USA Esports building what American competitive gaming hasn't had

When Jesse Bodony was a kid, the United States Tennis Association gave him a ranking, a membership card, and a pathway. He wants to build the same thing for every gamer in America — and USA Esports is the organization he helped build to do it.

The Esports Foundation, hosts of the Esports World Cup and Esports Nations Cup, awarded National Team Partner status to organizations and individuals across more than 100 countries and territories. Each country's organization will act as the conduit in deciding which players will wear the nation's colors in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in November.

“The Esports Nations Cup introduces something esports has never had before: a global system for national teams at an unprecedented scale,” said Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports Foundation via press release. “The response we received from across the world shows that communities are ready for this next step. Together with our partners, we are building structures that will allow players to represent their nations and compete on the biggest stage in esports. With more than 100 nations now part of the system, the Esports Nations Cup moves from concept to reality — establishing national esports as a lasting part of the global competitive landscape.”

USA Esports was selected as the EF's National Team Partner in the United States, operating under what the EF describes as a "club-led coalition" model — one of several partnership structures deployed across different nations depending on the state of their local esports ecosystem.

“We feel deeply honored,” said Bodony, who sat down with The Sporting Tribune as the organization’s president and CEO. 

The Origin

The International Olympic Committee announced in July 2024 that it had partnered with the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee to discuss the idea of an Olympic Esports Games.

It didn't take long for chancellors and presidents from universities with established esports programs to investigate establishing a national development program, akin to ones in tennis, soccer, and other traditional sports with national teams.

Discussions began in January 2025, organized through another esports-adjacent nonprofit, the Voice of Intercollegiate Esports. The team spent the next six-plus months researching and speaking with stakeholders on all levels of the esports ecosystem.

USA Esports didn't build that application alone. The established United States Esports Federation — a member of both the International Esports Federation since 2018 and the Global Esports Federation since 2024 — collaborated with USA Esports specifically for the EF partnership bid. The IESF, founded in 2008, and the GEF, founded in 2019, operate in a similar space as the EF, each serving as international governing bodies for competitive esports. Rather than submit competing applications, the two organizations found common ground and submitted one unified entry. USEF's president, Todd Harris, sits on the USA Esports Board of Directors, while Clint Kennedy, the USEF's managing director, works directly alongside Bodony — though both organizations continue to operate independently.

“[They have] been doing incredible work for years before we existed, including competing internationally,” Bodony said. “We were able to come together with them, identify complementary strengths, and submit a single unified application under the USA Esports banner. We are all aligned around consolidating and being stronger together.”

When the discovery process finished, USA Esports incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in August, with the stated goal of uniting a fragmented esports ecosystem.

“The consensus was clear: a unified body like this was needed,” Bodony said.

It's a sentiment the esports industry has heard before — sustaining a unified national body in the U.S. has historically proven difficult. Whether USA Esports holds together where others haven't remains to be seen.

It isn't just about uniting the United States under one esports banner. He wants to emulate the aspects of traditional sports to strengthen esports' standing as an organized competitive discipline. Using his experience playing tennis as a child and registering with the United States Tennis Association — through to playing collegiate soccer at Oregon — his background in traditional sports is shaping some of the organization's foundational goals.

Among the top priorities of USA Esports is establishing the framework and structure that works specifically for esports. Some of the items Bodony highlighted were having a third of the board represented by current athletes, along with training, background checks, codes of conduct, conflict-of-interest policies, membership systems, and sanctioning and rankings.

“These unglamorous elements create the infrastructure upon which sports can flourish and athletes can be safe,” he said. “Those national governing bodies shaped my life, and what they do is central to legitimizing any sport.”

The IOC announced that it put the plans for an Olympic Esports Games on pause in 2025 with a brief public statement stating that each entity would pursue its own path forward in esports. The unraveling was more complicated than a simple pause, news reports reported.

According to reporting by The Esports Advocate, however, the original 12-year deal signed by then-IOC President Thomas Bach fell apart after new IOC President Kirsty Coventry took office in June 2025. Sources told the outlet that Coventry objected to a proposal that would have left the games under permanent Saudi government control without a democratic process — a structure Bach had agreed to but his successor would not. 

For USA Esports, an organization built in part around the promise of esports reaching the Olympics, it was an early reminder that the road ahead runs through institutions that move on their own timeline — and don't always move forward.

It likely doesn't change how Bodony or the organization views their aspirations for providing young players an opportunity to grow in a competitive environment.

“The goal is a pipeline from the time a kid is 6 years old all the way to becoming a professional, or hopefully, an Olympian,” Bodony said.

Eyes Open

The territory USA Esports is walking into is not without precedent. The organizations it is modeling itself after — FIFA, the IOC, the national governing bodies of traditional sport — aren't without their share of corruption scandals. In 2015, the United States disclosed cases of corruption by officials associated with FIFA. The IOC has faced its own charges, with more recent allegations focusing on host nation selection and venue construction.

The EF, in its current form, doesn't carry the same name recognition as FIFA or the IOC just yet. But when Reichert spoke with The Sporting Tribune in February, he addressed it directly.

“As long as the foundation has the players and the community first, we will succeed in fulfilling our mission,” Reichert said on Feb. 1. “If that starts changing, then we will start to get in trouble.”

Bodony's answer to the siren's call of corruption is "constant vigilance" and a deliberate effort to keep every corner of the ecosystem at the table.

For now, the organization is running lean by design. Bodony is the only paid member of the team — everyone else, including the board, is volunteering their time.

