MOGAMAD ALLIE: Saudis shake up sports world with their oil dollars

Saudi Arabia’s latest venture into shaking up the established sporting world with its multibillion-dollar investment to disrupt football has, not surprisingly, ruffled feathers, particularly in Europe’s powerhouses which have long held sway. 

Already the country’s oil money has forced the prestigious PGA golf tour, which started in 1929, to merge with its Public Investment Fund-financed LIV Golf Series that got off the ground just two years ago.

It has also muscled into Formula One racing and boxing, but it is football with its larger and more enduring global market and fan base that the Saudis are seeking to capture for a variety of reasons. These include attempts to diversify its economy from its reliance on oil, tapping into the huge interest in football of its large young population and let’s not forget sportswashing.   

Already the Middle Eastern kingdom’s move to attract big names, which started with the high-profile signing of Cristiano Ronaldo to Al Nassr in December, has drawn comparisons with the failed exercise in China.

Over the past month big names such as the former Chelsea trio of N’Golo Kante, Kalidou Koulibaly and Eduouard Mendy, reigning Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema, former Liverpool striker Roberto Firmino and former Wolves midfielder Ruben Neves have signed up for what some have batted away as players opting for large pension payout contracts. 

The Saudi venture has also been dismissed by Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin as bound to fail. “The system of buying the players that almost ended their career is not the system that develops football. It was a similar mistake in China,” he told the Dutch broadcaster NOS. 

“They should invest in academies, they should bring in coaches, and they should develop their own players,” Ceferin said. Maybe that is already on the drawing board. 

When Oscar left Chelsea in December 2016 in a transfer window during which Chinese Super League clubs spent more than $390m (about R7.25bn), Antonio Conte, the former Brazil midfielder’s club manager at the time, warned of the Chinese danger.

Other ageing stars such as Carlos Tevez, Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka also moved east. The Far Eastern venture ended badly with bankruptcies, corruption scandals and no discernible improvement in the standard of the game in China. 

It’s easy to dismiss the Saudi venture, particularly when one looks at the age profile of the players being signed — they are clearly past their best — as a waste of money and one that won’t challenge the dominance of the European leagues.

It’s worth noting though that Saudi Arabia is much better placed than China to succeed, though there’s no guarantee this will be the case. First, there is a lot more money around. The Public Investment Fund is cash flush with a war chest of $650bn at its disposal.

Second, Saudi Arabia is already a continental powerhouse, having made six World Cup appearances that include an appearance in the second round in 1994 and a victory over eventual champions Argentina in their opening group game at last year’s tournament in Qatar.   

They have won the Asian Cup three times while several of their leading clubs like Al Hilal (four-time winners) and Al Ittihad (two-time winners) have excelled in the Asian Champions League. Add to that the country will host the Asian Cup in 2027 and is aiming to launch an ambitious joint bid with Egypt and Greece to host the 2030 World Cup, and suddenly Ronaldo’s prediction that the Saudi league could become one of the world’s big five is not so far-fetched.

Of course, it won’t be easy to displace the European leagues because top players want to play for leading clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and the like. They also want to win big competitions like La Liga, the Premier League, the Bundesliga and the Champions League.

Last month, as part of the Public Investment Fund’s club investment and privatisation project four clubs — Al Ittihad, Al Ahli, Al Nassr and Al Hilal — were transformed into companies, each of which is owned by the fund and nonprofit foundations, marking the first steps towards privatisation.   

At this embryonic stage the idea may seem like pie in the sky, but the Saudi Pro League’s target is for the four clubs to join other global brands like Manchester United, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the top-20 rankings of the Deloitte Money League, which ranks the clubs that generate the most revenue in the world. 

Of course, there is also the strong element of using sport to sportswash the country’s terrible human rights record.

Amnesty International recorded in 2022 that Saudi Arabia’s specialised criminal court convicted and sentenced 15 individuals, both citizens and foreign nationals, to 15-45 years in prison after grossly unfair trials for their peaceful expression or association, including peaceful online speech on Twitter.

The Public Investment Fund is chaired by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, a man fingered by America’s CIA as having sanctioned the brutal and barbaric assassination of Washington Post journalist  Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. 

Their human rights record is terrible, but is it really worse than that of, for example, the US, a superpower that has in past decades invaded dozens of countries, leaving them in ruins?

In no way does this excuse the terrible Saudi human rights record which should rightly be condemned, but so too should other human rights abusers.