7. Testing the hypotheses and discussion
This section confronts each of the three hypotheses from section 3 with the evidence from sections 5 and 6, and then directly addresses the three cases that most challenge the hypothesis this paper defends (H1). Table 4 summarizes the verdict before each argument is developed.
| Observable prediction | H1 (domestic-rentier) | H2 (intra-Gulf emulation) | H3 (sportswashing) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concentration in domestic consumption | confirmed (local league, Riyadh Season, domestic tournaments) | not predicted | contradicts the prediction |
| Persistence under reputational crisis | confirmed (no retreat since 2016) | neutral | contradicted (retreat should have occurred) |
| Declared integration with Vision 2030 | confirmed (official document cites sport and entertainment) | neutral | not predicted |
| Multi-sport breadth beyond football | consistent (portfolio diversification) | partially predicted (more sports than the precedents) | contradicts (would disperse investment instead of concentrating in football) |
| Same sequence as the precedents, at larger scale | neutral | confirmed (club, league, mega-event, diversification) | neutral |
| Temporal compression relative to the precedents | neutral | strongly confirmed (3 years vs. more than 10) | neutral |
| Measurable improvement in external perception | not testable with available data | not testable | no available evidence in favor |
H1 finds strong and consistent support. The concentration in domestic consumption assets (the Saudi league with its four biggest clubs, the Riyadh Season boxing events, the Esports World Cup, snooker, and rally within the territory) shows that a substantial fraction of the investment does not have, and never had, as its primary audience an international public deciding where to root for a team or what to watch. Even more decisive is the temporal pattern: the investment grew without pause since 2016, spanning the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 (Callamard, 2019), the pandemic, the war in Yemen, and a decade of constant and predictable critical reporting in the Western press, without a single documented retreat. An investment whose dominant goal was international reputation (H3) should show sensitivity to these events; the complete absence of sensitivity is, in itself, a data point against H3 and in favor of H1, and Vision 2030, the official document that legally and politically anchors the entire program, is explicit about domestic entertainment and quality of life as central goals of economic diversification, not a public relations document aimed outward.
H2 finds partial and specific support. The sequence of vectors (European club, participation in the domestic league, mega-event, multi-sport diversification) reproduces, almost step by step, what Abu Dhabi and Qatar had already done before, which supports the reading that Saudi Arabia studied and replicated a proven script rather than inventing a new one. Temporal compression, however, is the strongest data point in favor of H2: what the precedents did over ten to fifteen years, Saudi Arabia compressed into three to five. This speed strongly suggests that intra-Gulf rivalry (not falling behind neighbors who had already hosted a World Cup and bought major clubs) functioned as an accelerator of the timeline, even if it does not explain the underlying motivation for the investment. H2, therefore, helps explain the pace of the Saudi program, more than its primary cause, which this paper attributes to H1.
H3 finds weak and mostly circumstantial support. There is, without doubt, a component of external projection in assets like Aramco's sponsorship of FIFA and Formula 1, or the Spanish Super Cup played in Riyadh: these are investments with a mostly foreign audience and an evident image return. The problem for H3 is not the total absence of favorable evidence, it is the absence of evidence that this is the dominant goal: no publicly available international perception metric shows improvement attributable to the investment, and the pattern of persistence under criticism is inconsistent with a rational calculation of image return, which should, at least occasionally, recommend a tactical pause. The sportswashing hypothesis remains the most cited explanation in press coverage precisely because it is the simplest and the most morally legible one, not because it is the best supported by the available evidence.
7.1 The three hardest counter-evidences
A hypothesis test that only presents favorable cases is not a test, it is an illustration. Three episodes directly challenge H1 and deserve to be confronted head on.
The first is the disappointing performance of the Saudi Pro League after the initial hype: stadiums with low attendance outside games featuring the big names, and the Neymar case itself, signed by Al-Hilal for a transfer fee of nearly 100 million dollars in 2023, who played seven matches amid injuries, scored one goal, and had his contract terminated in January 2025, giving up tens of millions of dollars to return to Santos. If the goal were to build a lasting domestic entertainment product (H1), the league's competitive and attendance failure is a real setback for the program, not a confirmation of it. The response H1 allows for, and which this paper adopts with due caution, is that the domestic goal is not necessarily the competitive quality of the league itself, but the entertainment and the sense of modernization and openness that international stars produce regardless of sporting results; even so, this is a genuine point of friction for the hypothesis, not an easy win.
The second is LIV Golf: the league split world golf in 2022, signed a framework agreement with the PGA Tour in June 2023 that, as of this publication's date, has never converted into an actual merger, and 2026 reporting (Sportico) raises doubts about the continuity of PIF funding after billions of dollars invested with no clear competitive or commercial return. This is perhaps the hardest case to fit into H1, because elite golf does not have the same massive domestic consumption component that football or boxing have within Saudi Arabia; LIV appears, at first glance, to be a purely international prestige investment, closer to H3 than to H1. This paper's reading is that LIV functions as a partial exception within the broader portfolio, a prestige asset aimed at a specific and limited international audience (the professional golf circuit and its corporate sponsors), coexisting with the predominantly domestic pattern of the rest of the portfolio, without invalidating the general argument.
The third is the asymmetry of reputational effect: when Newcastle won the English League Cup in March 2025, the club's first domestic trophy in seventy years, it was Newcastle's supporters who celebrated, fans who have loved the club since decades before the PIF existed; there is no evidence that the triumph produced any measurable reputational gain for Saudi Arabia. The contrast illuminates this paper's own argument: even when the investment produces the most desirable sporting outcome possible (a title, genuine joy among fans), the international reputational effect remains absent, exactly the pattern H1 predicts (the outcome matters for the domestic audience and for the project's legitimacy, it does not automatically produce the image return that H3 would assume as a natural consequence).