Saudi PIF failure isn't a TKO for Riyadh Season boxing
Turki Alalshikh is planning a new spending spree. Does he have the money?
The global sports press has done a lackluster job in covering the recent retrenchment of Saudi sports investment.
Mass confusion has been created and is now spreading into combat sports.
Let’s try to address fact from fiction.
In recent reporting about LIV Golf, snooker, rugby, flag football, and other Saudi investments in the sports world, there has been a strange campaign to conflate different political silos into one basket.
Back to basics
For the purposes of our little world of combat sports, let’s focus on three particular Saudi silos.
Public Investment Fund: Saudi capital and ownership. Sovereign Wealth Fund governed by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who also functions as a key public representative for the Kingdom in the Western world. He was cage side in a blue suit next to US President Donald J. Trump at UFC 309 for Jon Jones’ MSG fight.
SELA (Sports and Entertainment): Dr. Rakan AlHarthy is the Managing Director and CEO. Based in London and Riyadh, SELA organizes major events and coordinates business partnerships. Key financial strategists working with institutions and advisory firms on complex transactions. SELA worked closely with Big Law firm Clifford Chance to establish the Joint Venture with TKO for Zuffa Boxing.
General Entertainment Authority: Chaired by Turki
Al-SheikhAlalshikh, GEA is the Saudi government body responsible for expanding the Kingdom’s entertainment sector under the Vision 2030 umbrella. A focus on policy, regulation, and national strategy. Think: Riyadh Season and Wrestlemania 43.
Then there’s the human angle.
Turki Alalshikh and Yasir Al-Rumayyan are competing power brokers in the orbit of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Both men are (or were) deeply tied to soccer football. The PIF has Newcastle United. Turki bought Spanish club Almeria in 2019 (which he sold in 2025) and previously owned Egyptian club Pyramids FC.
Turki’s other obsessions include video games, wrestling, and boxing. Mr. Al-Rumayyan’s personal sporting obsession is golf.
Rich Eisen recently interviewed veteran golf writer Alan Shipnuck about LIV Golf’s financial downfall. Over a billion dollars yearly in Saudi investment. Mr. Shipnuck described LIV Golf as a fantasy sports camp for Mr. Al-Rumayyan.
Sounds a lot like Turki’s passion project of buying up all his favorite boxers. Except it turns out that Turki’s boxing burn rate is less than LIV Golf’s. With SELA & TKO involved in the mix, Turki has a few powerful friends to help generate the kind of stability LIV Golf cannot.
Astute readers can see where this story is heading.
Besides sporting interests, the key difference separating Turki Alalshikh and Yasir Al-Rumayyan?
Turki is the childhood friend of MBS with whom he reportedly played video games and watched WWE matches together.
As The Guardian reported in 2022, Turki was reportedly a key enforcer for MBS in his 2017 Riyadh palace coup.
Sheikh allegedly confined Nayef to the room for hours, pressuring him to sign a resignation letter and pledge allegiance to MBS. At first, Nayef refused. According to one source close to the prince, he was told that if he did not give up his claim to the throne, his female family members would be raped. Nayef’s medication for hypertension and diabetes was withheld, and he was told that if he did not step down willingly, his next destination would be the hospital. He was so afraid of being poisoned that night, said another royal family source, that he refused to drink even water.
As our favorite YouTuber Napoleon Blownapart recently highlighted in his brand-new video on Zuffa Boxing, Turki’s vision of restoring glory to boxing is happening at any price necessary.
Once SELA connected with UFC mastermind Lawrence Epstein and Nick Khan to form the Saudi JV with Zuffa Boxing, corporate change in boxing was inevitable.
Given Turki’s proximity to the Crown Prince and their shared entertainment interests, Saudi Arabia’s investment in boxing appears to be the last item on the budgetary chopping block.
Mutual sporting interests in current Saudi leadership — plus the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act and TKO’s JV for Zuffa Boxing — means that prize fighting will remain a crown jewel in the Kingdom’s portfolio.
In 2026, boxing is a perfect sport for monopolization. High-profile enough to grab the attention of world leaders and celebrities, but not important enough for those in power to care about exploitation. It’s an expensive but achievable arbitrage play.
