The Scoop
The first foreign investor in a Saudi soccer team is looking to deepen his bet on sports in the country with a potential buyout of a women’s club, and hopes to take on deeper pocketed rivals by investing heavily in data analytics and infrastructure.
Ben Harburg, an American tech investor who has previously backed Airbnb and Palantir, acquired Al Kholood FC in July. He plans to take his venture-investing approach — using artificial intelligence to buy undervalued players and social media to build the club’s profile as a scrappy insurgent — to go against other Saudi clubs owned by rivals like the kingdom’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund and oil producer Aramco.
“The bad news story of this club we took over was that it had nothing, no fan base, no history, no real culture around it, no infrastructure,″ Harburg said in an interview. “So we can run this like a startup company.”
That will involve spending $20 to $30 million on training facilities and other infrastructure around the club, plus investments in using data to assess players. Harburg hopes that data analytics can help manage the team and identify young players to buy, boosting Al Kholood’s chances of competing against some of the world’s highest paid soccer stars.
Know More
Saudi Arabia is betting big on soccer as a way to attract tourists, change perceptions of the country, and make money. It’s set to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup and has made Cristiano Ronaldo the sport’s first billionaire after his latest contract to play for Public Investment Fund -owned Al-Nassr was reportedly worth more than $400 million. The kingdom’s top clubs spent almost $1 billion buying top players in 2023.
That spending, however, has not been matched by investments in training facilities and stadiums. “The weird dichotomy of Saudi Arabia is you have some of the highest paid players in the world walking into high school-quality infrastructure,” Harburg said.
His goal is not necessarily to start winning the Saudi Pro League, but to make his club financially sustainable by building a loyal fanbase and profit from trading players.
The data-driven approach to soccer is a management technique adopted by American baseball manager Billy Beane and popularized in the Hollywood film Moneyball, based on a Michael Lewis book.
“The jury is still out on its effectiveness, but I think we can punch above our weight,” Harburg said. He plans to use data harvested from players all around the world to score potential athletes on how well they would fit on his team and inform who he should buy. He’s also considering buying other soccer teams in small European leagues to develop a multiclub strategy that would see players developed in different leagues and traded within his clubs before ultimately being sold off to the bigger ones.
Harburg is also evaluating investment opportunities for a Saudi women’s soccer team, and exploring how to make it profitable. He is optimistic: “Saudi Arabia women’s football could one day maybe even outpace the men’s.”
Notable
- Saudi Arabia is using soccer to shift perceptions and assert soft power, according to Washington DC-based Gulf International Forum.
- The kingdom’s long-term vision for sports, from Formula 1 to boxing, and golf to soccer, is set to become a major economic driver, Arab News reported.