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Is Saudi Arabia’s Takeover of International Sport Over Already?

For fans of some sports, particularly boxing, MMA, tennis and snooker, two words have become synonymous with the action: Riyadh Season.

It’s been the snappy hashtag used by Saudi Arabia in a bid to normalise its ‘takeover’ of international sport, which has seen a number of high-profile events held in the country.

Prior to 2020, it would have been unthinkable for a world title fight in boxing or MMA to be held in the country, or even an F1 race, tennis, golf or snooker tournament. Even Spanish football temporarily makes the trip to the Saudi city of Jeddah for its seasonal curtain-raiser, the Super Cup.

Hot, desert-based countries seemed to recover faster from the health crisis than others, and that – allied to the aggressive investment and marketing of key officials in Saudi Arabia – has seen more and more sports taking up an offer to host events in the country.

But that might all be about to change, to some extent….

The Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is essentially the ruling family’s sovereign wealth kitty, will begin to strip back the amount of capital it deploys internationally – with reports intimating that it will invest as much as 20% less in overseas sport moving forward.

Instead, the resources of PIF will now be deployed domestically in a bid to bolster the Saudi economy, which had pivoted (to a small degree) to international tourism in recent years to diversify the country’s portfolio away from its typical reliance on oil-based revenue.

Some sports fans will rejoice at the news, with the hope that big events – particularly those major fight cards in boxing and MMA – will now return to Western soil.

However, the chieftains of many sports will be left to rue the loss of the Saudi dollar, while you wonder how PIF’s shift in investment will affect their business at Newcastle United, the English Premier League club that they own, as well as their LIV Golf brand.

The Big Scale Back

Saudi Banknote as Jigsaw Puzzle

It’s likely that PIF’s divestment will be gradual and take place over time, rather than being an immediate change.

Indeed, just weeks before the sovereign fund’s directors announced their international pullback, media firm DAZN announced a ‘multi year’ partnership with Riyadh Season to broadcast its events to a global audience.

But if Saudi chiefs are to cut their investment in international sport by up to 20%, the actual monetary value of the scale-back will run to hundreds of millions….which will send shivers down the spines of the likes of the UFC, Matchroom Sport and the leading boxing promoters, who have taken their fighters and athletes to the country in a bid to secure them the highest-possible payday.

When La Liga President, Javier Tebas, described the decision to shift the Super Cup to Saudi as ‘very good for Spanish football’, he wasn’t referring to the Middle Eastern climate – he was instead talking about the €120 million (£108 million) that PIF had invested to secure the rights to host the action.

Tebas presumably didn’t think it was ‘very good’ that the fans of the teams involved in the Super Cup would have to catch a flight in excess of five hours long to watch their heroes in action – at a significant cost into the bargain.

There is an argument that sporting organisations have an obligation to their employees – be it boxing promoters and their fighters, or football governing bodies and their member clubs/player – to maximise their earning from what is, typically, a short career.

To that end, Riyadh Season has been a roaring success: according to reports, Tyson Fury earned £85 million in defeat to Oleksandr Usyk – a huge chunk of which came from the purse put up by Saudi money men.

Counting the Cost

Naturally, boxing – collectively as a sport – never wants Riyadh Season to end. And they’re not the only ones.

It’s likely that football’s World Cup will head to Saudi Arabia in 2034 – which will once again mean that the domestic season in Europe will be halted for the tournament, which will likely take place in November and December.

FIFA have already taken their Club World Cup to Jeddah, while the ATP tennis tour will host their Next Gen finals in the country.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has also been granted hosting rights to the Asian Winter Games in 2029….despite the fact that ‘fake snow’ will have to be used to cover up an average winter temperature of 3˚C in the mountain resort of Trojena.

Back in 2018, the WWE revealed it was to host an annual pay-per-view event in Saudi Arabia called ‘Crown Jewel’. PIF has paid £39 million for the privilege. The attendance at the 2023 Crown Jewel was little over 9,000, with an additional 8,700 buy-ins on PPV. That all means that PIF lost tens of millions on their investment.