Weapons of Mass (Media) Confusion
The Saudi PIF is not SELA. It is not the General Entertainment Authority. These Kingdom entities sometimes operate in conjunction on projects, but they are, nonetheless, separate silos.
The UK is where many big business deals involving the Kingdom are often consummated. Therefore, it is trade publications like The Financial Times breaking PIF-related stories rather than outlets like ESPN or Sky Sports.
This recent article by Karim Zidan at Sportspolitika clarified some misconceptions about who is currently orchestrating and recalibrating Saudi sporting investments.
The problem is that a super-majority of sports fans, reporters, and media analysts have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to the Saudi PIF and Kingdom politics.
As I recently remarked, it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault because no one in sports reporting signed up to cover Hollywood marrying Private Equity. Nobody signed up as a sports fan to study Sovereign Wealth Funds, political mercenaries, and government contractors.
If you really, truly want to understand Gulf State politics in relation to WWE & UFC, our recent MMA Draw podcast is the best 90-minute tutorial available in all of sports and business media.
Turki Alalshikh has spent a lot of money on his passion project of boxing. Thanks to SELA and TKO, he has a business crutch.
Turki’s boxing bets have cost the Kingdom some big money. Luckily for him, they weren’t as expensive as the Saudi PIF’s sporting investments.
LIV Golf is one of the PIF’s highest-profile busts. It’s both a personal and professional loss of face for Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
A professional loss because Al-Rumayyan saw golf as a way to accumulate soft power with US President Donald Trump and leverage influence on the PGA. The PGA, like the ATP & WTA (tennis), appeared to be vulnerable from the outside looking in.
It ended up being a giant bear trap.
A personal loss for Al-Rumayyan because the very passion project he spent the PIF’s money on — golf — became the most embarrassing Saudi sports investment on the global stage.
These personal and professional losses for Mr. Al-Rumayyan equal some security for Turki Alalshikh. Turki wasted no time expressing his confidence in future boxing spending.
Turki hits Tokyo for a spending spree
Turki Alalshikh made his presence felt at the Naoya Inoue vs. Junto Nakatani fight at the Tokyo Dome. Turki’s appearance with Terence Crawford silenced some doubters.
Riyadh Season is a key sponsor for Monster Inoue. Saturday’s Tokyo Dome fight drew a reported 55,000 spectators for an estimated gate of over five billion yen (nearly $32M). PPV buys on NTT Docomo-owned Lemino are reportedly “strong” and might be in a similar range as THE MATCH 2022 on ABEMA, which would translate into the 500,000-600,000 buy level.
This Yahoo! Japan report claims there will be future negotiations for a Riyadh Season-sponsored fight between Naoya Inoue and Matchroom fighter Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez in February 2027 at the 17,000-seat IG Arena in Nagoya. Turki’s Ring is claiming January 2027 as the date.
Nikkan Sports is reporting that a 2027 fight at the National Stadium is also a possibility. There hasn’t been a mega-fight there since the 2002 K-1/PRIDE Dynamite event.
As if that isn’t big enough, Turki’s Ring is also claiming contracts have been signed for a September fight between Canelo Alvarez and Christian Mbilli in Riyadh. Also, there appear to be future Riyadh Season fights on the horizon for Oleksandr Usyk.
The BBC is reporting that Mr. Usyk will be training with Anthony Joshua. Turki has booked Joshua for a July 25th Riyadh Season fight against Kristian Prenga and then a rematch with Tyson Fury.
The reports of Turki’s boxing demise appear to be exaggerated… unless the deeply inflationary oil shocks from the US war with Iran hit the global economy harder than expected.
So much for escaping real-world politics by being a fight fan.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
Mahalos for writing something that to help us disambiguate the different investment arms of KSA and what their successes and failures mean. It's definitely much needed information these days, and is a detail I'm surprised the mainstream press has largely ignored.
Also, I'm really feeling this passage (about *everything*, not just boxing):
"In 2026, boxing is a perfect sport for monopolization. High-profile enough to grab the attention of world leaders and celebrities, but not important enough for those in power to care about exploitation. It’s an expensive but achievable arbitrage play."
Feels bleak, man!