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Last year, when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund set up its own golf league to compete with the PGA Tour, we pondered whether the country with massive amounts of oil money would ever turn its attention to football.
That could be happening.
According to the Financial Times, via Sports Business Daily, Saudi Arabia plans to launch a multibillion-dollar investment company in order to “expand its sports interests following its power grab in golf.”
The sports group will be part of the Public Investment Fund, and it will have a “war chest to fund its expansion.” Targeted will be soccer, tennis, and “other sports.”
If that other sport is ever football, things could get very interesting. Would Saudi Arabia try to buy its way into the NFL directly, where ownership rules would have to be changed, or would the plan be to create a competing league and to buy up NFL players?
The NFL should be prepared for the latter, if the league chooses to keep the door slammed shut on the former. And that would be something. An all-out bidding war for players from a league that competes with the NFL during football season. The NFL hasn’t seen that since the AFL, which eventually forced a merger.