Saudi Arabia has already launched a hostile takeover bid for professional golf. He has invested billions of dollars in world football. Now he also wants to own professional boxing.
An ambitious and expensive Saudi plan that would reshape the economy, structure and future of boxing is in the final stages of approval, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth giant, the Public Investment Fund, would finance the project. The fund is currently conducting final negotiations on how to split the initial investment — estimated at $2 billion — that the plan would require, according to the two people involved in the planning. Both people declined to be identified because the project has not yet received final approval.
The Public Investment Fund, known as PIFdeclined to comment.
Under the Saudi proposal, around 200 of the world’s best male boxers would be recruited and then divided into 12 weight classes in what would amount to a global boxing league.
Each class would include around 15 fighters each, allowing top talent to compete against each other on a regular basis. The move would effectively create a single boxing entity that would replace the sometimes chaotic and frustrating system of dueling promoters and warring sanctioning bodies. The new entity would have the resources and fighters to run high-profile cards around the world.
And unlike many sports that Saudi Arabia has already tried to disrupt, professional boxing could be ripe for reinvention. The sport has lost its luster and appeal in recent decades and is currently run by a tangled web of rival promoters and disparate sanctioning bodies that stage their own fights and award their own titles. This leaves fans sifting through a confusing system that often prevents matchups between top boxers and a system that has multiple “champions” in the same weight classes.
The new series would operate under a single brand name, an arrangement similar to the business model of the wildly popular Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has gradually eroded boxing’s global popularity. In the UFC, 15 fighters are ranked in leagues by weight division as well as rankings for the best fighters “pound for pound”. In the Saudi-backed event, boxers could move up the rankings, but also be eliminated from the show and replaced by new talent.
The project has been under discussion for more than a year, discussions which were first reported by Reuters Tuesday evening. It was developed with the help of several consulting firms, including Boston Consulting Group, which supported the PIF on several projects. If an investment decision was confirmed in the coming weeks, the series could start as early as the first half of next year, according to one of the people involved in the planning.
At this point, the PIF would again provide what the project needs most: money.
For years, the fund was the vehicle that Saudi Arabia used for its financial assault on the sports industry with efforts such as the LIV Golf series and the signing of dozens of European soccer stars. His measures have injected huge amounts of fresh capital into clubs, teams, events, federations and sports organizations. But they have also disrupted entire industries, from professional golf to football to football. tennisand criticized that Saudi Arabia has sought to reshape the perception of the kingdom through what is derided as “sports wash.”
Perhaps the biggest sticking point for the Saudi boxing project is the long-term contracts that some of the top boxers already have in place with top promoters, many of whom are often separately linked to different television networks.
To address this, discussions have already begun about the possibility of full or partial PIF investments in several of boxing’s largest promotional companies, according to planners.
Two of the biggest promoters, Top Rank and Queensbury, declined to comment on the discussions.
Partnerships are also being discussed with some of boxing’s traditional organizations, which control the rights not only to key boxers, but also to high-value intellectual property like archive videos, historical results and title belts once owned by boxing kings like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. .
In the new series, boxers would be required to compete in a minimum number of events per year, a measure intended to prevent some of the best boxers from taking a long time away from the sport, a cause of frustration among boxing fans.
If the proposed boxing league comes to fruition, a PIF entity called Sela has been appointed to promote the events, which would take place not only in Saudi Arabia but around the world. Sela, a sporting events company, has previously organized boxing events in Saudi Arabia, including the recent heavyweight unification fight between Britain’s Tyson Fury and Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.
In this fight, Usyk became the first unified heavyweight champion in over a generation.
Sela declined to comment on the new Saudi boxing plan.
The fight was just the latest in a series of high-profile boxing cards staged in Saudi Arabia in recent years, making the kingdom, thanks to the sport’s richest purses, the favored destination for the biggest fights.
Saudi and Sela will soon expand further, with headline events Riyadh Season now planned to take place abroad.
The first will take place in August in Los Angeles, when Terrence Crawford and Israil Madrimov meet for the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Organization super welterweight title. This could be followed by an even bigger event at Wembley Stadium in London, featuring former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
This event has already been mentioned by the Saudi official who quickly became the most notable figure in boxing, Turki al-Sheikh, president of the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Sheikh is at the center of plans to restructure boxing, and he alluded to this in a recent interview with ESPN in which he reportedly said he planned to “fix” a “broken” sport. The interview did not reveal details about the new Saudi league.
The boxing effort he is leading is part of broader projects already underway in the kingdom. It also fits with the desire of the country’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, to reshape the image of the Gulf’s largest nation, wean it off its dependence on oil exports and also make broad changes to its conservative Muslim society.
Al-Sheikh, who is one of Prince Mohammed’s most trusted lieutenants, is often the most visible presence in the royal court at high-profile sporting events. During the Usyk-Fury fight, for example, he sat ringside alongside soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and other celebrity guests. After Usyk’s victory, al-Sheikh entered the ring to speak with both fighters.
But his growing influence in boxing is evident in other ways as well. His name has been name-checked in interviews and social media posts by top boxers, promoters and even major broadcast networks.
And as Saudi Arabia has replaced Las Vegas, Los Angeles and London as the destination for the biggest fights, it is also helping to change the way the sport is broadcast. The recent heavyweight title fight – which reportedly earned Fury $100 million – was essentially offered to broadcast partners to air for free on the condition that they share a portion of their revenue with the host country . Broadcast partners typically spend millions of dollars to acquire such rights.
The broadcast of the fight was also curious in another way that increased viewership: hundreds of illegal online streams were readily available and lasted for the duration of the fight. No effort, it appears, was made to remove them and prevent the public from seeing the latest Saudi showcase.
