to talking business weekly with me aaron heslehurst. let s go and to talking business weekly with me aaron heslehurst. let s go and take a look at what was on show. the show. the saudis are splashing out on sport. golf, football and boxing a role being pumped with cash but what does this middle eastern moneymen for the business of sport? qatar, bahrain and the uae of also bending the sporting establishment, but is it s about the speech, profit or trying to take the focus away from human rights concerns. upending the sporting establishment. i will discuss all of this with these two. there they are. leading expert on the links between sport and politics and top your spot investor he thinks there s millions to be made for a plane for profit. also on the show, i m going to catch up also on the show, i m going to catch up with the man he puts the big deals together for boxes such as anthonyjoshua and jesus rodriguez and asking how saudi arabia s vast oil wealth in shaping the p
how that plays out over time. but sports is a good investment, and sports also brings other people and cultures together in the ways that other business opportunities cannot. and george, let me end on this, because there have been suggestions that saudi arabia might be interested in buying formula one or investing in in men s tennis. george, do you think there s more spending to come and which sports are ripe for these kind of for these investments? the number of people that are investing in sports is an asset class today has increased dramatically. so to me, for somebody, if i m a public investment fund with $700 billion, i m probably going to invest more in various sports and i think places where there. things are underdeveloped and need capital, i think are going to be great opportunities for investors, notjust saudi arabia, but a whole number of investors. and you re seeing it, the number of investors in sports in the last ten years has dramatically increased. well, on that point,
and that was the focus for them. other territories, and like i say, when you talk about saudi, for example, i think their big drive is to aid and grow participation of these sports in the country. when we first went to saudi in 2019, the growth from 2019 to 2020, i believe was around 600% in people attending boxing gyms. so, you know, every market we go to will have a different view and vision of what they want us to deliver with the event. and a lot of the the focus from a lot of the governments is tourism led and driving tourism. when the saudis recently did their major deal in the world of golf, rory mcilroy said, and i quote, at the end of the day, money talks. is he right? is sport just about money these days? all of these territories want internationally renowned events. i don t think itjust
around the sport as well. but i think we have to sort of split the two up. you know, politics is not our place to get involved in. that is the way i look at it now. we want to deliver the best opportunities for our athletes, and we also want to grow the grass roots of the sports we re involved in in these territories. and if that can benefit the countries long term, being a sport we re involved in, then i think it s beneficial. frank, is there any country where you wouldn t put a fight on me because of human rights concerns? no. look, obviously, there s countries legally we wouldn t be able to put events on for sure. you know, sanctioned countries where we wouldn t be able to put shows on. but when it comes to putting on events, our business is to deliver the biggest sporting events in the world. it s what we do week in, week out, you know. and like i say, i think we have to separate the politics from the sports themselves.
a reply to our request. and the question i wanted to ask is, why is so much money flowing into sport? so instead, i turned to a leading academic who s been studying the links between money, power and sport for more than 25 years and is currently part of the cma business school in paris. professor simon chadwick, a real pleasure having you on the show. and simon, let sjust start with this. why is saudi arabia spending so many billions of dollars on sport? when you look at it, let s be frank, not a country with a reputation for a deep sporting heritage. so, two responses to that. i think the first is around the sport itself. there is a lot of engagement. there s established engagement with sports like football. but the sporting heritage of saudi arabia as well is bound up in camel racing and falconry, also in equine sports as well. so there is a sporting culture there. we re not making a giant leap