But do they care? Is making money really the point of Riyadh Season, after all?

The critics of the Saudi regime would argue not. Some claim that they have invested so heavily in sport as a bid to claim ‘soft power’ – a reminder to the Western world of the incredible resources that the country, and the Middle East as a whole, has to work with.

“Yes, they will have spent maybe $20 billion, $30 billion [on sport]. But what is that in the budget of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? It is nothing. It is a marketing budget,” so said sports consultant Andrea Sartori.

And then there’s claims of sportswashing; essentially, Saudi Arabia aligning itself with elite sport in a bid to deflect attention away from its questionable approach to human rights and equality.

The despicable murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, is another stain on the country.

Whether Saudi Arabia’s involvement in top-level sport has been a good thing or not could be debated until next Christmas. But as PIF announces the scale-back of its international investments, some sporting organisations – and their competitions – will be left picking up the pieces as Riyadh Season comes to a close.

As world leaders finally wake up to the possibility of utilising renewable energy sources on a grand scale, as opposed to leaning on the Gulf for its oil supplies, the reliance on Saudi Arabia will shrink accordingly.

And then the Saudi aristocracy and its PIF will have bigger fish to fry.…presumably, investing in sport will then fall down their to-do list considerably.

LIV-ing the Life: But For How Much Longer?

LIV Golf LogoOne of the biggest moves that PIF has made in global sport came with the foundation of LIV Golf in 2021.

Estimates claim that the Saudi fund has spent more than $2 billion (£1.5 billion) in getting the golf tour off the ground; which includes the huge sums paid to poach the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka from the PGA TOUR.

Typically, PIF’s investments have simply been a continuation of the infrastructure of the sports into which they have pumped their funds, but in LIV Golf they made a very conscious decision to shake the very foundations of the sport with their breakaway division.

Some think that LIV – with its shortened tournaments, team-based league table and musical razzmatazz – is great for golf. Others don’t. The point is that the sport is now split into factions, with the best players in the world employed by rival companies; and only able to take each other on four times a year at the majors.

There are hopes of a merger between the PGA TOUR and LIV, although those talks have been hampered by anti-trust regulation involving PIF. And, even if an agreement is reached, what will the future of elite golf look like?

Will LIV resort to PGA TOUR rules on 72-hole events and 36-hole cuts, or will the PGA be forced to accept LIV’s new way of 54 holes and guaranteed prize money for all? Will they attempt a compromise (good luck with that)?

In short, the future of golf has been impacted by Saudi involvement….and many would agree not for the better. But, as usual, those getting a handsome payday courtesy of PIF will defend the wealth fund’s honour to the hilt.

Any chance of reparations between the PGA and LIV will ultimately come down to money; the truth is that LIV golfers are simply paid better for doing less work.

Here’s a list of the top prize money earners in world golf in 2024:

Chart Showing Golf's Top Earners in 2024

Five of the top seven highest-earning players in 2024 came from LIV Golf, with the annual prize money of Rahm, Niemann and Hatton bolstered by the huge bonuses they earned from their season-long performances in the points table.

The raw data reveals just how well the best LIV golfers are paid compared to their PGA TOUR counterparts, but the difference becomes even more stark when we render the earnings of these ten golfers per tournament appearance:

  • Jon Rahm – $2.66 million
  • Joaquin Niemann – $2.03 million
  • Scottie Scheffler – $1.53 million
  • Tyrrell Hatton – $1.14 million
  • Sergio Garcia – $0.97 million
  • Xander Schauffele – $0.83 million
  • Brooks Koepka – $0.82 million
  • Rory McIlroy – $0.56 million
  • Wyndham Clark – $0.51 million
  • Ludvig Aberg – $0.51 million

According to this metric, now only one PGA TOUR player is in the top-five earners in world golf in 2024.

