, if cameras will be pointed at your hands all day, why shouldn’t they be manicured?
“Rock stars need manicures and pedicures, and [they] need good hair,” Jagnow muses. “That’s why we have a barbershop over there. You don’t need to go out if you don’t want to, because you have everything neatly packed in one area.”
For Jagnow and his team, it isn’t enough to simply make things convenient for players and clubs, but rather ensuring that everyone involved with the EWC organization has their needs met on a personal level. Inspired by restaurateur and author William Guidara’s concept of “Unreasonable Hospitality” — a philosophy predicated on going above and beyond to create magical moments — EWC’s commitment to hospitality is just as much about connecting with players on an emotional and social level as tangibly with services.
A gathering of heroes and legends
As essential as it is for the Esports Foundation to take care of its players on game day, one of the key strengths of an organization with its resources and reach is impacting the lives of professional gamers long-term. To be successful and build a long-lasting legacy, the endorsement of its competitors and investment in their future is paramount.
Jagnow narrows in on one program specifically designed for such purpose, called the Heroes Club. Ostensibly a membership structure for those who go the distance and win one of the EWC’s championships, the Heroes Club is very exclusive — out of two thousand competitors in 2026, only about 100 will make the cut by bringing home gold in their respective game. It’s a status symbol on its own, but of course there are perks beyond bragging rights.
“Winning once makes you a ‘hero,’ but heroes can fall. Winning three times makes you a ‘legend,’ and as one, you basically have a lifetime status within this program,” Jagnow explains. “Each year you can come back to EWC, and even if you don’t play, you get your access to the Heroes Lounge, and you meet your fellow heroes.”
With 2026 being the third year of EWC, it’s the first year where anyone is actually eligible for legend status. Sure enough, there’s exactly one: a Moroccan/Canadian player, Samy “dralii” Hajji, whose back-to-back-to-back victories in Rocket League have cemented his place in esports history. But his story is unique for another reason, as Jagnow points out.
“[dralii] won EWC three times in a row, for three different clubs: for Team BDS, Karmine Corp, and this year for Team Falcons,” he says. “He switched teams, and that’s why it’s so important for us to have this hero status. It’s not only about teams here. In this specific case, it is about players, regardless of which jersey they wear. Once they’re out of the jersey, they’re still a legend, even post-career.”
Beyond individual career status among their peers, there’s also a larger mission behind the Heroes Club, and it extends far outside gaming circles. Champions who obtain a hero’s badge also have a slew of opportunities presented to them courtesy of EWC’s network of partners and sponsors. Hilton provides them with diamond status that they can use throughout the year to upgrade their hotel stays, get free breakfast, and access executive lounges. For a lifestyle predicated on constant travel, it can be a godsend. But it also opens other doors.
“The Heroes Club gives you access to the coolest events in the world. So, they have access to the Super Bowl in the VIP area, or the Paddock Club at Formula One,” Jagnow says. “They have a skybox at the Champions League finals, and they can join the driving race car safety workshop, driving 300 kilometers per hour.”
And while it sounds pretty amazing to literally take the wheel behind a race car, it’s the social aspect that affords greater possibility. Being put in the right room with the right crowd can change everything.
“Meeting people — that’s super important for us. Suddenly, you stand next to a famous American football star, you’re going through the racing tables at F1 and into the garages and shaking hands with Lando Norris,” Jagnow says. “Ideally, at the end of such an event, they have a number in their phone, and someone calls them without us being the facilitator, saying, ‘Hey you were really cool, and I really like to play video games. Let’s do something together.’ We want to bring them together with the players to create a new generation of influential people, and change the lives of the players ultimately by introducing them to a part of society that is usually closed off.”
“Game recognizes game,” he adds.
A generational shift in perception
What the Esports World Cup truly represents to players is a series of new opportunities: to build a career, make connections, and most importantly, find your community. Jagnow’s work in hospitality offers, in many ways, a better life. But it’s not limited to people who are already set up for success. It’s a stage that anyone can take for themselves.
This is reflected not just in the nature of esports itself, where players from across the globe can rise to fame online, but in EWC’s last-chance qualifiers (LCQ, for short). Up until the tournament day, attendees can step up to compete on-site for a chance to make it through to the finals. The odds are slim, but they’re very real. Jagnow notes that out of roughly 1,200 LCQ challengers this year, just a few made it to the main event. But even then, one of those players, Khawaja “M. Zubair” Muhammad Zubair from Pakistan, ended up going all the way to win the championship in Tekken, earning points for AG.AL, which contributed to the Club winning the EWC 2026 Club Championship.
“You don’t need to be part of a very exclusive circle to have a chance to compete on the biggest stage in the world; esports is very personable in that aspect. It lets you go from zero to hero, from your bedroom to the main stage, in one big run. It’s very open to showcasing talent,” Jagnow says. “There’s a dedicated LCQ stage, and it brings back that feeling I grew up with when we went to LAN parties. When we went to big offline LAN events, like a thousand PCs in a dark expo hall, it brings back good memories. It’s what this industry and sport was built on.”
Looking back, Jagnow’s ascension to the pinnacle of esports has been unconventional, but that’s really the nature of the industry itself. There is no one singular path to success; but organizations like the Esports Foundation are offering chances for people to chart their own. For many, it means an uphill battle against external forces and stigmas. Jagnow himself knows the feeling intimately.
“I don’t think that my grandmother ever understood what this was, and over the years, she never understood why I started to talk to governments and celebrities — why I was a president of a federation that looked after this, suddenly shaking the hand of heads of state,” Jagnow laments. “She just couldn’t compute it; can’t compute it to this day. But I think everyone was happy that I found something that makes me happy and drives me. There’s just a generation that will never understand it, it’s just too foreign.”
But, in the end, it all comes down to acting with intent. It’s called hospitality, but much of the work done by Jagnow and company boils down to recognition — seeing players for who they are and giving them what they need. Even if it’s just a sense of community.
“This feeling of belonging is so important because, for the longest time, it’s had a negative image in many countries. So, finding people who share your passion and are really good at the games, who follow your ambition for excellence, or follow your own ambitions as a fan, it’s a really important topic for the identity of esports at its core.”
“Times are changing.”
