{"id":29354,"date":"2025-07-28T12:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/29354\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:25:08","slug":"us-investor-buys-saudi-soccer-club-in-first-foreign-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/29354\/","title":{"rendered":"US investor buys Saudi soccer club in first foreign sale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US investor Harburg Group became the first foreigner to own a Saudi football team with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-07-24\/saudi-football-club-acquired-by-harburg-in-first-foreign-deal\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">acquisition of Al-Kholood<\/a> for an undisclosed amount.  <\/p>\n<p>The deal was one of three clubs that were sold, with the others going to local investors. The venture capital firm established by Ben Harburg also owns a stake in Spanish football club C\u00e1diz CF.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia has ambitions for transforming the Saudi Pro League into a big, global business. Clubs remain heavily reliant on government backing, though, especially for the hundreds of millions required to attract global superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo. <\/p>\n<p>Al-Hilal, Saudi\u2019s most decorated team which counts stars such as Jo\u00e3o Cancelo and Sergej Milinkovi\u0107-Savi\u0107 among its players, generated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/article\/03\/17\/2025\/gulf-soccer-clubs-slash-spending-as-they-focus-on-younger-talent\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"no-referrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$267 million in revenue<\/a> last year, earning $9 million in profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US investor Harburg Group became the first foreigner to own a Saudi football team with the acquisition of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-29354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}