This all feels like splitting hairs – professional golfers are not exactly short of a few quid, no matter which tour they play in. But trying to reconcile the differences between the two tours will be nigh on impossible: why on earth would LIV pros want to give up their extraordinarily privileged position?

The answer, of course, comes courtesy of the possible tightening of the purse-strings of PIF. Will prize money – the average purse at a LIV event tops £19 million – go down as they trim their overseas investment?

It seems not, given this X (Twitter) post by The Times journalist Tom Kershaw:

The commercial success of LIV Golf is still open to debate. The tour only has a small army of sponsors – compared to the legion of big-name brands associated with the PGA TOUR, while LIV still hasn’t been able to land a lucrative network television deal despite launching its first season in 2022.

So there remains black marks against the viability of both the tours as separate entities. LIV isn’t working commercially, while the integrity of the PGA TOUR is damaged by the fact that a number of the best players in world golf are competing elsewhere.

The only solution? Some kind of merger that works for both parties. Or PIF pulling their money out of LIV, which would render the breakaway tour redundant on the spot.

What Will Happen to Newcastle If PIF Pulls the Rug?

When PIF completed its buyout of Newcastle United for around £300 million back in 2021, Magpies fans were rejoicing.

Given the might of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Newcastle became – in essence – the richest football club on the planet.

Now, as has been well documented, money doesn’t automatically equal success in football. But it certainly helps.

And so, almost overnight, Newcastle supporters started dreaming of incremental improvements: a top six finish would become a top four, before league titles were being challenged for as the Saudis invested more and more in the playing squad.

Yet, in reality, the Magpies are pretty much stagnating.

It’s hard to say with absolute confidence whether the people behind PIF did their due diligence into English football. You can’t just spend billions on new players without being a huge global success commercially; otherwise, you fail to satisfy the various financial fair play rules.

The likes of Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal are able to spend large sums on new players because they have the consistent revenue stream that comes with being a recognised brand worldwide; Newcastle United simply doesn’t have that.

Without mammoth commercial revenue coming in, the Magpies can’t offset their transfer spending and balance the books, which would enable them to progress as a club.

So Newcastle may have riches available to them, but they’re not really able to spend them.

If we take the 2022/23 season to be the first full campaign with PIF at the helm, here’s how much the biggest clubs in England have spent in total since:

Chart Showing the Top Spending Premier League Clubs Since 2022/23

Although Newcastle United have outspend Liverpool since 2022/23, it’s worth remembering that the Reds had a stronger playing squad than the Magpies to start with.

Otherwise, Newcastle aren’t spending as much as the rest of the big clubs in the Premier League – and that’s why they aren’t really closing the gap to them, which explains why they finished seventh in the table in 2023/24.

It’s curious that there are no manifestations of Newcastle’s status as the richest club in the world on the pitch. Eddie Howe is a man that could go about his business without being stopped for an autograph all over the globe, and even some of the Tynesiders’ players – Martin Dubravka, Sven Botman, Fabian Schar et al – could do their weekly shop at the supermarket and not be recognised.

Although that’s a strange way to look at it, it’s true that Newcastle have few household names in their playing squad; not what you’d expect from a club with an entire sovereign wealth fund behind them.

And nothing will change any time soon, either. Although you’ll see Newcastle United shirts being worn if you spend time in Jeddah or Riyadh, the club is not a huge commercial success on a global scale; they are unable to create the revenue which can then be translated into transfer spending.

The Magpies will need to be smart, bringing in players for relatively small fees and then latterly selling them for a considerable profit. But such a wheeling-and-dealing approach is hardly befitting of a football club backed by the financial weight of a nation.

In the long run, maybe Newcastle United will start to become a recognised brand around the world. But these things take time….and you wonder how long it is before the patience of the Saudi aristocracy is tested over what has been one of its most considerable overseas investments yet.