“Our intention was never about control,” he said. “We want to be a facilitator that brings together the endemics who have been in the trenches: the scholastic space, the professional side, publishers — so we can unify a fragmented ecosystem.”

The International Landscape

The EF is not the only international body with a stake in global esports governance. The International Esports Federation, founded in 2008, and the Global Esports Federation, founded in 2019, have been operating in the same space for years — and USEF holds active membership in both. That means the United States now has representation across three separate international esports bodies, each with its own events, membership structures, and vision for the sport's future.

The EF's own framing — that the ENC is designed to complement existing frameworks rather than replace them — suggests coexistence is the stated intention. But according to The Esports Advocate's reporting on the IOC collapse, the Saudi Arabian government reportedly had no interest in working with IESF or GEF when structuring the Esports Olympic Games, in part because both organizations have struggled financially and neither controls the intellectual property of the games they govern. The ENC, by contrast, was co-developed with publishers including Electronic Arts, Krafton, Tencent, and Ubisoft, according to The Esports Advocate's reporting on the ENC announcement — a structural distinction that sets it apart from both IESF and GEF.

For USA Esports, navigating that landscape means operating within the EF's framework while maintaining relationships with two other international bodies through USEF. How those relationships coexist in practice remains to be seen.

First Steps

The ENC remains the top priority for USA Esports. 

The EF has been explicit that the competition is designed to complement existing esports frameworks rather than replace them — a framing that matters for an organization like USA Esports that must work alongside publishers, pro orgs, and existing international bodies simultaneously. The United States will send a coalition of players to the event, which runs from Nov. 2–29 in Riyadh before moving to a rotating city model for future editions. The organization will focus on identifying players from the 16 games the ENC announced, through practices modeled on how national team selection is done in traditional sports — such as soccer, basketball, and tennis — including interviewing and identifying potential coaches, inviting players to boot camps, and mediating team selection.

“We want to set a strong, transparent precedent for how national team programs work in US esports,” Bodony said.

The changing landscape of esports, however, means games can change on a whim. The organization plans to use caution when identifying which games to support.

“Esports titles ebb and flow in popularity. A game can be everything one year and gone the next,” Bodony said. “We’ll always need to be agile about where we put resources.”

The groundwork, however, is already underway. The USA Esports Alliance — the organization's formal partnership framework — counts 11 of North America's most recognized professional clubs among its founding supporters, including Cloud9, Team Liquid, TSM, and 100 Thieves, alongside 16 universities ranging from UCLA to the University of Hawaii.

Publishers represent the next frontier. Unlike traditional sports, where no single entity owns the game itself, every esports title is the intellectual property of its publisher. Riot Games owns League of Legends. Valve owns Counter-Strike. USA Esports' website lists publishers as a future expansion target, and Bodony acknowledged the organization has connections at most major publishers but no formal agreements in place yet. How that relationship develops will be one of the more consequential questions USA Esports faces in its early years.

“We want to be a good neighbor,” Bodony said, “support what they’re building, and work alongside pro teams and colleges to represent a part of the ecosystem that hasn’t had unified representation.”

As the organization drills deeper to establish the foundation, Bodony recognized the need to incorporate younger audiences. He listed hosting tournaments, boot camps, and event watch parties, as well as working with school districts and colleges to help ease parents' apprehensions toward having their children sign up for esports-related activities.

“We don’t want to come in and dictate how things should be. There’s already amazing work happening across the country,” Bodony said. “This year we want to run pilots in a few progressive esports states — Texas, New York, the Carolinas, Missouri — working top-down to harmonize everything from K-12 through collegiate, bring parents in, and identify models that work.”

It's an ambitious timeline for an organization less than a year old, especially one with a gameplan without exact plays and volunteers in the other positions — all while the broader esports industry has faced significant financial headwinds. 

An estimated 45,000 jobs were lost across the video game and esports industries between 2022 and mid-2025, and September 2025 alone saw layoffs hit G2 Esports, 100 Thieves, and Team Liquid within weeks of each other. USA Esports is building a foundation during one of the most financially unstable periods competitive esports has seen.

Bodony is set to travel to Korea to meet with the Korea e-Sports Association — what Bodony called the "gold standard" of esports infrastructure — to discuss logistics. Bodony's plan is to find what works in Korea, blend it with findings from traditional sports, and develop a model suited to the U.S.

“The goal is to gather information, learn from those pilots, and build a much more robust national ecosystem,” Bodony said. “We’ll borrow the best pieces from traditional sports, but esports is a unique medium, so we have to develop our own model as we go.”

It's a long checklist, and USA Esports is still on page one. Bodony believes it won't take long before the U.S. gets on the same scale as Korea and China in the esports power rankings. In fact, he said, the U.S. is already there.

“The U.S. esports ecosystem was already powerful before we launched,” he said. “It really just needed some organization and harmonization.”

It's a claim that reflects exactly the gap USA Esports was built to close.

Even so, Bodony acknowledges the perception gap remains. The rest of the country and its gamers have to see it the same way. That's the core of this organization: pave the way.

“When a kid sees a pro player wearing a USA jersey in League of Legends, they should think ‘I want to be that someday’ — and have a real, concrete pathway to get there,” Bodony said. “Whether you’re a pro player in LA, a kid in Missouri, or a League of Legends fan in Florida, everyone should have the same on-ramp into organized esports.”

The mission is underway. Whether it becomes the foundation American esports has always needed, or another promising start that couldn't hold together, is a question only time will answer.

Paul Delos Santos covers esports for The Sporting Tribune and publishes Inside Esports, a newsletter covering the Fighting Game Community and Riot Games ecosystem at insideesports.media.