Paris Saint-Germain star Lionel Messi will play in Saudi Arabia next season after receiving a $600 million offer from Al Hilal, a well-informed source revealed.
Last week, Lionel Messi was suspended by Paris Saint-Germain for taking a trip to Saudi Arabia to fulfill commitments for a commercial contract promoting tourism in the kingdom without the club’s permission.
Messi's transfer will follow that of Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo, who since January has played for Riyadh-based club Al-Nassr.
A few months ago, Al-Hilal offered the aging soccer wizard somewhere in the area of £320 million per year.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salaman (MBS) has been racing to sportwash his poor human rights record, dramatically hit after the killing of the US-Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi citizen Abdul Rahim Al-Hwaiti.
The oil-rich nation has spent billions of dollars aiming to rebrand itself as the Middle East’s newest sports and tourism hub—an effort known as Vision 2030 that is receiving harsh scrutiny from human-rights advocates and forcing some in the sports world to make hard choices.
After months of debate, the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has joined Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr on a two-year contract. According to reports, Ronaldo will receive £172.9 million-a-year through 2025 as part of the deal.
Much like with Formula One and professional golf, the world's biggest oil exporter has in recent years leveraged its immense wealth to assert itself on the eSports stage, hosting glitzy conferences and snapping up established tournament organisers, the report said.
In January, the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund launched the Savvy Gaming Group, which acquired top eSports firms ESL Gaming and FACEIT in deals reportedly worth a total of $1.5 billion.
The Riyadh-based Public Investment Fund also acquired more than $3 billion worth of stock in three US video-game makers during the fourth quarter, according to a regulatory filing.
Earlier, Richard Edelman, the CEO of the $1bn public relations firm Edelman, signed $9.6m in deals with the Saudi government over the past four years to sanitize the kingdom’s image.
The work, which was directed at American audiences and was projected to net Edelman more than $5.6m (£4.6m) in fees, included sending regular press releases that celebrated topics such as “mainstreaming women in business” and “doubling down efforts to empower women and youth”, the paper revealed.
