In 2023, the Saudis jumped further into sports. There is no sign of them slowing down in 2024
- Conversation has moved from concerns over sportswashing to how much influence desert kingdom’s money will buy
- Professional tennis could become the latest sport oil-rich nation decides to pump billions into
At the dawn of 2023, the spectre of Saudi Arabia’s growing influence on professional golf, and sport in general, served not only as a moral conundrum for players and their fans, but also, some argued, as an existential threat to the multibillion-dollar professional-sports industry itself.
Twelve months later, it’s a different conversation, now virtually devoid of concern about the supposed menace of “sportswashing” and the line between “right” and “wrong,” and more fixed on just how rich the Saudis might make all these athletes before they’re done investing.
Two major events sparked the change: The June 6 announcement that the PGA Tour was looking to go into business with the very Saudi group that was paying for the kingdom’s LIV Golf, which the tour had labelled as a threat. Then, six months later, the decision by the world’s third-ranked player and an early resister of LIV, Jon Rahm, to move to that league for a contract reported in the neighbourhood of US$500 million.
Making less-dramatic but almost equally important headlines were the continuing talks between the desert kingdom and leaders in pro tennis – and Saudi Arabia’s ongoing push into football globally, reflected most vividly by a decision that smoothed the way for the country to host the World Cup in 2034.
“You’re investing in sports, which is one of the few growth industries in the world,” Dan Durbin, director of the Institute of Sports, Media and Society at the University of Southern California, said of the Saudi strategy. “It is, as far as we can see, an almost endless growth industry.”
The conversation over golf went front-and-centre when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, was laying the groundwork for LIV in early 2022. Six-time major winner Phil Mickelson’s interview, in which he called the Saudis “scary (expletives)” – a reference, in part, to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – set the dividing line in what was viewed as a good versus evil stare down between the status quo and the Saudi disrupters.
