Saudi Arabia has already launched a hostile takeover of professional golf, the country has invested billions in world soccer and now it is trying to buy professional boxing.
An ambitious and expensive Saudi Arabian plan to overhaul boxing's economics, structure and future is in the final stages of approval, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans.
The project will be funded by Saudi Arabia's giant sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, which is in final negotiations over its share of the initial investment needed for the project, said to be as much as $2 billion, according to two people familiar with the plan, who declined to be identified because the project has not yet had final approval.
The Public Investment Fund (PIF) declined to comment.
The Saudi proposal would see around 200 of the world's top male boxers signed to form a global boxing league divided into 12 weight classes.
Each weight class would feature about 15 fighters, with the best talent competing against each other on a regular basis. The move would essentially create a single boxing organization, replacing a sometimes confusing and frustrating system of promoter-versus-promoter and governing body-versus-government. The new organization would have the money and fighters to stage high-profile bouts around the world.
Unlike many of the sports Saudi Arabia has tried to disrupt, professional boxing may be ripe for a rethink. The sport has lost some of its luster and glamour in recent decades and is now run by a tangled network of rival promoters and different sanctioning bodies that arrange their own bouts and award their own titles. So fans must sift through an opaque system that frequently prevents the best boxers from facing off against those who boast multiple “champions” in the same weight class.
The new series will operate under a single brand name, an arrangement similar to the business model of the hugely popular Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has steadily eroded boxing's global popularity. UFC has 15 fighters ranked in leagues by weight class, plus a ranking of the best “pound-for-pound” fighters. The Saudi Arabia-backed event allows boxers to climb the rankings table, but also allows them to drop out of the series and be replaced by new fighters.
The project has been in discussion for more than a year and has been developed with the help of several consulting firms, including the Boston Consulting Group, which has backed several PIF projects. If an investment decision is confirmed in the coming weeks, the series could begin as early as the first half of next year, according to one of the people involved in the planning.
At that point, PIF will again provide the project with what it most needs: funding.
Over the years, the fund has been the vehicle Saudi Arabia has used for its big-money assault on the sports industry, including the LIV golf series and the signing of dozens of European soccer stars. The fund's moves have pumped huge amounts of new capital into clubs, teams, events, federations and sports organizations. But they have also unsettled the entire industry, from professional golf to soccer to tennis, and drawn criticism that Saudi Arabia is trying to change the Kingdom's image through what has been derided as “sportswashing.”
The biggest obstacle to Saudi boxing plans may be that some of the top fighters already have long-term contracts with big-name promoters, many of whom often have ties to different television networks.
To solve the problem, planners said talks were already underway about PIF potentially investing fully or partially in some of boxing's biggest promoters.
The two largest promoters, Top Rank and Queensberry, declined to comment on any discussions.
Partnerships are also being discussed with some of boxing's traditional organisations who control not only the rights to major fighters but also highly valuable intellectual property such as archival footage, historic results and title belts once held by boxing champions such as Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
The new series will require boxers to take part in a minimum number of bouts per year, a move intended to prevent some of the best boxers from taking long periods off the sport, which has caused frustration among boxing fans.
If the boxing league plans go ahead, PIF's Sela arm would be dedicated to promoting events in Saudi Arabia and around the world. Sela, the sports events company, has already produced boxing events in Saudi Arabia, including the recent heavyweight unification fight between Britain's Tyson Fury and Ukraine's Oleksandr Usyk.
The bout made Usyk the first unified heavyweight champion in more than a generation.
Serra declined to comment on Saudi Arabia's new boxing plans.
The bout was just the latest in a series of high-profile boxing matches held in Saudi Arabia in recent years, making the kingdom, which has the sport's richest prize pool, a prime venue for the biggest fights.
Saudi and Selah will soon be expanding further afield, hosting an event overseas titled Riyadh Season.
The first bout will take place in Los Angeles in August, when Terence Crawford and Israil Madrimov will face off for the World Boxing Association (WBA) and World Boxing Organization (WBO) super welterweight titles, before a bigger event featuring former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua could take place at Wembley Stadium in London.
The event has already been talked about by the Saudi Arabian government official who has quickly become one of the most prominent figures in boxing, Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority.
Al-Sheikh has been a central figure in plans to restructure boxing and was reported to have hinted at plans to “fix” a “broken” sport in a recent interview with ESPN, where he did not reveal any details about the new Saudi league.
His boxing initiative dovetails with a broader project already underway in Saudi Arabia and the desire of Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman to revamp the Gulf country's image, move away from reliance on oil exports and bring broader change to its conservative Islamic society.
One of Crown Prince Mohammed's most trusted aides, Al-Sheikh is often the most visible royal presence at high-profile sporting events. At the Usyk-Fury fight, for example, he had a ringside seat next to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and other invited celebrities. After Usyk's victory, Al-Sheikh entered the ring and spoke with both fighters.
But his growing influence in boxing is evident in other ways too, with his name popping up in interviews and social media posts by top fighters, promoters and even major broadcasters.
Fury has also helped change the way boxing is broadcasted, as Saudi Arabia has replaced Las Vegas, Los Angeles and London as the sport's biggest bout destination. His recent heavyweight championship fight, for which Fury reportedly made $100 million, was essentially given away for free to broadcast partners, who would then share a cut of the revenue with the host country, which typically spends millions to acquire those rights.
The coverage of the match was also interesting in another way that boosted viewership: hundreds of illegal online streams were readily available and continued throughout the match, with no effort appearing to be made to remove these and prevent spectators from watching the latest Saudi showcase.
