With upbeat music playing, smiling athletes run through a lighted tunnel with raised arms, watched online by thousands of people around the world. The music was written by artificial intelligence, but the athletes are office workers who will be solving fascinating tasks on spreadsheets at lightning speed for the next few hours. This is the “Excel” world championship in Las Vegas, and it is organized by Latvians, who have turned this classic office work tool into a full-fledged e-sport with millions of views on social media.
The “Excel” World Championship (officially “Microsoft Excel World Championship”) is a competition in which participants solve tasks in the “Excel” program. These tasks resemble a game – participants must collect points for correctly solved tasks, there are elimination rounds, and all this can be watched live or on the big screens in the eSports arena in Las Vegas. Both this championship and the wider competition season are organized by “Financial Modeling World Cup” (“FMWC”) – a project based in Latvia and founded in 2020 under the leadership of Andrejas Grigoļunović.
Everyone can participate in the “Microsoft Excel World Championship”, regardless of age, gender, place of residence or professional experience. The road to the finals in Las Vegas takes place in several stages: applicants can participate in the monthly “Road to Las Vegas” online Excel eSports battles, the regional online qualifying round (if applicable) or qualify based on their place in the “Financial Modeling World Cup” ranking. From these stages, 256 contestants are selected to compete in online elimination rounds, with the tournament culminating in the live finals in Las Vegas, where contestants complete timed Excel tasks. The assessment of answers takes into account whether the task was completed correctly and how quickly it was completed.
Started as a side project, continues as a full-fledged company
I found out a few years ago that there is a competition in which people measure their strength in using Microsoft Excel – a couple of videos from this event appeared in my Instagram algorithm. I thought – this is an excellent idea! I was very surprised when I found out that this competition, which is well known in the e-sports environment, is organized by Latvians, and the “brains” of the event are located in Riga.
The Latvian who introduced the world to “Excel” as an e-sport is financier Andrejs Grigoļunovičs, who together with his team came up with the concept and course of the event. He stated in a conversation with LSM.lv that before this tournament, there was a similar competition from 2012 to 2019, which was held by two guys from Australia – the World Championship of Financial Modeling. “At this event, there were tasks in Excel, but more in a professional, narrow niche – investment return calculations, profitability of infrastructure projects and similar things. The finals took place in London or New York – 16 people sat in the conference room of the Microsoft office and completed tasks for five hours. There were no spectators.”
Andrejs took part in this competition as a participant and in 2017 won 5th place in the world. After a couple of years, the competition was sold to the British, but they were unable to maintain it at a decent level and the event stopped.
At that time, Andrejs realized that such a format has an audience and potential, but a different strategy is needed.
“I knew how it should work and I had the ambition to take the event to a level with spectators, live broadcasts, an eSports format, bigger prizes and widespread international interest,” he said.
In 2020, the “Financial Modeling World Cup” was created. At first – as an additional project within his financial company. “I was a player myself, so I knew that there were people who were interested in it. I knew that the event could be made better and attract an audience. For the first years, I financed the event from my company, and then at some point I realized what should and should not be done [lai pasākums sāktu pelnīt]. Now these two lines of business support each other.”
Speaking about the beginnings of the championship, Andrejs remembers that in the first season, three people built the event in a couple of months. Panic allegedly started two weeks before the first stage of the event – Andrejs had already put 10,000 dollars from his own pocket into the prize fund, but only about 30 people had registered. “Then I thought – maybe it’s not worth it at all? Maybe we should cancel everything before it’s too late and end this event? But the tendency is that people apply in the last days – they applied then as well. After the first stage, more players applied and in the end there were a couple of hundred players. Yes, there was such an uneasy feeling at the beginning.”
Now the Microsoft Excel World Championship has about 600 players from all over the world applying, but together with national local championships, student championships and other formats, there are about 20,000 players who have participated in the competition over the years.
