By Joshua Murphy

Saudi Arabia has injected billions into sports (Image: Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia have changed the landscape of sports massively over the last few years, with the country spending upwards of £5 billion on different sporting investments. This cash injection into sport is at an unprecedented scale, making multiple high-profile deals in golf, snooker and football causing many changes to the way the sports are played and viewed.

One of the major players in the recent investment is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). The PIF has spent billions of pounds, with their most notable spend being the £2 billion investment in LIV golf and the acquisition of Newcastle United for £305 million and further investment of £150 million in the club.

The introduction of LIV golf has changed the sport forever. In 2020 Golf Saudi, a division of the PIF, announced their plans to establish a new global professional league. This entity formally launched in October 2021 as LIV Golf, with former professional golfer Greg Norman named as CEO.

The LIV Golf Invitational Series features two competitions occurring at the same time. An individual event and a team event. Seven events take place over the course of LIV Golf's four-month regular season. The eighth event is the team championship at the end of the season, where teams compete against one another in a match play format to see who earns the LIV Golf team trophy.

The individual competition is a competition where each golfer will compete in a stroke play format over the course of 54 holes. This is where the competition gets its name as LIV is 54 in roman numerals. There are no cuts and the golfer with the lowest score after 54 holes will be declared winner.

Each individual event features a £20 million purse - £15 million to be split over the 48 golfers who played a part in the tournament with the winner earning £3 million and last place earning £100,000. The remaining £5 million is then dispersed among the teams that finished in the top-three places.

The team element of the competition is where things start to get different, with a brand-new format introduced that left many golf fans around the world scratching their heads.

Each event features 13 teams made up of four golfers each, with LIV Golf appointing a captain to lead each team. Those captains are then tasked with selecting the other three players for their teams in a snake draft format each week, as the player pool will change from event to event. The PIV team event features 54 players, making up 14 teams of four players each. The 52 selected players will be joined by two local wild cards each event.

The cash injection has enticed many players (Image: Getty Images)

Golf isn’t the only major investment the PIF have made in Saudi Arabia, with football being another major part of their plans. The PIF purchased a 75% in four Saudi Pro League teams Al-Hilal, Al Nassr, Al-Ahli and Al-Ittihad. Since the acquisition of these teams the PIF have invested massively in bringing in big name players from all over Europe with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Neymar Jr and Riyad Mahrez to each of the clubs on combined wages of over £500 million per year. The wages and transfer fees that the Saudi Pro League teams offer have drastically changed the way the global football transfer market operates with many players heads being turned by the massive, untaxed wages. One of the most worrying stories of recent times is 21-year-old Gabri Veiga who chose a move to Al-Ahli over offers from prestigious European sides Chelsea, PSG and Barcelona.

Another alarming story coming out of Saudi Arabia was England midfielder Jordan Henderson leaving Al-Ettifaq on Thursday for Dutch side Ajax due to him and his family failing to settle because of the massive culture shock of moving to Saudi Arabia from Liverpool. Henderson signed a three-year deal, thought to be worth £700,00 per week.

Football’s global stars are flocking to Saudi (Image: Getty Images)

This week the World Snooker Tour announced a newly created Saudi Arabia snooker masters. The new competition is set to become the sport’s fourth major tournament with one of the largest payouts in snooker, offering a £2 million prize pot for the winner. The tournament will be open to all

A 10-year deal has been agreed between The World Snooker Tour and Saudi Arabia. The inaugural tournament will be held in Riyadh, running from the 31st of August until the 7th of September.

The new tournament will be predated by Saudi Arabia’s first TV snooker event, The Riyadh Season World Masters. This event will be non-ranking and will run from the 4th to the 6th of March. The most exciting part about the Riyadh Season World Masters is the inclusion of an additional “golden ball”. The “golden ball” will only be potable after a maximum break to reach a score of 167.

However, it is currently unclear at this stage if the ball will be on the table throughout the game, if there will be any penalty for hitting it too early or what a player gains for potting it other than extra points in an already-won game.

These sudden massive investments in sports have caused many people around the globe to accuse Saudi Arabia of “sportswashing”. This would suggest that Saudi Arabia are using sport to take sight away from their controversial domestic and foreign policies, especially regarding the criticism that they receive over human rights.

The impact of Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing”