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Saudi Arabia is fleeing its oil-dependent economy, and sports stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, golfer Phil Mickelson and boxer Anthony Joshua are part of the plan.
Spending billions of dollars on sports is a key to Vision 2030, an ongoing task led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that aims to make his country less dependent on crude oil and cement its position on the global stage.
Many critics of the Gulf kingdom say the investment campaign is a blatant example of “game washing”: the takeback of gambling to whitewash the symbol of an authoritarian regime that executed some two hundred more people last year and is widely believed to have ordered Washington’s brutal war. Murder. Publication of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
But the point is that the crown prince has a greater ambition: to boost Saudi Arabia’s economic growth.
The world’s largest oil exporter has invested billions of dollars in football, golf, fighting sports and Formula 1 over the past two years.
Saudi Arabia’s push to dominate football is based on a market town in northeast England: In October 2021, the government-controlled Public Investment Fund (PIF) paid £305 million ($372 million) to buy an 80% stake in Premier League club Newcastle. . United after 18 months of negotiations.
In just under two years, they have spent piles of millions of dollars recruiting new players for the perennial underachievers who qualify for Europe’s premier competition, the UEFA Champions League.
Ronaldo joined Riyadh-based Al Nassr in January, paving the way for the PIF to attract some of the world’s players to Saudi Arabia.
In June, the fund acquired majority stakes in the country’s top four clubs, and Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema, Brazilian legend Neymar and former Liverpool striker Sadio Mane are among the stars who have since traded Europe for Arabia Saudita. Pro League.
“Soccer is by far the most popular game in the world, so the justification for making an investment in this game will be there,” Danyel Reiche, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Insider. “But Saudi Arabia is also getting in other games, because they need to achieve a lot in a short period of time. “
The same month it took Newcastle, PIF invested around $2 billion in the separatist LIV Golf festival, and global stars such as Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka temporarily flocked to the new festival, which is expected to offer a $405 million prize pool this year. year alone.
Just two years later, LIV cannibalized its PGA Tour rival.
The competitions agreed in June to merge into a combined entity that will be funded and chaired through the PIF, in what many see as a hollow political coup for Saudi Arabia.
Beyond soccer and golf, the Kingdom has also spent tens of millions of dollars on high-profile events, adding two heavyweight boxing matches with Joshua, several WWE broadcasts and a Formula 1 Grand Prix held in Jeddah since 2021.
The Gulf state will host an undisputed heavyweight competition between boxing champions Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk, in what boxing promoter Frank Warren says will be “the biggest fight that can take place in our sport. “
Crown Prince Mohammed had a direct reaction to allegations that his investments constituted sports laundering. “I don’t care,” he told Fox News last week.
If he can breathe life into the Saudi economy, “then I will continue to wash games. I have a GDP expansion of 1% thanks to gambling and my goal is 1. 5%. “Call it what you will, we’re going to get that 1. 5%. “
The crown prince’s words imply that the kingdom is getting into sports both to breathe life into its own economy and to polish its symbol abroad.
Crown Prince Mohammed “has embarked on an adventure in the sports industry that he will seek to achieve, which characterizes Saudi Arabia,” says Simon Chadwick, a professor at SKEMA Business School in Lille, France.
“He laid it out very clearly . . . its main objective is to achieve a GDP expansion of between 2 and 3% through gambling, and it doesn’t care if we call it ‘game washing’,” he adds, noting that gambling constitutes a similar strategy. Share of American, French and German economies.
In addition to boosting growth, Saudi Arabia’s sports follies will affect the crown prince’s political standing, according to Chadwick and Reiche.
Those under 35 make up 70% of the Saudi population, and the government’s growing track record of attracting megastars like Ronaldo (and his more than six hundred million followers on Instagram) will likely increase his appeal to that demographic, they say.
A post shared via Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano)
“The crown prince is strengthening his authority and strength by offering other young people more entertainment opportunities to make them happy,” Reiche told Insider.
“In Saudi Arabia, we haven’t noticed what we saw in Iran, where other young people have taken to the streets, and that’s because bin Salman is very popular. “
For Chadwick, three sports sum up the Saudi government’s preference for appealing to its young and aggressively patriarchal population.
“The football triumvirate, fast cars and struggles guided investments,” he told Insider. “There is a macho tinge, but Saudi Arabia is still a very macho and patriarchal society. “
Riyadh’s investments in the Gulf are most likely part of another strategy: boosting the country’s fast-growing tourism industry, which Bin Salman said last week already accounted for 7% of total GDP growth.
“Saudi Arabia is going to expand its tourism sector, so golf is very much related to its economic expansion,” Chadwick says.
“My interpretation of LIV is that it’s part of a strategy that will eventually lead other people to decide to play in Saudi Arabia, rather than Miami, Augusta or St Andrews. “
Saudi Arabia may not stop investing money in football, golf, Formula 1 and sports in the short term, but it also seems keen to expand its strategy of investing in sports.
In June, the ATP Tour president said he had had “positive” conversations with the PIF and other investors about creating a Saudi-backed LIV-style festival, a concept that has already been shared by star players such as Australia’s Nick Kyrgios and Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur. .
It is also believed that the state will launch a new cricket festival inspired by the Indian Premier League. Officials quietly hope to convince European countries to back their bid to host soccer’s most iconic foreign tournament, the FIFA World Cup, in 2034.
As Crown Prince Mohammed made clear last week, this is all part of a broader strategy to breathe life into the Saudi economy through investment. That means their huge expenses will likely remain one of the biggest stories for some time.