It is simple to overlook the fact that this problem has existed for many years as top players queue up to accept Saudi money. The risks are substantially greater today, however.
Neymar comes to mind when reading about a Brazilian star being hailed by tens of thousands of supporters and taken away in a Rolls-Royce to dine with royalty.
But this also applies to the entrance of Rivelino, who in 1978, 45 years before Neymar, his contemporary, did the same this month, signed a rich deal with Al-Hilal.
The Washington Post said at the time that Rivelino “will be housed in one of the spare palaces of Prince Khaled Al Saud in addition to receiving a new Mercedes Benz and a reported $10,000-a-month living allowance.”
Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and the other late-career superstars who have joined the Saudi Pro League this year are receiving comparable luxuries that have been adjusted to current values.
Without taking into account the players’ exorbitant salaries or Ronaldo’s January signing in a deal that is rumored to fetch him 400 million euros over two and a half years, this summer’s transfer costs alone exceed $830 million.
Football has never seen spending of this magnitude and speed, which eclipses Saudi Arabia’s sporadic signings throughout the years of Rivelino, great coach Mario Zagallo, Roberto Donadoni, and Hristo Stoichkov.
However, the Saudi binge is part of an existential push: transforming the economy before oil revenues drop. It is more than just vanity or “sportswashing” the country’s widely criticized human rights record.
Carlo Nohra, the Saudi Pro League’s newly appointed chief operations officer, told AFP that “this project is part of a transformation project that’s moving this country where it wants to go.”
It’s completely different,
Even though Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter in the world, has a history of lavishly spending money on players, this time is totally different.
The present football initiative is a part of Vision 2030, the ambitious plan of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to wean the country off its reliance on oil revenue.
According to Saleh al-Khalif, deputy editor-in-chief of the Al-Riyadiah daily, “there was a push to bring big names” in the 1970s.
“Rivo (Rivelino) and few other talented Tunisian players from the 1978 World Cup arrived. However, the endeavor ultimately failed.
“It depended on the honour members of the clubs, not a government plan or spending,” he remarked, alluding to the royals funding teams on their own.
It couldn’t have survived since it wasn’t sustainable. The present thrust is quite different from this.
Saudi Arabia is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars on NEOM, a futuristic new metropolis on the Red Sea, as well as on tourist resorts and popular entertainment like football.
The 32 million-person desert nation of Saudi Arabia, where two-thirds of the population is under 30, has a strategy to diversify its revenue streams, but time is of the importance.
Global consumption is expected to peak around 2040, according to OPEC, the oil cartel of which Saudi Arabia is a key member. After that, revenues are expected to flatten and drop.
“Saudi Arabia is up against the clock,” Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economics at Paris’ Skema Business School, told AFP.
It will take Saudi Arabia 20 years to diversify. They are now susceptible to changes in oil prices.
“They must move quickly, strategically, and effectively.”
As in “Bread and Circus”
Huge audiences seeing Ronaldo is a significant change for a nation that is very traditional and where women were prohibited from entering stadiums until 2019.
A reference to “sportswashing” was made by Ali Khalid, the sports editor of Arab News, located in Riyadh. “Cynics will say what are the reasons behind it,” he remarked.
But a lot of it is that they are bringing the finest of it to their people, who for a very long period did not have access to any entertainment of that level.
The major goal, according to Nohra of the Saudi Pro League, is to make the sport one that “inspires, engages, and entertains the Saudi people.”
That is the motivating factor.
However, Chadwick said that the expenditures in sports like football, Formula One, golf, and music festivals may be about more than just getting people to spend money.
The security of the ruling family, according to Chadwick, is at the center of this.
“Investing in football is the circus and bread of the twenty-first century.
Give the populace what they want in the hopes that they would leave you alone, is how it goes. They will back you up and not challenge you.