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
to talking business weekly with me, aaron heslehurst. let s go and take a look at what s on the show. the saudis are splashing out on sport. golf, football and boxing are all being punched with cash. but what does this middle eastern money mean for the business of sport? qatar, bahrain and the uae are also upending the sporting establishment. but is it all about prestige, profit, or trying to take the focus away from human rights concerns? i m going to be discussing all of that with these two. there they are. a leading expert on the links between sport and politics, and a top us sports investor who thinks there s millions to be made from playing for profit. also on the show, i m going to catch up with the man who puts the big deals together for boxers such as anthonyjoshua and jesse rodriguez. i m going to ask him how saudi arabia s vast oil wealth is reshaping the prizes on offer in his big money sport. wherever you rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello
good to be with you. you know, back in 2019, saudi arabia really put itself on the sporting map when it secured the right to host the biggest boxing match of them all, the heavyweight championship of the world. it s been widely reported that the fight which saw anthonyjoshua beat andy ruinr cost the host the best part of $100 million in hosting fees and prize money. so i ve been speaking to one of the men behind that deal, the chief executive of matchroom boxing, frank smith. a real pleasure having you on my show. and frank, let me start with this, because in many ways, you are where this saudi investment in sport really started, the anthonyjoshua versus andy ruinr fight back in 2019. that was something of a watershed moment for saudi investment in sport. so, frank, i ve got to ask you, how did it come about that riyadh hosted a world championship fight? we ve had a lot of approaches over the years from saudi entities to bring events over. and we had an approach from prince khalid aziz
and i appreciate your time. my pleasure. thanks for having me. really appreciate the opportunity. good to be with you. you know, back in 2019, saudi arabia really put itself on the sporting map when it secured the right to host the biggest boxing match of them all, the heavyweight championship of the world. it s been widely reported that the fight which saw anthonyjoshua beat andy ruinr cost the host the best part of $100 million in hosting fees and prize money. so i ve been speaking to one of the men behind that deal, the chief executive of matchroom boxing, frank smith. a real pleasure having you on my show. and frank, let me start with this, because in many ways, you are where this saudi investment in sport really started, the anthonyjoshua versus andy ruinr fight back in 2019. that was something of a watershed moment for saudi investment in sport. so, frank, i ve got to ask you, how did it come about that riyadh hosted a world championship fight? we ve had a lot of approaches over
to bring events over. and we had an approach from prince khalid aziz around bringing anthonyjoshua. and, you know, i think the truth is we ve been approached, as i say, on so many occasions that you don t quite believe it because you have so many people come on to you and say we want to bring a huge event. and this isn tjust a saudi, but across the middle east, you go down the path of six months of discussing and then it doesn t get anywhere. so i don t think we really believed it at the time when this discussion came up, it was only when it moved very quickly within. we had to make a decision whether we took this event to cardiff. so i think that helped, the fact we were in a rush meant that these negotiations couldn t be prolonged. we gave them very strict deadlines and they and they stuck to it. and that showed that they had huge intent to bring massive sporting events to the region. and, frank, when you re looking after an athlete, what do you think about? because i m wondering, is