Challenges ahead for sports integrity in Saudi Arabia: what can the kingdom learn from mistakes elsewhere?

The recent announcement that Saudi Arabia has won the right to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup marks a milestone in the kingdom’s Vision 2030 programme and its ambition to become a world leader in hosting major sporting events. Saudi Arabia’s aspirations don’t end there: the country looks set to make a bid for a Summer Olympic Games, possibly for 2040. All the while, participation in grassroots sport, including women’s and youth sport, is increasing.

 

However, Saudi isn’t the only country with major sporting ambitions. In 2011, China President Xi Jinping outlined a vision to turn China from a footballing minnow to a superpower, with a plan to host a World Cup, to ensure the Chinese men’s team qualifies for another World Cup, and to win one. He wanted the Chinese Super League (CSL) to rival the biggest football leagues in Europe in terms of money spent. In the boom season of 2015-16, $451 million was spent on transfers, briefly taking the CSL into the global top five spending football leagues.

 

But a set of challenges and lessons came China’s way – ones that Saudi Arabia can benefit and learn from: namely, how to ensure the dark side of big-money sports – match-fixing and corruption in particular – doesn’t taint its emergence as a sporting superpower.

 

Lessons from China

 

China failed to understand and plan for the inevitable downsides of huge investments in sport – and match-fixing in particular. A recent investigation by the Chinese Football Association (CFA) found that 120 matches involving 41 clubs had been fixed, amounting to one of the biggest match-fixing cases ever. Similar cases have been exposed in Chinese snooker.

 

The business side of sport in China has also been tainted by bribery and corruption. In 2022, Beijing launched a major anti-corruption crackdown on Chinese football, with more than a dozen officials of the Chinese FA investigated or charged.

 

Given the inevitable scrutiny that comes with hosting world events, and with many commentators looking for opportunities to pounce, Saudi Arabia would do well to take heed of developments in China as its own sports programme ramps up. 

 

What challenges will Saudi Arabia face?

 

One concern is that Saudi Arabia, if not the Arab world in general, lacks an intuitive understanding of match-fixing. This is largely because mass market, app-based sports betting is so new there. Global betting markets are penetrating even the Saudi Second Division, meaning that anyone anywhere can bet on outcomes at the lower level of sports, where most problems occur. 

 

In 2022, the Egyptian authorities were advised on how their country had become the premier match-fixing destination in world tennis. Organised crime groups, as well as foreign players, were using the low-level, almost back-to-back International Tennis Federation events in Sharm El Sheikh to conduct match-fixing on an industrial scale. Promising Egyptian players had been drawn into this activity. Egypt as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member had little collective understanding then of the scale of “offshore” betting on Egyptian sport, especially football and tennis.

 

This betting, of course, brings integrity challenges. At that time, Egypt had no national sports integrity programme, no intelligence programme to monitor global betting markets, no special police unit, no law prohibiting match-fixing, and no courts with experience in these matters. It was a risk-free environment. While some progress has been made, this remains an area of vulnerability for the whole region. 

 

So what can Saudi Arabia do?

 

The good news is that Saudi Arabia has the time and opportunity to learn from missteps in China, Egypt and elsewhere. It would do well to benchmark itself against gold-standard national programmes such as that of Australia, which has a national sports integrity statutory body covering doping, match-fixing and safeguarding for all major sporting events it hosts. It also has strong laws and highly experienced and proactive police and courts, and is leading the world in landmark prosecutions to protect sport from bad actors. A gap analysis of existing Saudi programmes as they measure up against such a national benchmark would be instructive.

 

Furthermore, the kingdom could be the first Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state to sign and implement the so-called Macolin Convention – a multilateral treaty that aims to prevent, detect and punish match-fixing in sport. It is supported by an implementation toolkit, which includes, for example, “boilerplate” laws that can be adjusted and enacted to provide a legal framework at the national level. Such an initiative would also help the kingdom give substance to its G20 commitment to tackling corruption in sport.

 

It can also look to experts with experience in the sports sector to help reduce, manage and mitigate risk. Global consulting firm Ankura’s team of sports advisory professionals act as trusted advisors to the world’s leading organisations across the sports sector.  Ankura’s cross-functional team of experts and advisors provide the experience and skills necessary to develop well‐defined and executable strategies that protect reputation and assets and maximise performance.

 

As the kingdom continues to progress these sporting programmes, there is a need to be open and transparent on matters of integrity in sport. Sponsors, athletes, fans and the media will be watching closely, as will bad actors who might be tempted to try to subvert sport in the kingdom for their own gain. Saudi Arabia is well set to achieve its ambitious vision in sport; now it needs to protect that investment and secure its reputation.

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