Riyadh Season, the fourth annual sport and entertainment festival that runs in Saudi Arabia’s meteorologically hospitable months between October to March, is approaching its climax with a high-end week of Formula One, boxing and snooker. How long before the season becomes a rolling, 12-month, air-conditioned fantasia featuring every major sport? Host to the Super Bowl, the World Cup, Olympic Games? Don’t rule it out.
Advocates are everywhere. This week’s sample includes Judd Trump, who loves the atmosphere in Saudi Arabia, better than many a British snooker venue, he tells us. Boxer Tyson Fury is mad about the place. He gets a proper welcome here. And lo, smile wider than the Persian Gulf, he takes his place alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Anthony Joshua and Francis Ngannou, who fight in Riyadh on Friday night, and his favourite emissary, Turki Alalshikh, who, in his role as Chairman of General Authority for Entertainment, captions his latest Instagram post in celebratory froth about another mega-million development coming soon. Can’t wait.
The latest episode of the Christian Horner show is being filmed in Jeddah, on the Corniche, no less, where the second grand prix of the season takes place. In 2028, a new half-a-billion pounds, purpose-built circuit is planned, the Qiddiya Speed Park. What is it about the alcohol-free petrostate with the toxic human rights record that sports so love. It can’t be the money because none ever reference that. There is, though, a lot said about growing the game, and about the kindness and generosity of spirit shown by the locals.
It is this that particularly appealed to Fury on his first visit ahead of his fight with Ngannou six months ago. And he had harsh words for those who rule over the mother country back home, where gay folk wander free of persecution and women make their own choices. “Has the government ever given special treatment for the Gypsy King?’ Absolutely nothing. Do they even get me through customs at Heathrow Airport, quicker than anybody else? Or do I wait for two hours in the queue?”
He has a point. I mean, who likes queuing when you can elevate yourself above the poor people and just stride on through? “You come over here and you get treated like an absolute legend. And then you go home and don’t get any special treatment. Turki Alalshikh, His Excellency, I want to shout out, all the Saudi government and the big boss himself, MBS [Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud].”
The Saudi regime certainly has a friend in Fury. So much so he has pledged to return in May to meet Oleksandr Usyk for the unified heavyweight crown, for which he will earn more in one night, £55m, than F1 world champion Max Verstappen earns in a season. As well as putting on a show for a community steeped in boxing culture, Fury helps out with a bit of public relations for his hosts. Don’t judge he says of a medieval regime that beheaded 192 individuals in 2022, the highest figure in 30 years.
He is not alone in sounding the Saudi trumpet. Flush from his victory over world champion Luca Brecel in the kingdom’s inaugural World Masters of Snooker event, Ronnie O’Sullivan expressed his admiration for the sport’s new destination venue. “It’s been a long time since we came to the Middle East,” he said. “We have been treated so fantastically well. The players have enjoyed it. The hospitality has been fantastic. The culture here is fantastic.”
Well of course it is Ronnie. You are doing your hosts a service. Just by being in the kingdom you normalise it. And they reward you for it. Moreover, you sell it as an upgrade on the venues you routinely call home, the shabby Ally Pally, the too-small Crucible, and heaven forbid, Covid Central Milton Keynes. Why, we are almost ready to jump on a plane immediately and join the party.
“These are the tournaments you really want to play in. One table, a great crowd. The music was going on in-between frames. It was like we were in some sort of rave. Like going 25 years back when I was young. It has made it lively. It feels like a really nice festival. Everyone wants to get to Saudi.”
O’Sullivan pouched a relatively meagre £250k for his victory, though the hosts did promise to ramp up the “golden ball” prize, awarded to the first player each year to post a 147 maximum, from £200k to £1m in 2025. A bargain for a testimonial as obsequious as the Rocket’s
This is all part of the grand design we call sportswashing, a strategic policy that seeks to project an alternative view to the watching world, one that distorts the reality on the ground. Famous sportspeople are the regime’s useful idiots, vectors of benign visions intended to alter negative perceptions.
Personally, I have no issue with athletes taking the Saudi dollar. They are as entitled to do business with a state sanctioned by the British government, that is considered an ally, owns chunks of British assets and buys our goods. If it’s good enough for our elected leaders, commercial powers and pension fund managers, who invest our cash in Saudi companies, then why should we hold our boxers, golfers, footballers, racing drivers, snooker players et al to a higher moral standard?
The distasteful element comes with the bought deceit. If just one athlete would speak with candour about the real reason they are engaged in the trade, few would bat an eyelid. It is the paid-for justifications that ring false. If Saudi Arabia was the paradise described by Fury and O’Sullivan, why does it not feature on their bucket list outside of work?
Somehow, Jos Verstappen managed to resist the siren call of Jeddah, scene of this week’s F1 grand prix, during the three-day hiatus between races. Instead, he departed neighbouring Bahrain to celebrate his birthday in Dubai. Not that Dubai is any more appealing than the kingdom in terms of the hostility shown to the fundamental rights and freedoms familiar to liberal democracies like our own, but you can get a beer in the hotel bar.
Don’t worry, the wealthy Saudis share Verstappen Snr’s enthusiasm for the neighbouring Gulf states. The King Fahd Causeway connecting Saudi Arabia with Bahrain acts as a highway to hell for Saudis seeking the kind of entertainment forbidden at home, i.e. the comfort of strangers in hotel bars. Tables occupied by women are set out to accommodate the appetites of men. Thursday night, the start of the Islamic weekend, is party night in Manama.
Those who engage are left to make peace with their conscience on the way home. If they can be bothered. More likely they adopt the sporting tactic and speak only about the wonderful service they received.