Expo 2030 will be held in Riyadh, a victory for a Gulf country after Qatar hosted the soccer World Cup last year.
Busan, South Korea, and Rome, Italy, were also vying to host the World Expo, a five-year occasion that attracts millions and billions of dollars in investment.
Saudi Arabia’s capital won 119 votes, Busan 29 and Rome 17, results from 182 members of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) showed on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia needed to garner two-thirds of the votes to win in the first round.
The Italian contestants were scathing in their criticism of the result.
“This huge result for Saudi Arabia is unforeseen in those proportions,” Giampiero Massolo, head of Italy’s bid for the Expo, told reporters. “It’s no longer about merit, it’s about transactions. “
“Yesterday there was a football championship. Tomorrow will be the Olympics,” he added.
Saudi Arabia, as the only declared candidate, is expected to host the 2034 World Cup and is also a candidate for the Olympic Games.
Riyadh had enlisted football star Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays for the capital’s Al Nassr club, to persuade BIE members in a video shown before the vote. The city has proposed to host the event from October 2030 to March 2031.
The victory is the icing on the cake of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 program, which aims to wean the country out of its dependence on oil.
“We had a fantastic team of ministers going around the world, engaging our counterparts in a very, very active way to understand what they expected, what they were looking for and what we should deliver in order to gain their trust,” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said.
Critics said the crown prince wants to use the expo to improve his country’s image after the 2018 murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a team of Saudi agents.