In his fortnightly exclusive column for CaughtOffside, Jon Smith, one of football’s first-ever agents and a man who was an integral figure in the forming of the Premier League, discusses how Saudi Arabia and AI will change the footballing landscape, why Sheikh Jassim is likely to be the new owner of Man United, a creative deal for Lionel Messi and why Arsenal’s move for Declan Rice is taken time.
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Saudi player grab is a very clever move – and not anything like the Chinese Super League project
I think the aggressive buying tactics we’re seeing from the Saudi Pro League is a very clever play by a region hitherto regarded as an errant state. They’ve seen what the UAE have done and also the masterplan of the City Group, both financial and influential, and wanted to be a part of that. Suddenly you’ve got a country which was considered a pariah owning golf. Football is an obvious place to target because their message gets through to literally billions of people every weekend, and they’ve got the money to reshape the game.
There are going to be some real fragmented changes in the football broadcast market soon too. If you speak to the guys who are at Sky Sports at the moment, some of them are a bit concerned that the best days are actually behind them, and if a major state like Qatar really wanted to get behind their broadcast partners at beIN, they could buy up all the television rights from the change in their back pocket. Not to mention fan TV audiences which can regularly get hits of over 100 million a month.
UEFA are going to want to expand the influence of the Champions League and the various European competitions now. FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has relocated from his very nice home in Switzerland down to Qatar, which I know is probably a very nice place to be but is it a lifestyle choice or is it the fact that he needs to have huge money behind him to expand? FIFA also has to manufacture their Club World Cup rights into a meaningful tournament and then sell those at a value.
You can begin to see how that whole broadcast rights area is beginning to move and shake around a bit. It’s not going to be too traditional. The markets are…
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