Arabian dreams
The Saudis were making a huge push into Western sport less than two years ago. Is the Kingdom losing interest, or just biding some time?
At last week’s draw for the UEFA Champions League, an impossibly silly affair in which celebrities dress up in formal wear to watch as matchups for a European football competition are announced, Cristiano Ronaldo was given an award as the tournament’s all-time leading scorer.
UEFA president Alexsander Cerefin, handing him the hardware, teased Ronaldo, 39, about the fact that he no longer plays in the Champions League, reserved for the best clubs in Europe.
Ronaldo made one of those faces that was an attempted grin but was more like a grimace. Since the winter of 2022, he’s been playing for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, and probably didn’t need any reminding that he’s nowhere near football’s big stages anymore. He told Cerefin that he’s still playing in the Asian Champions League. So there.
Ronaldo could understandably be a little grumpy about the situation. His move to Riyadh came when Saudi Arabia was advancing on Western sports on multiple fronts. The country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund said to be worth something like $800-billion now, had purchased Newcastle United of England’s Premier League and there were expectations that it would soon be trying to buy many of the world’s best players. The PIF had founded LIV Golf, making very rich men of some high-profile golfers even if it was unclear whether the enterprise made any business sense. And Ronaldo was the prized asset in a growth strategy for the Saudi Pro League, which saw the PIF essentially nationalize four of its biggest clubs and embark on a recruitment drive for global talent. The Saudis appeared to be using their enormous wealth to try to make the SPL one of the best leagues in the world. This was a sportswashing campaign — when an autocratic nation plays in the global sports sandbox to burnish its image — at a level never before seen.
But less than two years later, it’s a little hard to see where all this is going. The SPL did recruit some stars in the summer of 2023, players like Karim Benzema, Neymar and Sadio Mané. Most of them had accomplished a lot in Europe, and went to Saudi Arabia for massive paycheques as they wound down their playing careers. The feedback wasn’t great. Crowds were small at most stadiums, the heat was unbearable, the traffic not much better. Former Liverpool midfielder Jordan Henderson didn’t last six months, apparently surprised to discover that moving his young family to live in one of the most repressive places in the world might be very different than coastal England. Before this summer’s transfer window opened, there were reports that the Saudis would not embark on another spending spree, although the possibility remained that they would upset the market again.
Except they didn’t. Even amid a summer in which most of the European heavyweights were restrained, the Saudis made a few modest purchases, mostly picking up players like former Manchester City fullback Joao Cancelo, who still wanted a big salary but couldn’t find a European club willing to pay it. In one instance, Al-Ahli was willing to pay a significant transfer fee to Napoli for striker Victor Osimhen, and give him a giant salary, but he wanted an out clause because he’s only 25 and doesn’t want to spend the rest of his prime on the Saudi retirement circuit. Al-Ahli, showing frugality that is unusual for a Saudi club, didn’t want to pay a $50-million fee for one year of Osimhen, so they bought Brentford striker Ivan Toney instead for a similar amount. Toney, 28, spent half of last season suspended by the Premier League for betting on football and is reportedly getting his former $8-million salary quadrupled, so the whole frugality thing only goes so far.
But the broader point is that the SPL didn’t conduct any kind of raid on global talent. Toney and Cancelo are fine players, but no one is going to make a point of following their games in Saudi Arabia other than immediate family members. It’s a sharp contrast from LIV Golf, which in its early days kept wooing big-name players with bigger and bigger contracts, even giving a reported $300-million to Jon Rahm last winter.
But that enterprise has also entered a curious phase. LIV announced a surprise peace treaty with the PGA Tour in June of 2023, and has been in some kind of negotiation with them ever since on a new golf business. The PGA Tour, meanwhile, secured billions of funding from a group of wealthy U.S. sports owners and is ticking along with its own plans, announcing a full 2025 schedule recently that doesn’t include any kind of LIV cooperation. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said last week that there is no timeline for a LIV-PGA deal, which seems pretty obvious at this point. It’s been more than 18 months since the initial back-of-napkin deal. When it was first announced, it was unclear if the Saudis had bought golf, but all this time later they are still not part of whatever the PGA Tour is doing, and LIV is still LIV, over there paying giant sums to a select few golfers while nobody much cares. The whole point of sportswashing, after all, is that people are supposed to watch the sport in question.
Even with the Saudi foray into the Premier League, one of the biggest and most popular leagues in the world, there have been limits to the success. English clubs are only allowed to spend what they bring in, more or less, so Newcastle United’s wealthy benefactors haven’t been able to just shoot a firehose of money at it to make it successful. Newcastle was good in the first full year under Saudi ownership, went backwards last year, and this summer didn’t do much of anything other than sell a couple of young talents to avoid breaching financial rules. There have been reports in England that the Saudis have tired of this particular toy, having discovered that they couldn’t just go on a LIV-style buying spree.
But the Saudis also have many irons in many fires. They have gone big into Formula 1, boxing, MMA, wrestling, horse racing, among other endeavours. They will also host the World Cup in 2030. It’s possible that they have simply decided that spending big to stage sporting events that attract global viewers is a better use of their billions than the ongoing investment required to run a football league, golf tour or Premier League club.
Or some Saudi prince could wake up tomorrow and decide that what he really wants is an NBA team. Or Liverpool star Mo Salah for his favourite football team. Or to host Chiefs-Bills in December of 2026. Maybe Taylor Swift would even say hi.
It seems like a lull in the Grand Saudi Sportswashing Spectacle, is what I’m saying. But it might not last.