If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 transformation project promised to catapult an insular desert petrostate to global A-list status in the space of 15 short years and, as an additional bonus, provide unlimited free lunches to anyone who could bring a sports event to Riyadh.

For the first half of the project, all of this worked like a charm. Global sport flooded Saudi Arabia’s events calendar, raking in billions of extra dollars with very little asked for in return, save a bit of embarrassment here and there. This provided Saudi Arabia with the battering ram it needed to show the world its myriad ‘giga-projects’ across real estate, technology and energy.

NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s headline project, was to be a desert megacity straight out of Blade Runner. LIV Golf and the Saudi Pro League were to break the status quo by buying the best athletes on the planet. Futuristic skyscrapers were to be filled with foreign white-collar workers, figuratively drunk on the luxurious lifestyle offered to them.

It was all going well until roughly two weeks ago, when the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, sounded the alarm.

PIF has been bankrolling the Kingdom’s so-called giga-projects since the Vision 2030 project was rolled out in 2016. However, PIF’s bullish investments in the intervening period are, in investor parlance, playing out over a longer time horizon than was originally forecast.

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In plain English, Saudi Arabia is yet to make much money from its cyberpunk city/free lunch idea, and it’s time to do something different.

Originally reported on by Reuters, PIF’s latest five-year financial plan is less Vision 2030 and more Make Some Money Quickly 2030. Reuters says that the Kingdom will shift toward “quality of spending” and priority sectors: technology, energy and tourism. Notably, real estate and sport have not made the list.

NEOM is set to be scaled back from a 170km-long futurist metropolis to an industrial hub focused on green energy. A huge number of real estate white elephants will either be canned or ‘rationalised’. As for sport, the future will be a lot more than the present.

Regardless of whether this year’s Saudi Grand Prix is postponed or outright cancelled due to the war in Iran, F1’s growing reliance on hosting fees for growth means the relationship will remain solid.

Sport has been a very useful soft-power marketing tool for Saudi Arabia as it sought to convince the world of social and cultural change within its borders. The word ‘sportswashing’ was often used to dismiss the legitimacy of the Kingdom’s transformation project, with professional sports stars often taken to task for their lack of moral fortitude and love of money over prestige.

These criticisms had a lot more weight before 2024, after which the West has had plenty to deal with closer to home. Saudi Arabia has noticed this, too. The Kingdom has all but stopped advertising its social transformation efforts as the world pivots hard towards realpolitik – ownership of oil fields, the race to generative AI – and away from the moral high ground that feels a lot more level than it once did.

In such a climate, Saudi Arabia’s use of sport is far narrower, and its place in PIF’s streamlined financial plan is reduced as well. Sport is now either a pure financial asset or a tool for boosting tourism and attracting foreign capital.

Leading the cost-cutting list is LIV Golf, despite PIF injecting a further $267m into the project to tide it over for this year. Prize money and bonuses are noticeably smaller this year, as is LIV’s field of star golfers. LIV’s season-long individual bonus has been slashed, with reporting showing the champion’s bonus falling from $18m to $6m for 2026, and the overall bonus pool dropping from $30m to $10m. Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed have already made the jump back to the PGA Tour, and golf insiders believe this trickle could turn into a flood.

Much like plenty of other Saudi projects, LIV Golf now finds itself in an awkward in-between stage, with billions of sunk cost, no real returns to speak of, and faith wavering on all sides. The golf league is reported to have cost the Kingdom more than $5bn, with PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan hoping that investors can be found sooner rather than later.

LIV’s stake-sale plan targets valuations of up to $300m for each one of its ‘golf clubs’, which are majority-owned by PIF. This is LIV’s only route out of permanent subsidy, and PIF won’t wait forever.

LIV is not alone in having its timeline accelerated. The Kingdom is yet to rake in any real returns from its sports investments aside from endeavours in boxing and esports, where losses have been significant but plenty has been achieved. Saudi entities have managed to gain almost complete control of these vulnerable, segmented ecosystems, and they are now ripe for cost controls.

In the case of esports, PIF’s acquisition of games publishing giant EA in 2025 was a sign that Saudi Arabia has understood the need for end-to-end ownership in order for profit to be made from sport. PIF already owned the scaffolding beneath competitive gaming through deals struck through Savvy Gaming Group, which owns an array of esports tournament organisers.

The Kingdom’s focus on owning sport is strongly influenced by TKO, the publicly listed company that pioneered the strategy with outright acquisitions of the UFC and more recently WWE. TKO is now partnering with Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority on Zuffa Boxing – an attempt by Saudi Arabia to seal off the loose ends of its expensive boxing empire.

In March last year, TKO, General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki Alalshikh and Saudi agency Sela joined forces to launch a new boxing promotion, with UFC president Dana White and WWE chief commercial officer Nick Khan overseeing operations. Zuffa Boxing has a stated aim of simplifying boxing’s fragmented model and bringing cost control to the sport – much as the UFC has done in mixed martial arts.

But in cases where end-to-end ownership is not possible, PIF is realising that sport is little more than a fun way to lose money. Case in point, the Saudi Pro League, which had stated ambitions to become one of the world’s top five football leagues by the end of the decade.

Thus far, the league has failed to gather anywhere near that kind of status as an array of ageing stars fail to capture the imagination of global football fans. This is partly due to the cast of F-tier domestic players and F-tier match attendances that surround those stars, but also the ersatz sports product it offers.

Much like with other ‘giga-projects’, there are signs that PIF is running out of patience with the continuous spending without return. The lack of transfer activity from Saudi Pro League teams in the recent January window did not go unnoticed by European football clubs, nor by the league’s talismanic quadragenarian, Cristiano Ronaldo, who complained of an investment slowdown across the league.

A Saudi Pro League spokesperson responded that “no individual, however significant, determines decisions beyond their own club”. In simpler terms, Ronaldo was told to shut up. He has since obliged.

Some luxuries will be allowed, however. Formula 1 continues to be strategically important for projecting Saudi Arabia as a Middle Eastern home of luxury and largesse. It also brings a young and diverse global audience to a Saudi project – unlike LIV and the Pro League.

Regardless of whether this year’s Saudi Grand Prix is postponed or outright cancelled due to the war in Iran, F1’s growing reliance on hosting fees for growth means the relationship will remain solid.

PIF’s investments in Formula E and Extreme H are indicative of how loss-making sports can be valuable to the Kingdom, as they provide Saudi Arabia with a platform to sell its green energy capabilities and, in the case of Extreme H, a travelling trade show for its green hydrogen business.

At the other end of the spectrum, events like darts, snooker and the WTA Finals have pulled in poor crowds (or worse, paid crowds) and have made little sense for Saudi Arabia from any perspective.

Tennis has already delivered bad optics. SportsPro reported crowds of around 400 at the WTA Finals in Riyadh in a 5,000-capacity arena, and UK media coverage turned the empty seats into a wider argument about the point of the move. Snooker has leaned into novelty and gimmickry, with a “golden ball” format and a $500,000 prize attached to a 167 break, and later coverage leaning heavily on the bonus rather than on the tournament.

This year’s inaugural Saudi Darts Masters also attracted attention for the wrong reasons, with an eerily quiet room of Saudi dignitaries becoming the story and players wheeled out in hostage-esque interviews to defend the tournament.

Without an outright acquisition or equity investment in the WTA Tour or in Matchroom, these are the kind of cuts that PIF will be looking to make.

In Saudi Arabia’s new Vision 2030, sport either works for the Kingdom’s bottom line, or it does not work at all.

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