Saudi Arabia has deployed billions from its Public Investment Fund (PIF) over the past two and a half years, according to analysis by the Guardian, spending on sports at a scale that has completely changed professional golf and transformed the international transfer market for football.
The Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal submitted a world-record bid on Monday for the French captain, Kylian Mbappé, understood to be worth €300m (£259m).
The $6.3bn investment dwarfs the estimated $1.5bn Saudi Arabia spent between 2014 and early 2021, according to data compiled two years ago by the Grant Liberty campaign group.
Grant Liberty and other organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch term such spending "sportswashing" - bankrolling big-name sporting events in order to distract from a poor record on human rights.
"Previously, sports figures and brands had rejected offers to engage with Saudi Arabia due to its well-documented human rights abuses," said Grant Liberty. "However, there has been a worrisome shift in moral stance, as lucrative deals are now being accepted despite the ongoing and deteriorating violations." After the 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia was broadly shunned, with many large corporations withdrawing or pausing investments in the country.
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