Why women’s sport is so central to Saudi plans

A clear line has been drawn in Saudi Arabia’s desert sands for Western critics who continue to question the morality of the state’s sporting acquisitions.

After pouring billions into golf, football, F1, boxing and now tennis, the crown prince says notably he “doesn’t care” about accusations of sportswashing. But, as Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova can attest, woe betide those who go on to attack the state’s record of discrimination against women.

Fury still simmers in Riyadh over the tennis pair’s recent Washington Post op-ed, which prompted the ambassador to the US to write a response said to be “as ferocious as anything she has ever written”. Evert and Navratilova were told to “get your facts straight” after they wrote women were essentially “the property of men” in Saudi.

Stakes have been high for Princess Reema Bandar Al Saud as senior figures within the state’s £492 billion Public Investment Fund attempt to woo US-based administrators for both the WTA and ATP Tours.

Speaking out in opposition to the state potentially hosting the WTA Finals this year, Evert and Navratilova wrote that Saudi “criminalises the LGBTQ community to the point of possible death sentences” and the country’s “long-term record on human rights and basic freedoms has been a matter of international concern for decades”.

But it was their criticism of “male guardianship” that prompted Princess Reema to turn on “outdated stereotypes and Western-centric views of our culture”.

“What is often referred to as ‘guardianship’ no longer describes the status of Saudi women today,” she fired back. “Women do not need the approval of a guardian to travel, work, or be the head of their household. Today, Saudi women own more than 300,000 businesses and roughly 25 per cent of small and mid-sized start-up companies, which is about the same percentage as the United States. Women in Saudi now enjoy equal pay, leading the way towards something that should be universal.”

In fairness to Evert and Navratilova, even locals have struggled to keep pace with whirlwind reform. Telegraph Sport has previously been on the ground in Riyadh to tour state-of-the-art women’s sporting facilities springing up in recent years. Residents, sitting in restaurants where women would have been banned just six years ago, acknowledge the “dizzying” speed of change. It is still only half a decade since women were granted permission to drive. Those who successfully protested for their right to licences remained in jail for some time afterwards. Yet now Saudi Arabia looks set to make the biggest investment that women’s sport has ever seen, with a $1 billion offer to merge the men’s and women’s tennis tours.

Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at SKEMA Business School, believes Saudi eagerness to refute the claims of Navratilova and Evert will have been with one eye on “internal politics”. “What this government doesn’t want is for this restless Gen Z population, and in particular its females, to start getting restless and rebelling,” he says. “Whenever you’re in downtown Riyadh now it’s like a kind of controllable hedonism. That might sound a bizarre thing to say but what I think the Saudi Arabian government is doing is to say, ‘Well, OK, we’ll let you do things, women – go to gyms and go to football matches and drive cars, but we’re going to decide on what you can do, not you’. This patriarchy still exists in Saudi Arabia.”

Saudi’s big argument is that investment in sport has a demonstrable benefit for its population of 35 million, of whom 51 per cent are under the age of 25. Larger families are the norm and experts warn of pressures on the state to create enough jobs.

“As we know, Saudi Arabian economic growth has been weak for decades and to grow more quickly, particularly in a post-oil world, it needs to sustain whatever is at its disposal,” Chadwick adds.

The Saudi Government, meanwhile, says “major investment in tennis” is aligned with Vision 2030 ambitions, which “include targets for boosting women’s participation in sport”.

Across the country, there are now 330,000 registered female athletes – 14,000 actively playing tennis – but the other major area of growth in women’s sport this year will be football.

Specific numbers are not supplied, but the state claims “the number of female players, clubs and referees is growing nationally”. 

“Since 2021, the number of professional female players in Saudi Arabia has increased by 195 per cent, with the number of clubs up by 56 per cent and women’s national teams up by 300 per cent,” the Saudi Sports Ministry adds.

Although investment is dwarfed by the men’s big-spending Saudi Pro League, the nation’s national women’s team received a Fifa ranking last year and the country hosts the 2024 West Asian Football Federation Women’s Championship this month. Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, was forced to abandon the prospect of accepting Visit Saudi as a sponsor at the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand last year. However, his appearance at a domestic women’s match in December was warmly welcomed by a state that has gone public in its hopes to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup, the year after its likely hosting of the 2034 men’s tournament.

‘They have to make sure the pieces of the jigsaw fit’

However, both women’s football and tennis share reservations more acutely than their male counterparts: how can these sports at the forefront of championing LGBT awareness align themselves with a nation where, even if the nation is improving on women’s rights, same-sex sexual activity remains illegal?

There are already those in women’s football who echo some of the concerns expressed by Navratilova and Evert. When previously asked about Saudi critics, the country’s sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Al Faisal, told Telegraph Sport: “I call on them to attend the diverse events we’re hosting and see the impact they are having on our people.”

Despite the Saudis coming out swinging at Navratilova and Evert, Chadwick believes the state will tread carefully, “aware of the risk” of potentially “losing” face. “They’re trying to manage the situation differently and thinking more strategically in terms of getting the building blocks in place before they make a bid,” he says, suggesting that a Women’s World Cup in Riyadh seems less of an inevitability than the men’s version. “They have to make sure that the pieces of the jigsaw fit.”