Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman unveiled on Monday an ambitious investment and privatization plan for sports clubs, after completing the executive procedures for its first phase.

Major companies and development agencies will be allowed to invest in sports clubs in return for a transfer of club ownership to them. Also, a number of sports clubs will be offered for privatization starting in the last quarter of 2023. These will be implemented under two tracks in the first phase of the project, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The project meant to realize the ambitious goal of bringing the Saudi Professional League to the list of the 10 best professional leagues in the world, and increase the league’s revenues from SR450 million to more than SR1.8 billion annually, in addition to raising its market value from SR3 billion to over SR8 billion.

The project is aimed at achieving the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 to build an effective sports sector by stimulating the private stakeholders and enabling them to contribute to the development of the sector. The overall objective of this is to achieve the desired excellence of the Saudi national teams, sports clubs and sports practitioners at all levels.

This project is based on three strategic objectives, represented in creating quality opportunities and an attractive environment for investment in the sports sector to achieve a sustainable sports economy, as well as raising the level of professionalism and administrative and financial governance in sports clubs.

The objectives also include raising the level of clubs and developing their infrastructure to provide the best services to sports fans, which is reflected in a positive way in further improving the experience of the public, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The transfer and privatization of clubs in general aim to achieve qualitative leaps in various sports sectors in the Kingdom by 2030, to create a distinguished generation in sports at the regional and global levels. This is in addition to developing the football game and its competitions in particular.