FIFA signs another Saudi deal with sovereign wealth fund PIF backing Club World Cup
GENEVA (AP) — FIFA took another Saudi Arabian investment Thursday for the U.S.-hosted Club World Cup, announcing a top-tier commercial deal with the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, which holds majority ownership of one of the 32 teams playing.
The Saudi state's Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the 75% owner of Riyadh club Al-Hilal, one of four teams in the national league it has controlled since 2023. PIF also created the LIV Golf project.
FIFA said PIF was an official partner of the June 14-July 13 tournament being played in 11 American cities, though the value of the deal was not stated.
Saudi state money also is effectively funding the Club World Cup broadcasting deal that has largely backed the $1 billion tournament prize fund being shared among the 32 teams, including Al-Hilal, which will get an entry payment of $9.55 million.
FIFA announced a global broadcast deal for the Club World Cup with streaming service DAZN in December, two days before confirming Saudi Arabia as host of the men's 2034 World Cup.
A widely speculated Saudi investment in DAZN, reported to be around $1 billion, was confirmed several weeks later.
FIFA also signed Saudi state oil company Aramco to a World Cup sponsor this year.
The U.S. is hosting the first 32-team Club World Cup which will played every four years by teams that won an edition of a continental club championship, or ranked highly by results over the four-year qualifying period. Inter Miami, with star player Lionel Messi, was invited by FIFA to represent the host nation.
Al-Hilal won the Asian Champions League in 2021 and was drawn by FIFA in a group with Real Madrid, Pachuca and Salzburg.
The Club World Cup has become a personal project of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has built close ties since 2018 to Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the chairman of PIF.
The gold Club World Cup trophy has spent much of this year at the White House with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is scheduled to present it to the winning team at the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Trump also has worked closely with the LIV Golf tour.
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He came to Bayern directly from a Premier League relegation with Burnley and without any major trophies on his managerial record. The now-39-year-old Belgian was seen as lacking the credentials for the role, and his arrival was met with plenty of doom prophecies. But he has exceeded expectations. The players like him, and the younger ones have enjoyed his communication style and the instructive, detailed nature of his coaching. Off the pitch, he has adapted well to the environment. Bayern are always fraught with political issues and Kompany has navigated them smartly, staying away from the public arguments and media rucks that so undermined his predecessor Thomas Tuchel. Olise was Bayern's best player last season and Kane their top scorer, but Musiala is the star. The 22-year-old is a doubt for this tournament having not played since a hamstring injury in April, but at his best he is a fabulously gifted playmaker and one of the most elusive ball-carriers in European football. He had already equalled his best goalscoring season before that injury, too, a measure of not just his form but also the evolution in his game under Kompany. Olise is one of them. He was signed from Crystal Palace of the Premier League last summer, and even though he cost €50million, a big fee in Bundesliga terms, there was a sense he was coming in as a two- or three-year project, rather than as an immediate difference-maker. As it happened, Olise was outstanding almost from the get-go. He was one of the reasons Bayern were more watchable, more subtle and ultimately more dangerous than their 2023-24 team had been. The London-born France international is right on the cusp of stardom. Advertisement Bayern fans would also point to Aleksandar Pavlovic. The 21-year-old is a deep midfielder with a lovely feel for the game. His season was disrupted by a series of minor injuries and a bout of glandular fever, but when fit and healthy he passes the ball as well as anyone at the club and seems likely to be at the heart of their team for the next decade. And he's homegrown, too. Pavlovic was born in Munich and developed by Bayern's youth academy — something that already makes him extremely popular with their supporters. There are different answers to this. Locally, Munich is a two-club city, comprising Bayern, the Reds, and 1860 Munich, the Blues. However, 1860 have been plagued by financial dysfunction during the modern era and have fallen on hard times, currently playing in the German football's third tier. As a measure of how dormant the rivalry is, the two teams have not faced each other since 2008 — a year before Thomas Muller, who will leave Bayern this summer as their record appearance-maker with 751 (so far), had even made his competitive debut. Borussia Dortmund are a rival of sorts, even though Der Klassiker, as games between the two are called, is more of a marketing construct than a reality. Dortmund, a six-hour drive from Munich, would certainly consider neighbours Schalke to be their biggest rivals, though they are in Germany's second division. Bayer Leverkusen's rise under Xabi Alonso has made them a rival, with recent seasons breeding animosity among the respective players and even some rival board members, but that is very new and likely to disappear as quickly as it appeared with Alonso now gone to manage Real Madrid and Leverkusen selling star players. Bayern and Borussia Monchengladbach had a fascinating back-and-forth in the 1970s. Advertisement It was a political rivalry in a sense. In public perception, Bayern were the established power and Gladbach the younger, free-spirited challenger. The latter's informal nickname, 'the foals', is a reference to those teams and their coltish youth. But those dynamics have been embellished and do not bear much scrutiny at all — Bayern's teams of that era scored lots of goals and were full of rebellious, counter-culture characters. The rivalry was real enough, though, and games between the two have a habit of producing strange results, even today. Bayern were formed in response to pejorative attitudes towards competitive football. The club's 11 original members had originally belonged to Manner-Turn-Verein 1878 (MTV) and were the footballing department of what was principally a gymnastics club. At the beginning of the 20th century, organised gymnastics — 'turnen' — was wildly popular in Germany, and seen as a way of fostering collective, nationalistic spirit. By contrast, football was a game imported from England which bred competitive instincts many saw as vulgar. 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