Top-of-the-line sports have grown from an amateur era in the 1980s to a tens of billion-euro television business that many states have wanted to join for image and marketing reasons – despite not having a significant sporting history of their own.
Qatar is hosting the World Cup in football, although it has never made it to the qualifiers for the final tournament. The UAE has hosted the Formula 1 race since 2009 without a single F1 driver.
International top-level tennis and golf tournaments have been held in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates since the early 1990s, and later in other countries in the western Gulf, such as Kuwait and Bahrain.
With a population of 34.8 million, Saudi Arabia is by far the largest country in the West Gulf. The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have a combined population of only 18.8 million.
However, small neighbors have enjoyed an ever-growing showcase of top sports, thanks in large part to their vast oil reserves.
With the exception of Bahrain, all of the above countries are among the 14 largest countries in the world in terms of oil production. Even in this sense, however, Saudi Arabia is the largest in its region, still ahead of the United States only in the world rankings.
The reasons why Saudi Arabia has been out of international sport for a long time can be found in politics. Unlike its neighbors, Saudi Arabia has only opened its doors to Western sports markets in recent years. And with decades to come, compared to its neighbors, the Saudis have not saved in costs.
This article examines, through a few examples, the size range of investments that Saudi Arabia has made in different sports and how they relate to the normal monetary policy of the sports.
There are traditions to draw from
Unlike its Gulf neighbors, Saudi Arabia has a tradition of top sports.
The country advanced for the first time from the qualifiers to the World Cup finals in 1994. That’s when it advanced to the starting block and bowed to the upcoming World Cup bronze team in Sweden in the first round of the playoffs 1–3.
Since its first visit, Saudi Arabia has only been excluded from the World Cup finals in 2010 and 2014.
Saudi Arabia has participated in the Summer Olympics since 1972. Along the way, four medals, two silver and two bronze, have been awarded. Perhaps the most famous medal for Finns is the 2000 Sydney Athletics Championships, where Hadi Al-Somaily reached silver in the 400m hurdles with a time of 47.53. A difference to an American gold medalist To Angelo Taylor only three hundredths of a second left.
As for the athletics played in the stadium anyway, Saudi Arabia does not pale in comparison to Finland’s record in the men’s series: out of 19 sports, only ten have a better SE result. In women, it is not possible to compare results, because in Saudi Arabia, women have only become involved in athletics in the last decade.
It is also noteworthy in athletics that both the 400-meter Olympic silver fence and other record holders in Saudi Arabia have been born in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the country, like its neighbors, is not involved in the competition, where endurance runners in particular are bought from East African countries.
The rush is reflected in the stakes
Of the above sports, Saudi Arabia has so far only invested in football. The most publicized acquisition was the English Premier League tradition club Newcastle United, which transferred its ownership to more than € 350 million in October 2021.
Earlier that year, the news was that Saudi Arabia might be seeking a shared host with Italy for the 2030 FIFA World Cup. The idea is not entirely out of the question, as both the Italian and Spanish Super Cups have been played in Saudi Arabia since 2019. The ten-year contract for the Spanish Super Cup alone is worth € 400 million.
It is also known that Real Madrid has received a EUR 167 million contract offer from the Saudis.
The biggest single contract coins have moved in show press and formula 1. The ten-year contract, which started in 2014, will bring the show press organization WWE EUR 463 million in Saudi money. A contract of the same length for the F1 race in Saudi Arabia is worth € 600 million.
A record EUR 32.6 million in prize money was awarded in the Saudi Cup equestrian competitions held in February. In Kentucky Derby, one of the classic racing races, the sum was ten times smaller.
Snooker’s umbrella organization has signed a ten-year contract for the Saudi Arabian Masters competition. The total value of the contract is over € 30 million, and the tournament’s prize pool is at least the same as in the world’s most prestigious competition, the World Cup at the Sheffield Crucible Theater.
The mismatch between prize money and performance bonuses
However, the above amounts are only part of the whole. Saudi Arabia attracts star athletes to its soil or to competitions it owns by paying millions in performance fees.
Indeed, in some sports, the prize money in the competition is only a fraction of the amount that the stars acknowledge for mere participation and being an advertising face.
One of the most striking examples can be found in golf, where Saudi Arabia hosted the Saudi International competition, which was part of the European tour, in 2019-2021.
Last year, Saudi organizers paid more than three million euros in prize money for the race, but attracted star players with performance prizes totaling almost 14 million euros.
The trend of players competing for nearly five times lower amounts than performance fees doesn’t appeal to multiple levels of promotion. One of them is Finland’s all-time player Mikko Ilonen.
– The Saudis have taken the appearance fee policy of the Middle East, which has already left the glove, to a whole new level. You can already see it in the list of participants: the majority of the participants are line players, but there are also individual world stars among them. Money has been spent on them, and a lot, Ilonen says.
Performance fees have been part of the history of golf since the 1970s. Ilonen cites the Spanish species legend as an example Severiano Ballesterosinwho felt that he should be paid an extra slice as the market face of the species.
In the United States, it is not officially possible to pay performance fees, but organizers circumvent the rule by entering into long and multiple tournament contracts with players.
A knockout for a terrible Saudi tuning
The event that caught the eye in 2022 is a player legend of years past Greg Normanin a saudi-funded golf league run by the LIV Golf International Series. Out of a series of eight races, four races would be played in the United States and one in England, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
The series is scheduled to begin in June, but the venue for the eighth race, which concludes the tour, has not yet been announced. Instead, it is known that the initial capital of the series, including all costs, is EUR 370 million.
There will be € 23 million in prize money in the top seven competitions, after which almost € 28 million will be awarded as an additional prize to the top three players. The prize pool for the team competition at the end of the season would be over 46 million euros.
By comparison: The most expensive competition in the history of the US PGA Tour has won € 18 million in prize money.
– My personal opinion is that this series is not really needed. The world is full of good competition and there is a lot of money on the ground. I can’t comprehend who would need so much money, Ilonen says and continues:
– Unfortunately, there are a lot of guys in the sport who make business and who have said quite directly that money plays a big part here. It’s unfortunate because it takes the bottom out of the sporty side of golf.
The Saudi League was also one of the topics in the Masters tournament in early April. The reason was the lack of a star player in the competition Phil Mickelson.
The six-time major winner ended up in the headlines early on when preview material from his biography was published. In it, Mickelson called the Saudis a scary and murderous but planned golf league as a useful blackmail tool against the PGA tour.
In his career, Mickelson has earned nearly one hundred million euros in prize money and even more money through sponsorship agreements.
– Mickelson sees that he is not receiving adequate compensation for his performances. It’s completely ridiculous, Ilonen says.
Top players refused
Saudi’s path to top golf has not been entirely straightforward. Recently Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy refused to take part in the Saudi International competition, even though both had paid a performance fee of more than two million euros for their mere visit.
Ilonen has welcomed McIlory’s Saudi speeches, in which the Northern Irishman has not ignored human rights.
– Today’s players are more aware than, for example, ours 20 years ago. The amount and flood of information has also risen to a whole new level.
Following Russia’s offensive war in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia’s plans for a golf league that trampled on human rights and carried out public executions have been even more headwind. The PGA Tour has also threatened to take its players to competition law on their tour if someone participates in the Saudi tuning.
Even though money is being distributed in unprecedented amounts, is everything still a trade? Has the limit been exceeded in the unbridled prosecution of money?
– I hope the league doesn’t happen. I don’t think it will come true at least on the scale that has been planned, Ilonen says.
Sources: Grant Liberty, Guardian, Athletic, The Times, Forbes, Golf.com.