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The Saudi sovereign wealth fund on Sunday introduced a brand new sports activities funding firm designed to attract “main international occasions” to the dominion, which has spent latest months luring high soccer stars.
The corporate, SRJ Sports activities Investments, “will spend money on buying and creating new sports activities occasions IP (mental property), industrial rights of fashionable and outstanding sports activities competitions and internet hosting main international occasions in Saudi Arabia,” the Public Funding Fund (PIF) stated in a press release.
It can “goal companies specialised in providing distinctive fan engagement actions and transformative sports activities know-how throughout the trade, bolstering Saudi Arabia’s place as one of many world’s main sports activities and leisure locations.”
Sports activities have been a serious focus of the oil-rich kingdom’s effort to rebrand as a world enterprise and tourism vacation spot below the Imaginative and prescient 2030 reform agenda pursued by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the PIF chairman.
Soccer golf equipment within the Gulf state, the world’s largest crude exporter, have signed a bunch of main stars starting with Cristiano Ronaldo final yr and persevering with with Karim Benzema, Jordan Henderson and Sadio Mane this yr, although overtures to Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi have been unsuccessful.
Saudi Arabia has additionally induced shockwaves in golf with its financing of the insurgent LIV collection and hosts a System One Grand Prix.
The ATP and the WTA, which run the boys’s and girls’s skilled tennis excursions, have been focused by the Saudis, who hosted an exhibition for high males’s gamers outdoors Riyadh final yr.
The flurry of offers and negotiations have spurred allegations of “sportswashing”, or utilizing sports activities to distract from Saudi Arabia’s ceaselessly criticised human rights document.
The Public Funding Fund is likely one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth autos with greater than $620 billion in property.
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