When you post Saudi Arabia, following it up with “Billions” is quite redundant.
It seems that Saudi Arabia and Turki Alalshikh are poised to turn the boxing world upside down.
In case fans haven’t noticed, Saudi Arabia has become a massive player in the world of combat sports. In the last few years, the country has made a big push into fighting. Led by Turki Alalshikh, a top advisor to Muhammad bin Salman, they’ve attracted multiple major boxing matches to the country by offering huge purses.
The likes of Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk, Anthony Joshua vs. Francis Ngannou, and Deontay Wilder vs. Zhilei Zhang have all happened in 2024 alone. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has begun to get involved in the world of MMA as well. Last year, the wealth fund invested $100 million into the PFL. They also have a deal with the UFC, whom is set to hold an event in the Middle East later this month.
Well, it seems that the country’s push into combat sports is just beginning. Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund is reportedly working on a deal to reshape the world of boxing. The news was first reported by Reuters, earlier today. According to several sources, the PIF (Public Investment Fund) is looking to create a league featuring some of the sport’s biggest promoters.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund reportedly begins creating massive boxing league
According to the report, a handful of the sport’s biggest promoters are already working to make it happen. Those promoters include Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, as well as Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. If the deal goes to plan, it would result in a deal valuing the new boxing league at $4 to 5 billion.
The report also confirmed that Turki Alalshikh was heavily involved with making the deal, and has been working on it in the last month or so. However, what is currently unknown, is how the boxing league would function and be structured. Regardless, it seems that Saudi Arabia’s PIF is full steam ahead on making the deal.
For what it’s worth, Alalshikh has repeatedly stated his intent to clean up boxing. That’s one of the main reasons he helped to make Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk. That bout produced the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis, who accomplished the feat 25 years ago. ‘The Cat’ scored a split-decision victory over the British boxer last month to make history.
How does this impact the Ali Act if fights are held overseas?
Yep. It’s going to be big. Utter game changer.
NYT
" Saudi Arabia’s Next Billion-Dollar Sports Play: A Boxing Takeover
A proposal awaiting financing would attempt to bring together dozens of the world’s best boxers in a single, Saudi-run pro league.
"Saudi Arabia has already launched a hostile takeover of professional golf. It has invested billions of dollars in world soccer. Now it wants to own professional boxing, too.
An ambitious and expensive Saudi plan that would reshape the economics, 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 giant sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, would finance the project. The fund is holding final negotiations about dispersing the initial investment — said to be as much as $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 does not have final approval.
The Public Investment Fund, known as the P.I.F., declined to comment.
Under the Saudi proposal, about 200 of the top men’s boxers in the world would be signed and then divided into 12 weight classes in what would amount to a global boxing league.
Each class would include about 15 fighters each, allowing the best talents to regularly face off. 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 the fighters, to stage high-profile cards around the globe.
And unlike many of the sports Saudi Arabia has previously attempted to disrupt, professional boxing may be ripe for reimagining. The sport has lost its luster and some of its allure in recent decades and is currently run by a tangled web of rival promoters and disparate sanctioning bodies that arrange their own fights and award their own titles. That leaves fans to sift through a confusing system that frequently stymies meetings between the best boxers and one that boasts multiple “champions” in the same weight classes.
The new series would operate under one brand name, an arrangement similar to the business model of the hugely popular Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has steadily eroded boxing’s global popularity. In the U.F.C., 15 fighters are ranked in leagues per weight division as well as one ranking for the best “pound-for-pound” fighters. In the Saudi-backed event, boxers would be able to move up the rankings tables but also be eliminated from the series and replaced by new talent.
The project has been under discussion for more than a year, and developed with the help of multiple consultancy firms, including Boston Consulting Group, which helped shape the Saudi-funded LIV Golf series. Should an investment decision be confirmed in the next few 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 that point, the P.I.F. would again provide what the project needs most: money.
For years, the fund has been the vehicle Saudi Arabia has used for its cash-soaked assault on the sports industry. Its moves have plowed huge amounts of fresh capital into clubs, teams, events, federations and sporting organizations. But they also have unsettled entire industries, from professional golf to soccer to tennis, and brought criticism that Saudi Arabia has sought to reshape perceptions of the kingdom through what is derided as “sportswashing.”
The biggest sticking point to the Saudi plan for boxing may be long-term contracts that some of the best boxers already have with high-profile promoters, many of whom are often separately tied to different television networks.
To resolve that issue, discussions have already begun on the possibility of full or partial investments from the P.I.F. in several of the biggest boxing promotion companies, according to the planners.
Two of the biggest promoters, Top Rank and Queensbury, declined to comment on any talks.
Partnerships are also under discussion with some of boxing’s traditional organizations, which control the rights not only to key boxers, but also to highly valuable intellectual property like archival video, historic results and the title belts once held by boxing royalty like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
In the new series, there would be a requirement for boxers to perform in a minimum number of events per year, a move designed to prevent some of the top boxers from taking prolonged time away from the sport, a cause of frustration among boxing fans.
Should the plan for the boxing league go ahead, a P.I.F. entity called Sela has been earmarked to promote the events, which would be held not just in Saudi Arabia but around the world. Sela, a sports events company, has already staged boxing events in Saudi Arabia, including the recent heavyweight unification bout between Britain’s Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine.
In that fight, Usyk became the first unified heavyweight champion in more than a generation.
Sela declined to comment on the new Saudi boxing plan.
That fight was just the latest in a series of high profile boxing cards held in Saudi Arabia in recent years, turning the kingdom, thanks to the richest purses in the sport, into the top destination for the biggest bouts.
Saudi and Sela will soon be branching further afield, with events under the headline Riyadh Season now set to take place overseas.
The first of those fight nights will be in August in Los Angeles, when Terrence Crawford and Israil Madrimov meet for the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Organization super-welterweight title. That may be followed by an even bigger event at London’s Wembley Stadium featuring Britain’s former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
That event has already been talked up by the Saudi official who has quickly become the most prominent figure in boxing, Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority.
Al-Sheikh is at the center of the plans to restructure boxing, and alluded to as much in a recent interview with ESPN in which he reportedly said he planned to “fix” a “broken” sport. The interview did not reveal details of the new Saudi league.
Ali Act is a US law only. Every country has its own laws.
You know, we think the Saudi boxing project is big. Well it is nothing compared to the Saudi Line City project.
Have you heard of this?
It is a building project where the building is taller than the Freedom Tower, NY, but as long as from LA to San Diego. lol
Really.
…
If I had unlimited funds, I would be the Vince McMahon of roller derby
I would build an ECW bingo hall type arena for the fans…
We could draw WNBA numbers.
Fuck Saudi Arabia.
Can’t wait to never see a live event ever again when everything is in the shit slave desert.
Anyone else love this Saudi Money in sports?
Shits Fire.
Wheres Joseph Parker you faggot article (not HKP)
Unfortunately $ talks …
I was gonna go work in Saudi a few years ago. I had to have an operation and while I was recovering they chopped that journalist up. I changed my mind, they were not happy as I’d already signed a contract and sent some less than polite messages.
Fuck em.