As part of their diversification and job-creation efforts, MENA states are turning themselves into a new global hub of professional sports.
Drop your guard for an instant, and you’ll get clobbered by a barrage of sporting investments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
The sports market for the region is primed for a 16.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2023 to 2030, according to consultancy Grand View Research. Qatar’s sports market alone is projected to hit $3.7 billion this year, according to a 2024 white paper by Middle East Sports Investment Forum.
Morocco is slated to co-host the 2030 soccer World Cup (with Portugal and Spain), with Saudi Arabia following four years later, nearly on the heels of the 2022 edition in Qatar. And Egypt is preparing a bid for the 2036 Summer Olympics.
With a $2 billion annual investment, the sports industry’s contribution to Saudi GDP should equal $16.5 billion a year, or 1.5% of output, by 2030, says a report published in December by SURJ Sports Investment, a unit of the Public Investment Fund (PFI), the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. The sector’s market value is projected at $22.4 billion by then, up from $8 billion today, which should translate into over 100,000 jobs.
“It’s new, sexy, and different compared to the stock market,” says Viktoria Tsvetanova Lightbody, a competition lawyer with Dentons, a global law firm, and a director of Badminton Europe, the regional governing body for that sport.
“The Middle East is such a hot market,” says Marquel Martin, CEO of 3Point0 Labs, a sports and entertainment management firm that spearheaded two boxing matches in Riyadh for its then-client Francis Ngannou, a mixed martial arts crossover fighter. “There is tremendous growth to be had in sponsorships and leagues.”
Heavyweights hail from the oil-rich Persian Gulf, but markets like Egypt and Morocco are punching above their weight. “It’s pretty much everywhere. It’s the new Klondike,” says Simon Chadwick, a business consultant specializing in sports and geopolitical economy, comparing it to the frantic late-19th century Canadian gold rush.
A Cascade Of Deals
To get a sense of the velocity, consider these highlights from the first quarter of 2025.
TKO Group Holdings, parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), confirmed the launch of a new boxing organization in partnership with Sela, an events company owned by PFI.
Abu Dhabi hosted the first-ever Middle Eastern leg of the World Surf League Championship, held in an artificial wave pool. The competition numbered as one of at least 19 major international events featuring at least 14 different sports this year in four countries: United Arab Emirates (UAE: notably, Abu Dhabi and Dubai), Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Mercedes-AMG, the high-performance subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz AG, announced plans to build an auto racing theme park in Qiddiya, Saudi Arabia, working with another PIF subsidiary. It is expected to rival Abu Dhabi’s Ferrari World, which opened in 2010.
NIP Group, an esports (video game) firm, inked a five-year, $40 million deal with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), a publicly owned investment booster agency, to drive expansion in the region and around the world. NIP was formed in 2023 from a merger between Swedish esports outfit Ninjas in Pyjamas and the Chinese digital sports group ESV5.
SURJ Sports Investment bought a stake in the London-based DAZN sports streaming service, throwing down the MENA gauntlet to Qatar-based rival beIN Sports.
Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the state’s sovereign wealth fund, announced the launch of PSG Labs, a high-tech “innovation hub” as an extension of its ownership since 2011 of the Paris Saint-Germain football club.
Maverick Carter, business partner of basketball legend LeBron James, secured PIF’s backing for a $5 billion venture to organize a new global professional basketball league, The Financial Times reported. The deal is reminiscent of the 2022 launch of the PIF-backed LIV, a golf tour that forced a merger last year with the established PGA Tour.
Etihad Airways, the UAE’s national airline, announced a multi-year sponsorship agreement with the Badminton World Federation (BWF), starting with the 2025 season.
Still pending in early March, Moroccan amateur golf phenom Adam Bresnu appeared set to sign with 3Point0 Labs. The agent deal may prove symbolic beyond its size as a step toward the development of local sports heroes, helping establish a sustainable homegrown sports ecosystem in the region by giving local fans “a stable champion to get behind,” as Martin put it.
Forays into golf and badminton aside, money tends to be channeled into the three Fs: “fighting, football, and fast cars,” notes Chadwick, a fact that may reflect something deeper. “Not that women don’t participate, but the society is still incredibly masculine.”
21st Century Kickoff
The Middle East is hardly new to sports. “Wrestling, athletics, and fencing all originated in Egypt,” notes Victor Olivereau, a geopolitical consultant specializing in the Middle East and sports who has worked with Peace and Sport, an international organization.
The groundwork for today’s skyscraper-scale outlays was laid in 2013-2017, however. In 2016, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pushed PIF to flex “its financial might globally, including in the sports world.” Some mark the beginning of the current craze to pioneering investment in Formula 1 (Bahrain), tennis (Dubai) and English Premier League (Abu Dhabi). The next year, Saudi Arabia launched its ambitious Vision 2030 program.
For the hydrocarbon-dependent MENA economies, the official rallying call extends beyond economic growth to diversification for job creation, especially for individuals entering the workforce. More than 250 million children and young people, from newborns to age 24, lived in MENA countries in 2023, making them around 47% of the population, according to UNICEF. Youth (15-24) unemployment in the region stood at 24.9% the same year, according to the World Bank.
“Diversification through sports can create wealth and jobs,” says Chadwick.
Another key goal is “nation branding through sport, which acts as a veritable showcase for a country,” Olivereau notes. Following the footsteps of the US and the UK, notably, but also Brazil (football) and South Korea (K-Pop), MENA countries want to “manage their reputations through sport” and other activities such as fashion and music, says Chadwick.
Public health factors in, too. State officials hope that a combination of spectator sports and other initiatives that encourage physical activity will reverse a trend that projects MENA as the inauspicious world champion in youth obesity in 2050, according to a recent article in The Lancet, a leading medical journal.
Questions remain as to how justifiable and sustainable the MENA states’ investment in sports will prove to be in the long run. “These states are primarily seeking political gains, not economic ones,” Olivereau points out.
Saudi Arabia, for one, “will not be able to invest, without limit and in this way, over a long period,” he predicts. “When we observe the delays in the construction of NEOM and the revision of the kingdom’s ambitions in this area, we can legitimately wonder whether this policy of massive investment will continue beyond 2034.”
The region’s track record thus far suggests that “the sums invested are often greater than the benefits generated,” he adds. Take the World Cup in Qatar, which is estimated to have cost the Qatari authorities some $200 billion to stage and to have generated only $20 billion to $40 billion in indirect gains and investment.
“On the other hand, the organization of these events constitutes a vast stimulation for the local economy, at the level of built infrastructures, tourism, and others.”
Like the Klondike over a century ago, every participant is not guaranteed to come out ahead.
Leave a Reply