Photo: Publicity photo
Move “in Excel” like in the city
Andrejs explained that the most difficult task was to make the championship watchable. “In the beginning, we tried different options. For example, we created video flashbacks of how people solve tasks at home, but it didn’t really work. The money was spent, but the effect was weak. Then there was the middle stage – we created a game format with financial modeling tasks, for example, building a company’s profit/loss calculation based on the given data. It was more watchable – there were points, a battle of leaders, but the tasks were too complicated and incomprehensible for a wider audience.” It was decided to try a simpler approach – to create “Excel” tasks that the participants must solve quickly and accurately. Tasks that look simple and are understandable to viewers, but which are not so easy to solve. For example, a city map with cars is drawn in Excel, and it is necessary to plan a route taking into account the given traffic situation.
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Try to complete the task of the 2025 “Excel” World Championship final!
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Speed is important in these competitions, but it is even more important to understand what and how you are doing and to be prepared. “The strongest players prepare very purposefully at home – they use complex Excel options, write their own functions, automate actions. For example, in tasks with cards, you have to calculate movement along the grid – diagonals, horizontals, verticals, distances. If you try to do it with ordinary Excel functions, it is laborious, but experienced players have prepared their own formulas and solution templates,” he said, mentioning that this championship is not a competition of quite professional e-athletes. Participants are mostly people from the financial field, office workers, consultants. Namely, people who use Excel in their work every day.
“Let’s be honest – it’s a boring enough job. And suddenly what you do every day turns out to be a “Wow!” event with the finals in Las Vegas, which is watched by millions of people around the world.”
The winner of the last championship is Diarmuid Early – a player of Irish origin, who used to be the vice president of “Deutsche Bank” and for whom participation in this championship is a hobby.
Andrejs admitted that he himself tried to participate in one of the stages of the championship, but remained around the 100th place – the level of players has grown considerably in recent years.
In a marathon by car
In terms of the rules, the approach is said to be very free – “everything goes” or – you can use all possible aids. You can prepare your own macros, formulas and codes at home. Even with the appearance of artificial intelligence tools, the organizers allowed their use because they did not see any risk in it. However, it ended in one of the 2025 stages when a contestant used the artificial intelligence so skillfully that they won without doing anything. “From that moment on, we decided to ban it, because we don’t want the competition to become ‘who uses artificial intelligence better’. We discussed for a long time and in the end we understood – it’s like organizing a marathon in which someone wants to participate with a car. People like to run, while others drive cars in that marathon,” Andrejs said and added that perhaps in the future we could organize both types of competitions, but for now this format is about human skills.
One of the benefits of the participants is not only the prize money and the opportunity to participate in the event, but the fact that the skills learned and trained by “Excel” e-sports players can later be applied in the real work environment as well. “You may not become a world champion, but you will learn to work more efficiently, get more clients and a higher salary. With e-athletes who play games, it’s a different story, for example, a person devoted five years to one game, and suddenly this game was no longer supported, the tournaments ended. It turns out that you have invested in a game that no one is interested in anymore. In that sense, this “Excel” e-sports is safer,” Andrejs commented.
When asked what a person should be in order to win this competition, Andrejs explained that one must have good analytical skills and a high IQ. “What can be developed to win is knowledge – knowing the functions, solving previous years’ tasks and learning. Third – a wide range with its own functions to use during the championship.”
Latvians in the lights of Las Vegas
Most of the organizing team is located in Latvia – it is convenient because it is possible to quickly make decisions and coordinate activities. The community of players also helps to organize the events – the members are supportive and there are volunteers at the event. There are also activists who organize local championships in their countries.
Photo: Publicity photo
Andrejs pointed out that “Microsoft”, which owns the “Excel” brand, was very welcoming and supported the idea of such an event when Andrejs approached them as the main sponsors. “It would be more difficult for them to organize such an event themselves than for us. Big organizations have many levels and need a lot of coordination even for small things. This is a disadvantage of big companies. We are small and we can make all decisions quickly,” he explained and mentioned that both players and supporters know that the organizers are from Latvia. “We have a strong and reliable team that strengthens Latvia’s image.”
Latvian representatives have never participated in the finals of the championship, but Andrejs sees the potential to hold local “Excel” championships in Latvia as well. Such championships are held all over the world – for example, Great Britain has its own local championship, and Germany has a regional one (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). “Latvia has strong universities, smart people, and I know that Latvians can go far in intellectual competition. We just haven’t had time to develop it yet.”
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