Is Saudi Arabia the World's Best Marketer?

When Saudi Arabia bought Newcastle United - a long-time sleeping giant of one of the world’s biggest sports leagues - we were told that, “It’s not sportswashing, it’s investment.” That was a highly debatable statement at the time and in a later announcement, it was confirmed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that, “If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we will continue doing sportswashing.”

But it’s the investment comment that I’m more interested in for the purpose of this blog. Along with other investments like the unchallenged Men’s Football World Cup bid, this really is an investment because, in the long-term, it appears that it will rapidly change perceptions of Saudi Arabia around the globe as we approach a post-oil world.

Why is this smart marketing?

Saudi Arabia as a Tourist Destination

Take a quick look at Google Trends data and you can see that people barely thought of taking a break in this part of the world before the last couple of years when the sports investments started happening. For a country looking to attract 70 million tourists a year by 2030 (and way more who are visiting for non-religious purposes), this is a positive shift as it diversifies its economy.

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Having signed a dizzying array of top tier football talent to play in the Saudi Pro League, it’s clear that The Kingdom has its sights set on making the domestic competition one of the most-watched in the world. It’s doubtful that it will attract big in-person crowds given the relatively small local population, stifling heat and other factors, but in an era where young fans are often following players more than clubs, it’s likely that viewership of highlights and - to a lesser extent - matches will be strong.

Everything is a Media Channel

A report released this week by Play the Game, an initiative run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies, showed that Saudi sponsors now have more than 300 sports deals. Today, there are more media channels than ever and many of them aren’t obvious at first glance. Every single one of these sponsorships is actually a media buy and this is just the start of it.

In summary, this is likely to be one of the biggest and best marketing moves of all time. Why? It takes a calculated bet that individual people care more about what they are interested in - in this case, sport - than where it comes from.