Human Rights Watch (HRW) newly published 95-page report on Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund (PIF) has revealed how the sovereign wealth fund has “facilitated and benefited from human rights abuses” and how sportswashing has helped “to whitewash reputational harm.”
November’s Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals were held in Riyadh this year, the first instalment of a three-year agreement. The prize money was $5.15m (€4.87m) for the tournament, matching that of the ATP Finals. This meant for the first time ever, the women’s and men’s year-end champions earned the same reward.
The sums of money being poured into golf, football and motor racing in Saudi Arabia have also been astoundingly high too. As demand grows for more professionalism within women’s sports across multiple disciplines, the significant financial incentives being offered by the PIF are hard to turn down, especially in a sporting landscape where women’s teams often struggle for funding, sponsorships, and visibility.
“Investing in women’s sports send great signals to both the domestic Saudi population and the rest of the world that they are doing great stuff for women,” Stanis Elsborg, head of Play the Game – an initiative promoting democracy, transparency, and freedom of expression in world sport – told DW.
“Which then leads to more or less or no discussion about the continued human rights abuses of women in the country.”
Reality different for women in Saudi Arabia
While the push for equality is supposedly evident, women in Saudi Arabia continue to live under strict male guardianship laws.
The system requires women to obtain permission from a male relative — usually a father, husband, or brother — for many aspects of their lives, including marriage, travel, and sometimes access to healthcare or education.
Even after the recent incremental progress for women in Saudi Arabia, the problems remain.
“There are still a number of women’s rights defenders, either in prison or under house arrest, serving long prison sentences for social media posts advocating for women’s rights,” HRW’s Director of Global Initiatives Minky Worden explained to DW.
Worden also believes the male guardianship system might have played a role in the poor crowd numbers for the aforementioned WTA Finals in Riyadh.
“Moreover, the WTA did not do the work to make it safe for their players because their players were being questioned about the women in jail. That’s not right,” Worden said.
“The players should have been concentrating on playing their best game, not worrying about whether a journalist is going to ask them why they aren’t doing more to get women’s rights defenders out of jail.”
Earlier in 2024, former tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova wrote an open letter to WTA chief Steve Simon saying hosting the finals in Saudi Arabia “would represent a significant step backwards” and that it was “entirely incompatible with the spirit and purpose of women’s tennis and the WTA itself.”
Eventual tournament winner Coco Gauff admitted she had her “reservations” about playing in the Saudi Arabia, citing the country’s treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community. Gauff said she was hopeful the WTA’s presence in Saudi Arabia for the next three years would help introduce more Saudi women to tennis and “enact more equality.”
Saudi Arabia in 2030
Since 2018, Saudi’s PIF have invested billions of euros into men’s sport and the country look set to host the 2034 men’s World Cup. The decision to diversify towards investing in women’s sports appears an equally considered move.
Women are central to the much publicized ‘Saudi Vision 2030’, the country’s ambitious blueprint for economic and social reform spearheaded by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. A key goal is to empower women to contribute more significantly to Saudi society and its workforce. Currently though, as the HRW report found, there was no evidence that “PIF-funded projects advanced the government’s obligations to fulfill economic, social, and cultural rights of its people.”
“I do believe that they have an interest in getting more women to do sports in Saudi Arabia and get a healthier population,” said Elsborg.
“I also think that one of the key factors behind their sport strategy is that they really don’t want people to talk about the lack of women’s or LGBTQ+ rights. They want us to talk about all the good things that they do for world sport and that they do for women’s sports as well.”
While the increased renumeration remain attractive, many female athletes have raised their voices when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in women’s sport.
In October 2024, in response to an announcement that FIFA were entering into a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco, over 100 international players signed an open letter criticizing the deal as a betrayal of women’s sports values and human rights. The group suggested including female athletes on decision-making boards for future partnerships.
“Players have no say when it comes to sponsorships and partnerships and that’s one of the big problems,” Elsborg said.
“What the players expressed in their letter to FIFA about having a review committee, where the players could have more say about sponsorships their organizations have, could possibly be a way forward for women’s sport.”
Edited by: Jonathan Harding
