Saudi Arabia was the real winner at FIFA Club World Cup

On Sunday, the FIFA Club World Cup came to an end as England’s Chelsea delivered a surprising 3-0 pummelling of European champions Paris Saint-Germain in New Jersey’s MetLife stadium. The live broadcast frequently cut to President Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino — the hosts and facilitators of the tournament — sitting in a box together watching the game.

But there was a third man equally responsible for the tournament, who was absent in attendance but whose influence reverberated throughout the stadium: Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.

Millions of viewers watched on a free streaming service owned in part by Saudi Arabia. Players wheeled off to celebrate goals in front of billboards that advertised “PIF” — a reference to the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). The oil-rich Kingdom appears to have even supplied the tournament prize money.

Chelsea will get the plaudits, but MBS and his Public PIF might as well be the real winners, having used the tournament to further position Saudi Arabia as the new preeminent power broker in the world’s most popular sport.

In a Fox Interview in 2023, MBS vowed to “continue sportswashing.” He has kept that promise, taking the footballing world by storm. And last December, the Crown Prince got his prized possession: the 2034 World Cup.

FIFA’s decision to award Saudi Arabia hosting rights for the prestigious tournament was the culmination of a years-long lobbying campaign from MBS and FIFA President Gianni Infantino to secure the vote. MBS needed Infantino to cement the fusion between the world’s most popular sport — popularly referred to as the beautiful game — with a country carrying out significant human rights abuses.

Infantino, for his part, needed MBS’s seemingly bottomless pockets. The Public Investment Fund, where MBS serves as chairman, oversees some $925 billion in assets. A senior official of the footballing association in England described Saudi’s new relationship with FIFA as a "marriage of convenience.”

For a marriage of convenience, the two look particularly chummy. Infantino became Saudi Arabia’s most outspoken champion, even appearing in a video released by the Saudi Ministry of Sports. The FIFA president pressured countries to vote for the Kingdom’s bid to host the World Cup and even helped ward off challenges from potential hosts Australia and Indonesia. Nicholas McGeehan, founding co-director of football campaign group Fair Square, told BBC Sport that the World Cup process effectively acted "to ensure that Saudi Arabia was selected as host.”

Not long after Saudi Arabia’s announcement was formalized, sports streaming service DAZN paid $1 billion for the broadcast rights for the Club World Cup tournament. A few weeks later, a subsidiary of the PIF acquired a minority stake in DAZN worth $1 billion. Then, FIFA announced the prize money for the tournament: also $1 billion.

“Just simply following the money, it may appear that Saudi Arabia, after winning the right to host the World Cup, were able to help FIFA in return via D Zone to fund the club World Cup FIFA,” Adam Leventhal explained on the Athletic FC podcast. Chief Sports Writer Barney Ronay called the deals an “entirely illusory circle of hand-washing.”

Saudi Arabia’s ventures into soccer go far beyond the World Cup and Club World Cup. In 2021, the Public Investment Fund acquired an 80% stake in Newcastle United, one of England’s oldest and most storied clubs. Lionel Messi, arguably the best footballer to grace the pitch, is a tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia. As part of his contract, he is not allowed to say anything that would “tarnish” the reputation of the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi’s longtime foil, moved to Saudi club Al Nassr in 2023 and just signed a new contract worth close to $1 billion.

Three Saudi entities, the Public Investment Fund, Riyadh Air, and Aramco, sponsored the Gold Cup, the North American tournament hosted by the U.S. this summer. Despite being located over 6,000 miles away from North America, the Saudi Arabian national team was invited to play in the tournament. Its invitation raised suspicions about whether Saudi Arabia’s presence was earned on the pitch — or in the pitchbook.

Sportswashing has become an important tool for autocrats such as MBS engaged in human rights abuses to launder their reputations. A staff report by Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) published in April found that Saudi Arabia is using “sports to increase its influence and build its global reputation,” with DAZN being a billboard for PIF’s sports properties.

And Saudi Arabia has more than a few reasons for wanting to launder their reputation.In 2024, Saudi Arabia carried out a record 345 executions, and appears on track to surpass that amount in 2025, according to Amnesty International. Saudi authorities are indiscriminately killing migrants at their Southern border with Yemen. “If you attempt to flee, they shoot you,” said one Ethiopian migrant. Not long ago, Saudi Arabia was the lead instigator in a military intervention in Yemen that killed 377,000 people between 2015 and 2022.

When the World Cup was awarded to Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch warned that “without urgent action and comprehensive reforms, the 2034 World Cup will be tarnished by repression, discrimination and exploitation on a massive scale.”

MBS doesn’t want you to associate that with the Kingdom, or his country's involvement in the destabilizing Yemen war, or his approving the brutal murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. With enough money, MBS hopes to sweep all of that under the rug of soccer, wrestling, tennis, Formula 1 racing, and golf, among other sports.

And FIFA is more than willing to go along with it. The footballing organization assessed Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid to merely have a “medium” human rights risk and that the tournament would “contribute to positive human rights outcomes.”

Nothing more than a shrug.