Saudi Arabia has launched a hostile takeover bid for professional golf. It has invested billions of dollars into world football. Now it wants to own professional boxing, too.
An ambitious and costly Saudi plan to reshape boxing’s economy, structure and future is in the final stages of approval, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan.
Saudi Arabia’s massive sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, will finance the plan. The fund is in final talks to diversify the initial investment needed to diversify the plan, said to be as much as $2 billion, according to two people involved in the plan. Both declined to be named because the project has not yet received final approval.
The Public Investment Fund, or PIF, declined to comment.
Under the Saudi proposal, about 200 of the world’s top male boxers would be signed and then divided into 12 weight classes, equivalent to a global boxing league.
Each class will consist of approximately 15 fighters, allowing the best talents to face off regularly. The move would effectively create a single boxing entity, replacing a sometimes confusing and frustrating system of duel promoters and warring sanctioning bodies. The new entity will have the resources and fighters to host high-profile events around the world.
Unlike many sports that Saudi Arabia has tried to disrupt before, professional boxing may be ripe for reimagining. The sport has lost its luster and some of its appeal in recent decades and is now run by a labyrinthine network of rival promoters and different sanctioning bodies, which arrange their own fights and award their own titles. That leaves fans scrutinizing a confusing system that often hampers fights between the best fighters and those with multiple “champions” in the same weight class.
The new series will operate under one brand name, an arrangement similar to the business model of the popular Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has chipped away at boxing’s global popularity. In the UFC, 15 fighters are ranked in each weight class, and the best “pound-for-pound” fighters are also ranked. In the Saudi-backed event, boxers will be able to move up the rankings, but may also be eliminated from the series and replaced by new talent.
The project has been under discussion for more than a year and was developed with the help of several consulting firms, including the Boston Consulting Group, which has helped PIF complete several projects. A person involved in planning said the series could launch as soon as the first half of next year if an investment decision is confirmed in the coming weeks.
At that point, PIF will once again provide what the project needs most: funding.
For years, the fund has been a vehicle for Saudi Arabia to launch huge cash attacks on the sports industry, using things like the LIV golf series and signings of dozens of European soccer stars. Its initiatives have injected significant new capital into clubs, teams, tournaments, federations and sporting organizations. But they have also unsettled industries from professional golf to soccer to tennis and prompted criticism that Saudi Arabia is seeking to reshape perceptions of the kingdom through a derided “sports shakeout.”
Perhaps the biggest sticking point for Saudi Arabia’s boxing plans is that some of the best fighters have signed long-term contracts with high-profile promoters, many of whom are often tied to separate television networks.
To address this issue, discussions have begun on the possibility of the PIF investing in full or part in several of the biggest boxing promotion companies, according to planners.
Top Rank and Queensbury, the two largest promoters, declined to comment on any talks.
Partnerships are also being discussed with a number of boxing legacy organizations that not only control the rights of key boxers but also very valuable intellectual property such as archival footage, historical scores and the likes of boxing royalty such as Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. Championship belt owned.
In the new series, boxers will be required to compete in a minimum number of fights each year, a move aimed at preventing some top fighters from staying away from the sport for extended periods of time, a source of frustration for boxing fans.
If the boxing federation’s plans go ahead, a PIF entity called Sela has been appointed to promote the event, which will not only be held in Saudi Arabia but also around the world. Sports events company Sela has organized boxing events in Saudi Arabia, including the recent heavyweight bout between Britain’s Tyson Fury and Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.
In that fight, Usyk became the first unified heavyweight champion in a generation.
Serra declined to comment on the new Saudi boxing plans.
The fight is just the latest in a series of high-profile boxing events in Saudi Arabia in recent years, making the kingdom a top destination for the biggest fights thanks to the sport’s richest wallets.
Saudi Arabia and Sarawak will soon be expanding further afield, with events titled ‘Riyadh Season’ now taking place overseas.
The first event will take place in Los Angeles in August when Terrence Crawford and Israel Madrimov will compete for the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Organization super welterweight titles. This could be followed by a larger event at London’s Wembley Stadium featuring former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
Turki al-Sheikh, a Saudi official and chairman of the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia, who has quickly become the most well-known figure in boxing, has spoken out about the incident.
Sheikh is at the center of plans to restructure boxing, something he also alluded to in a recent interview with ESPN, in which he reportedly said he planned to “fix” a “broken” sport. No details about the new Saudi Arabian league were revealed in the interview.
The boxing endeavors he is spearheading dovetail with wider projects already underway in Saudi Arabia. It also fits the desire of the country’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, to reshape the Gulf’s largest nation away from its dependence on oil exports and bring widespread support to its conservative Muslim society. changes.
Sheikh is one of Prince Mohammed’s most trusted lieutenants and is often the most visible figure in the royal family at high-profile sporting events. For example, during Usyk’s fight with Fury, he sat in an arena seat next to soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and other invited celebrities. After Usyk’s win, Sheik entered the ring to talk to both fighters.
But his growing influence in boxing manifests itself in other ways as well. His name has appeared in interviews and social media posts from top boxers, promoters and even major broadcast networks.
He is also helping to change the way the sport is broadcast as Saudi Arabia overtakes Las Vegas, Los Angeles and London as the venue for boxing’s biggest events. The recent heavyweight title fight reportedly earned Fury $100 million, which was essentially given to broadcast partners to air for free on the condition that they share a portion of the revenue with the host country. Broadcast partners often spend millions of dollars to acquire such rights.
The game’s broadcast also boosted ratings in another way: hundreds of illegal online streams were easily available and persisted during the game. No one seems to be doing anything to take it down and prevent viewers from watching the latest Saudi display.
