Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) would bid for the World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., “should the company decide to sell,” reported Wrestling website.
According to Wrestlenomics, the WWE events that have taken place in Saudi Arabia since 2018 have generated $400 million for the company. That’s a sum of money larger than the ticket revenue of all 38 WrestleManias combined. With that kind of money on the table, and WWE already being in the midst of a 10-year deal with the country, it certainly makes sense that a buyout could be on the table for Saudi Arabia.
The website charged that MBS has been expanding its interests in sports in an attempt to cover up his poor human rights record and boost his international image.
PIF has served as the majority owner of Newcastle United in the English Premier League since 2021.
Last year, it spent at least $2 billion to bankroll LIV Golf’s global challenge to the PGA Tour.
Human rights organisations have long accused Saudi Arabia of using sport to whitewash its poor human rights record, most recently was superstar Cristiano Ronaldo’s deal to join state-owned Saudi football club Al Nassr FC.
AFP also linked Ronaldo’s deal to MBS’s attempts to cover up the Kingdom’s poor human rights record.
Along the same line, the Guardian revealed that discussion around Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to the Saudi Arabian league focuses on the player’s inexorable slide towards footballing oblivion.
Ronaldo was unveiled at the end of a year in which at least 147 people had been executed in Saudi Arabia, according to the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, the Guardian’s golf correspondent Ewan Murray wrote.
“Ronaldo’s 526 million Instagram and 106 million Twitter followers will now be afforded updates from Al Nassr as football obsessives debate his on-field decline. The Saudis have bought one of the game’s iconic figures, meaning goals and assists barely matter. Neither does the source of Ronaldo’s weekly wage. Sportswashing works.”
Much of the void is filled by Performance54, a sports marketing group which Companies House shows has three Saudi Arabians on their board including Majed al-Sorour – also a director of Newcastle and the long-time front man for Saudi’s golf operation, according to the paper.
Perhaps complaints about human rights abuses washes over Saudi’s sporting wing, just as it apparently does the golfers it employs on such lucrative terms. At some point, one has to assume all the heat, hassle and expense has to become worth it. LIV used 2022 to disrupt golf and change the complexion of the sport forever. Nothing that has transpired in the off season suggests Saudi Arabia’s dalliances on the fairways will prove as fruitful as elsewhere. So long as that risk lingers, golfers inside the LIV bubble face an uncertain future, Ewan Murray concluded.
