While LIV Golf gets quietly buried, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund just signed on as an official tournament supporter of the FIFA World Cup. The kingdom isn't retreating from sports — it's doubling down on the one that actually matters to them.
The value of the deal wasn't disclosed, but it covers North America and Asia, and it lands at a telling moment. PIF pulled the plug on future LIV Golf funding earlier this month after spending expected to exceed $6 billion on the tour by year's end. Golf was an experiment. Football is the strategy.
What this deal actually represents
PIF's head of corporate brand Mohamed AlSayyad said football plays a "crucial role in the ongoing transformation of Saudi Arabia" — and the portfolio backs that up. Newcastle United. The Saudi Pro League, which lured Ronaldo, Neymar, and Benzema. Hosting rights for the 2034 World Cup. A commercial partnership in last year's Club World Cup. A stake in DAZN, which broadcast that same tournament.
That last piece matters more than it might seem. FIFA's own accounts show broadcasting rights contributed over $1 billion — "the lion's share" of its annual revenue in 2025. PIF doesn't just want to sponsor football. It wants a stake in how football is distributed and watched globally.
The Saudi Pro League's recruitment wave has cooled. The era of every top star being linked with a move to Riyadh has passed. But that was never the whole plan — it was the attention-grabbing opening act. The infrastructure being built around the sport is longer-term and less flashy: hosting rights, media assets, governing body partnerships.
The 2034 picture is getting clearer
Winning the 2034 World Cup hosting rights was the headline achievement. Everything else — the players, the sponsorships, the DAZN stake — is scaffolding around that centrepiece. A World Cup on home soil that Saudi Arabia also helped fund at the governing body level, distributed through a streamer they part-own, is a closed loop that no other nation has attempted at this scale.
Whether FIFA's deepening financial ties with PIF raises governance questions is a conversation that will run for years. For now, the numbers speak plainly: Saudi Arabia has decided football is where its long-term sports investment lives, and FIFA has decided that's fine by them.
