Saudi Arabia’s football investments are ‘a long-term project’: World Football Summit official

By Fatih Erel

ISTANBUL (AA) - Saudi Arabia's extraordinary football investments are a "long-term project" with strong government support, unlike the short-lived projects for the Chinese and Japanese football leagues, according to Jaime Dominguez Perez De Ayala, director of content and communications at the World Football Summit (WFS).

"Saudi Arabia is definitely one of the places to be in terms of football," Jaime told Anadolu ahead of a WFS session in the capital Riyadh on Dec. 2-3.

The Saudi Pro League spent more than $900 million on transfer fees to acquire top-level foreign players last year.

Around 10 years ago, China invested heavily in football, and the Chinese Super League was in the spotlight. Since then, Chinese clubs have been facing financial issues after the huge expenditures for well-known football players.

The financial instability in Japanese professional football has also worsened since the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jaime stressed that Saudi football investments are “a long-term initiative.”

“It is not like another country. I think the main difference is there is a lot of government support. For them, it is a strategic move to diversify the economy. There is a long-term strategy behind it," he said.

He said the population in Saudi Arabia is more passionate about football than China and Japan to acquire the momentum to keep it a long-term project.

With the passionate fans, supporting institutions and committed clubs, a football league can have long-term plans, he noted.

Jaime said everyone talks about the transfers of top-level football players in the Saudi Pro League.

"But that is not all. They are evolving the business side of football. They are doing very interesting things in terms of content, storytelling in terms of sports tourism.

"We connect the global network of professionals in football. What we notice is there is a lot of curiosity around the world about what the Saudis are doing," he added.

"We found that there is a good mix of what both worlds can learn from each other to evolve the overall football industry," he noted.

"l think the vision from the very beginning back in 2016, which was the first WFS event, was to create a platform and a community of people that are working in the football industry to help it evolve from a business perspective.”

Noting that the WFS was launched in Spain in 2016, Jaime said there was no event to connect people working in football before the WFS.

"Whoever wants to understand about the football industry knows that the WFS is a community platform where people can actually learn and see what is going on in football," he said.

Being able to organize events around the world, Jaime said "our commitment is to maintain innovation and make the football industry more professional, profitable and sustainable in terms of a business perspective."