Mohammed Bin Salman — MBS for his devout—once splurged half a billion dollars on a yacht party for his friends. The Saudi Arabia crown prince, the man behind bringing the 2034 FIFA World Cup, gifted Rolls Royce to his country’s team that defeated Argentina in the Qatar World Cup. He reportedly purchased, with a proxy, a French château worth $300 million in Versailles; coughed up $450.3 million to fetch Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
But he is austere and stern with his words. He speaks straight and blunt, with no regal flourishes, no hollow diplomatic fervour.
Rather, he speaks like a businessman fuelled by vaulting ambition, as he did when the Fox News’ anchor sought his opinion on “sport washing” allegations. “If sport washing is going to increase my GDP by way of 1%, then I will continue doing sport washing. I don’t care … I’m aiming for another 1.5%. Call it whatever you want, we’re going to get that 1.5%,” he replied, with cold eyes and still fingers in an unwavering tone.
The 38-year-old, considered the de facto ruler of the kingdom, officially ruled by his 88-year-old father, has dressed simply for the interview in a plain white thobe, red-and-white-checkered headdress held in place with a black cord and wore black sandals. He then explains Saudi’s colossal investment in sports in the last eight years (an estimated $51 billion): “When you want to diversify an economy you have to work in all sectors: mining, infrastructure, manufacturing, transportation, logistics all this. Part of it is tourism and if you want to develop tourism, part of it is culture, part of it is your sport sector, because you need to create a calendar.”
The biggest reason the country is on a spending spree, not only in sport but also in other streams, is because it is dizzyingly rich. It sits on a treasure chest of $925 billion. But it spends because it knows that the resources at their disposal, oil, natural gas and minerals, are not imperishable, that they need to expand the wealth, that they can’t afford the youth, 63 percent are under the age of 30, to laze in the comforts of their home. Already, the country is reaping rewards —in 2023, the country’s Public Investment Fund reported $36.8 billion in profits, according to a study by Carlton University.
Behind the sporting forays of Saudi, thus, is not princely indulgence or a wanton gamble, or the pursuit of bunking its image as a regressive nation, or to acquire soft or hard power. It already is one of the most powerful nations in the world. At the heart of it is Saudi’s resolve to multiply their wealth. The PIF is not the only funding domain either. It has constituted a new company SRJ Sporting Investments, which would “invest in acquiring and creating new sports events IP [intellectual property], commercial rights of popular and prominent sports competitions and hosting major global events in Saudi Arabia”. Another PIF subdivision, Sanabil, specialises in investing in venture capital and private equity funds.
Unlike the Thanis of Qatar, MBS had no inclination to football or any sport. In his early teenage years, as Ben Hubbard writes in MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman, he was pampered like any other prince in the country. Hubbard writes: “During the lessons, MBS would take a walkie-talkie from one of the guards to make “cheeky remarks” about his instructor and joke with the guards on the other end of the line to regale his siblings.”
But soon after he turned 15, a cousin told him that his father Salman bin Abdulaziz, then one of the 36 challengers for the throne, is not as wealthy as he thinks and owed millions to businessmen, MBS suddenly became serious. “It was the first shock and challenge that I faced in my life,” he would later say. Abdulaziz was handsome and flamboyant, sported a goatee and wore Armani suits.
MBS was determined to make himself some money. He then started selling gold coins and luxury watches which he received as gifts from relatives. He briefly invested in stocks, and by the time he became 16, he had made a profit of nearly $100,000. Then he told his father that he wanted to open a trash collection business. Though he first laughed it off, he granted his son’s wish. He jumped into the real estate business, where stories abound of his ruthlessness. A story goes that he once sent a bullet in a cover to a land official who declined to give him the title to a plot he demanded, according to the book Blood and Oil, by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck.
His clout swelled when his father, now Salman of Saudi, was made the king in 2015. He became the minster of defence, and within days of assuming charge, he ordered the bombing in Civil War-ridden Yemen, Hubbard writes. Salman’s favourite son (he had 12 sons and a daughter) was MBS, not simply because he spotted leadership traits in him but because he was aloof from the influences of western culture. He didn’t study abroad, had a way with the locals and solved problems, and in Hubbard’s words: “He would stop at nothing to make Saudi Arabia great again, on his terms.”
Sport and football were just incidental vehicles to his ultimate dream of making Saudi great. The investments, especially in football, came at a time when recession and conservatism had clutched the sporting world after the pandemic, when the world’s wealth became increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. Therein lies the sporting success of Saudi too, that it is not driven by a love for sports, but by the blinding purpose to become richer.
Whether it involves sport washing or human rights risk, it would hardly shake the empire of Mohammed Bin Salman, or MBS.
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