The Saudi Image-Cleaning Process Started from Sports and Events…

…and Western society has decided to accept it.

It was only 5 years ago, on the 19th of October 2018, when the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul admitted that the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a strong opposer of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, died in the embassy after a supposed ‘fistfight’. At the time Khashoggi was in a self-imposed exile in Turkey and was last seen entering the Saudi embassy on the 2nd of October in order to receive some documents regarding his wedding, the C.I.A. later that year revealed that the Prince was the one that ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

POMED, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Flash-forward to five years later and Saudi Arabia has become one of the biggest investors in main-stream events worldwide. In 2019 the Saudi Public Investment Fund struck a deal with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to organise one of the biggest pay-per-views of the company in the Saudi capital of Riyadh and started to host major fighting events in the Kingdom.

Fighting sports were not the only global events that struck the Crown’s interests, since 2018 Saudi Arabia began to follow a path traced by many other countries in the Middle East, hosting motorsport events. Formula E, the FIA full-electric car series, started their 2018/2019 season with the Dir’iyya E-Prix, an event that has been repeating each season since, 2020 then brought to Saudi the 42nd edition of the Dakar Rally, the most known rally raid event in the world, and the following five editions.

However, the biggest deal was struck with Formula 1 which since 2020 has been sponsored by the Saudi oil company Aramco and from 2021 has a 15-year deal to host an F1 Grand Prix in Jeddah joining other Gulf nations such as Bahrain and UAE and they will be joined from 2023 onwards also by Qatar. The event takes place on a street circuit in the newly redeveloped seafront of the city of Jeddah, becoming a huge postcard for the Saudi government's push for a diversification of the economy from a petrol-based one to a more diverse one.

And then football made its entrance. In 2018 Jeddah hosted the Supercoppa Italiana, a game that is played between the Italian Championship winner and the National Cup winner, the event still remains in Saudi Arabia to this day and joined since 2020 by the Supercopa de España, his Spanish equivalent.

Ardfern, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

The first foreign investment came in 2021 when, following the steps of the Abu Dhabi United Group that in 2007 bought Manchester City F.C. to make it the best team in the world, the P.I.F. bought the English Premier League low/mid-table team Newcastle United and bringing it to the Champions League only two seasons after.

However, the biggest and most news-grabbing investment came in January 2023 when the PIF-owned Al-Nassr FC signed 5 times Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo for the world record price of 200 million euros per year which seemed a career-end transfer in a non-competitive championship for a player of CR7 level. Then the summer transfer window arrived and the Saudi Pro League teams, thanks to the state backing, started to invest in big stars bringing to Saudi Arabia some of the biggest names in world football like current Ballon d’Or holder Karim Benzema, Neymar Jr, Sadio Mane and many other stars.

These multi-billionaire sports investments are part of the previously mentioned economic differentiation project called Saudi Vision 2030, a project linked to two big worldwide events that Saudi plans to hold in the next decade. The important football-centred investments are focused on the bid to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup which will almost certainly be held in Asia because of the rotation wanted by FIFA in host-continents and the Saudi Arabian government has gained an enormous political influence in the latest years.

The Saudi influence can be seen on a better level from the bid to host the Expo 2030, Saudi Arabia has submitted a bid for Riyadh to host the event and the capital city will be facing in the selection other two candidate cities: Busan, South Korea and Rome, Italy. The latter has sparked some controversies in Europe because Saudi Arabia might be interfering on side paths with Rome’s bid. Since the first week of October, a state-organised festival called Riyadh Season has become the main sponsor of A.S. Roma, the Italian capital's most supported team, on a 25 million euro 2-year deal that will bring the name of the Saudi capital on Roma shirts. The other big controversy that sparked around the Expo was the visit of Mohammad bin Salman to Paris which convinced French President Emmanuel Macron to back the Saudi bid against one of their neighbours and European allies.

U.S. Department of State from the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This support for the Saudi Vision 2030 project from European leaders however is anything but new. Many big European leaders have in fact close links with the Saudi Crown. Former British Prime Minister and big sponsor of the ‘Third Way’ Tony Blair has through his institute kept a direct involvement with the Vision 2030 project and remained a partner even after the Khashoggi murder.

Another big controversial relationship with the Saudi Crown is the one of the former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi who since 2019 has been taking part in conferences organised by the PIF and in 2021 released some controversial statements in a conference in Jeddah stating that Saudi Arabia has the potential to start a ‘New Renaissance’ and that he was envious of the cost of labour of the country, all of this while his party had just created a government crisis in Italy.

The huge elephant in the room of the Saudi Arabian absolute monarchy has been slowly hidden by the de facto leader of the nation, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The Kingdom is known for having a really poor human rights record, the N.G.O. Human Rights Watch states: ‘Saudi Arabia has announced important reforms, but the repression of independent civil society and critical voices impedes any attempt at reform. Scores of human rights activists and dissidents are in prison or on trial for their peaceful criticism. Authorities failed to hold high-level officials accountable for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The Saudi and UAE-led coalition continue their military campaign against the Houthi armed group in Yemen which has included unlawful airstrikes that have killed and wounded thousands of civilians. Human Rights Watch signals also the case of a former teacher sentenced to death for tweets and videos by the Specialized Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism tribunal because he violated article 30 of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism law for “describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice”.

But we can see from the reaction of the Western society that often in the Middle East strong regimes that are able to avoid instability are favoured by a policy similar to the laissez-faire in economics; if you keep stability in the region and invest in our enterprises you’ll be avoided questions about how you treat your people.

References

Chulov, M. (2018, October 21). Jamal Khashoggi: murder in the consulate | Jamal Khashoggi. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/death-of-dissident-jamal-khashoggi-mohammed-bin-salman

Fandos, N., & Schmitt, E. (2018, December 4). Saudi Prince 'Complicit' in Khashoggi's Murder, Senators Say After C.I.A. Briefing (Published 2018). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/us/politics/cia-senate-khashoggi-.html

MacInnes, P. (2023, August 12). 'It's not a fad': the truth behind Saudi Arabia's dizzying investment in sport. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/12/its-not-a-fad-the-truth-behind-saudi-arabias-dizzying-investment-in-sport

Ginori, A. (2023, June 16). Bin Salman incontra Macron a Parigi: sul tavolo il sostegno alla candidatura di Riad a Expo 2030. la Repubblica. https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2023/06/16/news/francia_arabia_saudita_mbs_incontra_macron_expo_2030-404603356/

Guardian Staff. (2023, August 12). Tony Blair Institute continued taking money from Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi murder. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/12/tony-blair-institute-continued-taking-money-from-saudi-arabia-after-khashoggi

Redazione Il Post. (2021, January 28). Il video di Matteo Renzi che ringrazia il «grande» Mohammed bin Salman. Il Post., Cosimi, S. (2021, January 27). Perché le conferenze di Renzi in Arabia Saudita sono un problema. Wired Italia. https://www.ilpost.it/2021/01/28/renzi-arabia-saudita-video/

Human Rights Watch. (2023, August 29). Saudi Arabia: Man Sentenced to Death for Tweets. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/29/saudi-arabia-man-sentenced-death-tweets