Revealed: Saudi Arabia's $6bn spend on 'sportswashing'

Also: Saudi Arabia is spending billions to become a global gaming hub. Some fans don’t want to play (Associated Press)

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Source: The Guardian

Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s $6bn spend on ‘sportswashing’

Exclusive: Billions deployed since early 2021 in a move critics say is an attempt to distract from human rights record

Ruth Michaelson
Wed 26 Jul 2023 05.00 BST
Last modified on Wed 26 Jul 2023 12.47 BST

Saudi Arabia has spent at least $6.3bn (£4.9bn) in sports deals since early 2021, more than quadruple the previous amount spent over a six-year period, in what critics have labelled an effort to distract from its human rights record.

Saudi Arabia has deployed billions from its Public Investment Fund over the last two-and-a-half years according to analysis by the Guardian, spending on sports at a scale that has completely changed professional golf and transformed the international transfer market for football.

On Monday, the Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal submitted a world-record bid for the French captain, Kylian Mbappé, understood to be worth €300m (£259m).

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/26/revealed-saudi-arabia-6bn-spend-on-sportswashing

No-registration link: https://archive.is/8YgVq

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Source: Associated Press

Saudi Arabia is spending billions to become a global gaming hub. Some fans don’t want to play

By NICK EL HAJJ
Updated 2:02 AM EDT, July 26, 2023

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia, the new home of some of soccer’s biggest stars and a co-owner of professional golf, is proving to be no less ambitious when it comes to another global pastime – the $180 billion-a-year video game industry.

Last September, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund earmarked nearly $40 billion for a new conglomerate aimed at transforming the kingdom into the “ultimate global hub” for games and esports by 2030. In February, the Saudi fund became the biggest outside investor in Nintendo, and just this month the kingdom hosted a major gaming tournament with a record $45 million prize pool.

That’s made Saudi Arabia an increasingly important player in the industry and contributed to its breakneck transformation from an insular kingdom best known for oil and ultraconservative Islam into an emerging sports and entertainment powerhouse.

The move into gaming has sparked the same kind of backlash seen in soccer and golf, where critics accuse the Saudis of “sportswashing” human rights abuses, including the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident.

With gaming, a kingdom that sentences people to decades in prison over a few tweets is joining a worldwide community dominated by the young and very online.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/saudi-gaming-esports-politics-rights-91eb312f7a48ed9848172c4dbe0de171