Does Anybody Care About the Saudi Pro League Anymore?

Since Cristiano Ronaldo’s headline transfer to Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League in 2023, the footballing world has slowly and reluctantly started to pay attention to the Middle East and its endless pit of money. Each transfer window since has included many big-money signings by Saudi Clubs, pulling talent away from the top clubs in Europe, including Neymar Jr, Karim Benzema, Ivan Toney, and most recently, John Duran. 

In the 5 transfer windows since Ronaldo’s departure from Manchester United, Saudi Clubs have spent over €1.6 billion to entice some of Europe’s biggest players to make the switch. The transfer expenditure over this time has piqued the interest of the largest clubs in Europe, hoping to make a quick buck on surplus players who they can offload for more cash than they could get from anywhere else. 

Pulling players away from their childhood dreams has proved tricky, but not impossible, especially with the deep pockets that the club owners possess. To entice Cristiano Ronaldo to the league, Al-Nassr offered him a contract that paid him €100 million a year, which recently has been extended to pay him €200 million a year until 2026, or roughly €550,000 a day. Ivan Toney, one of the premier league’s top strikers in 22-23, made the move to Al-Ahli for a transfer fee of £40 million and is currently earning over £400,000 a week, a number he would never have been offered close to anywhere else. 

Though the league has been collecting some of the biggest names, the league recently ranked 31^st in the Global Football Rankings, 20 positions below the Championship, with 16 out of 18 teams ranked outside the top 300 teams in the world. Match attendance figures have slowly declined since 22/23, where average attendances of 9,176 have now dropped to 8,019, putting average attendance below the English League One. According to the streaming service Canal+ in France, the heavyweight matchup of Al-Hilal and Al-Ittihad in March 2024 drew 5,000 viewers, and Fox Sport recently revealed average viewership in the US sits at about 8,000.

It appears that the Saudi League is only something that stirs up interest over the transfer periods and lacks any real intrigue during the season. However, it doesn’t look like the PIF is going to give up any time soon, continuously snatching big names that can’t turn down the life-changing sums offered to them for a couple of years in the Middle East. Everyone has their price, and for some, the Saudi League will offer enough to give up on the dreams of winning the most coveted awards and trophies in football, as long as the money keeps coming, players will keep moving.