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Transfer fred.

Mosquito_Coasting said:
Maybe City, Chelsea and others will help progress the Saudi league with decent players to the point it starts to compete with Europe. That would certainly be in the county's interests. Philippe Auclair was talking about how he believes the Saudi league will eventually compete with Europe and isn't another US or China thing. Not sure I agree but it was interesting to here about.
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I've read some similar stuff, mostly focussing on how football is their main sport and it's pretty big there and they have at least some tradition in having been at quite a few world cups. There's no real tradition or appetite in China or the US where other sports get far bigger audiences/interest. I don't see it becoming a top 5 league but I don't think it's like China where it's just cashing in on a trend at the time. Plus they have far more money to throw at it.
 
P.D. said:
I've read some similar stuff, mostly focussing on how football is their main sport and it's pretty big there and they have at least some tradition in having been at quite a few world cups. There's no real tradition or appetite in China or the US where other sports get far bigger audiences/interest. I don't see it becoming a top 5 league but I don't think it's like China where it's just cashing in on a trend at the time. Plus they have far more money to throw at it.
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China is and was massive for football, they are one of the biggest importers of PL on TV, that's where the issues lie and will lie for Saudi. When the imported product is better than your domestic product the interest locally is hugely diluted. Easier to jump on a Liverpool and a United bandwagon than picking a team locally who trudge about
 
P.D. said:
I've read some similar stuff, mostly focussing on how football is their main sport and it's pretty big there and they have at least some tradition in having been at quite a few world cups. There's no real tradition or appetite in China or the US where other sports get far bigger audiences/interest. I don't see it becoming a top 5 league but I don't think it's like China where it's just cashing in on a trend at the time. Plus they have far more money to throw at it.
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The saudi league gets bigger audiences than the us or china? Even crowds that turn up at games they are slacking. Let alone tv figures.

Chinese league (2019 before covid for obvious reasons). Av attendence at the top 16 teams was 23314.
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/chi...herzahlen/wettbewerb/CSL/plus/?saison_id=2018

Mls 21311.
https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/usa-major-league-soccer-2019/1/

Saudi is less than 10k. (Check each year, 2019 only had 3 clubs).
https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/ksa-premier-league-2022-2023/1/

Viewing figures on tv? Do we really need to go there?
 
Lilbaz said:
The saudi league gets bigger audiences than the us or china? Even crowds that turn up at games they are slacking. Let alone tv figures.

Chinese league (2019 before covid for obvious reasons). Av attendence at the top 16 teams was 23314.
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/chi...herzahlen/wettbewerb/CSL/plus/?saison_id=2018

Mls 21311.
https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/usa-major-league-soccer-2019/1/

Saudi is less than 10k. (Check each year, 2019 only had 3 clubs).
https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/ksa-premier-league-2022-2023/1/

Viewing figures on tv? Do we really need to go there?
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I don't think it's about numbers, though. There's 35m people in Saudi Arabia vs 330m in the States and 1,4b in China. They'll never compete on that front. I'm not even sure anybody there really cares about football: it's all about changing the country's international reputation, something they've been trying to do for years, without much success. They were also interested in buying WWE earlier this year. It's clear they see Western sports/entertainment as a way to buy themselves some respectability.

Why they want that in the first place is anybody's guess, though. It looks like they're distancing themselves from the US so I'm not sure there's much point in trying to make themselves look more friendly. I've read some papers that claim that Ben Salmane is jealous of what Qatar achieved in recent years. I wouldn't put jealousy beyond a bored rich guy's motives but it seems like an easy answer.
 
Mr Gogolak said:
I don't think it's about numbers, though. There's 35m people in Saudi Arabia vs 330m in the States and 1,4b in China. They'll never compete on that front. I'm not even sure anybody there really cares about football: it's all about changing the country's international reputation, something they've been trying to do for years, without much success. They were also interested in buying WWE earlier this year. It's clear they see Western sports/entertainment as a way to buy themselves some respectability.

Why they want that in the first place is anybody's guess, though. It looks like they're distancing themselves from the US so I'm not sure there's much point in trying to make themselves look more friendly. I've read some papers that claim that Ben Salmane is jealous of what Qatar achieved in recent years. I wouldn't put jealousy beyond a bored rich guy's motives but it seems like an easy answer.
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Not arguing that. I was replying to a post where they said that football is the main sport in saudi, where as it wasn't popular in china or america.
 
GGyid said:
I think they don't know what to do with all the money that's pouring out of the ground.
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Perhaps they can see a time when the money from all that black gold starts to dry up, and want their pet states to remain vaguely relevant.

Of course, we'll be using hydrocarbons as raw materials long after they stop being used as mankind's main fuel.
 
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