{"id":407690,"date":"2026-05-02T02:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T02:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/407690\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T02:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T02:18:09","slug":"suddenly-saudi-money-is-drying-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/407690\/","title":{"rendered":"Suddenly, Saudi (Money Is Drying Up)"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a while there, it seemed like the only constants in life were death, taxes, and Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund buying up yet another beloved Western sports or entertainment property. Golf<\/a>, soccer<\/a>, boxing<\/a>, pro wrestling<\/a>, and of course, video games\u2014both in the esports<\/a> and large-scale development<\/a> senses\u2014have all found themselves entangled in Saudi Arabia\u2019s gleaming golden net. But in recent months, the moneybags have begun to look decidedly flaccid<\/a>, and with this week came the biggest casualty yet: LIV Golf<\/a>, which has been propped up by the crown since its inception five years ago. The games industry might be next. On the latest Aftermath Hours<\/a>, we talk about that.<\/p>\n

This time around, we discuss cheery news from yet another normal week<\/a>. For example: A video game CEO casually said the quiet part out loud<\/a> by opining during a routine interview that \u201cWe’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security,\u201d suggesting that it\u2019s time to instead rely heavily on a merry-go-round of beleaguered contractors. And this CEO is also the head of the head of the UK trade body for the games industry. Great!<\/p>\n

We also discuss Saudi Arabia\u2019s divestment from LIV Golf, the first of many dominoes possibly to fall<\/a> as its soft-power-hungry Public Investment Fund runs low on money. Are Saudi Arabia\u2019s games industry investments in similar trouble? According to early reports, it sounds very possible! Lastly, we talk about something that\u2019s actually cool\u2014the new Steam controller, which Chris is loving\u2014before envisioning the darkest possible special interest a person could have: Mario Party historian.<\/p>\n

You can find this week’s episode below and on Spotify<\/a>, Apple<\/a>, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can eventually hire our own historian to suffer through years\u2014perhaps even decades, by the time it\u2019s all said and done\u2014of my jokes.<\/p>\n

Or, for a limited time, you can support us by subscribing to Aftermath AND three other great independent sites\u2014Rascal<\/a>, Rogue<\/a>, and Never Post<\/a>\u2014at a 50% discount. Check it out!<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):<\/p>\n

Luke: [Saudi Arabia] has actually been stepping away from some of these investments for a while. They made a huge splash in European football\u2014not just with their own professional league, but in purchasing one of England\u2019s biggest clubs, Newcastle. They pumped a lot of money into that. They had aspirations of making Newcastle one of the best teams in England. Newcastle have improved, but they haven\u2019t become sort of an elite club like the owners would\u2019ve hoped, and in the last 6-12 months, there\u2019s been a very public backing away of their support for that club. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re looking to sell it, but they\u2019ve basically lost interest in turning that into a super club because it hasn\u2019t worked. And it felt like the investment was a poor one that they didn\u2019t fully understand.<\/p>\n

You saw that happening in a few places even before the war in Iran. The Saudis have essentially gambled their country\u2019s future on this idea of two aims: One is very understandable, in that they know the oil is going to run out or we are going to stop using oil one day. So they can\u2019t base their national economy on oil forever. So they had this idea that they were going to take the oil money they have now and invest that globally in countless industries and companies and corporations and basically diversify their income.<\/p>\n

The other part is a soft power grab, because obviously the Saudi regime does not have a great reputation globally in terms of human rights and authoritarianism and stuff. If they can invest in all these things we love and watch and follow and are passionate about, it would soften our approach to the Saudis because they\u2019re so involved in the things we love\u2014like football, wrestling, television, and video games.<\/p>\n

None of those things have worked. The investments have been shocking across the board. You look at the lion city, Neom: disaster! Who the fuck thought that was going to work? They blew so much money just on the plans and digging a few trenches for that. Everything they\u2019ve invested in has been an entertainment property that the reason they\u2019re investing in it is because it was failing or losing money. So they\u2019re not making money on that. They sunk money into an English football club, which you do not make money on. Those things are passion projects. They\u2019re a money sink, and they found that out very quickly.<\/p>\n

Nathan: They also sunk a ton of money into esports, which has always been notoriously unprofitable. That\u2019s why all the mainstream entities, investors, and sports organizations in North America pulled out or gave up on it [after the esports boom].<\/p>\n

Luke: The other way it\u2019s failing is that soft power needs to be soft. You can\u2019t overtly attempt to purchase soft power. That stuff happens organically. The Saudis\u2019 attempt to garner goodwill has actually backfired because they\u2019ve been seen to have been coming in and buying things that were or are important to people in specific markets. They haven\u2019t been seen as saviors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nathan: Or originators or propagators. [They\u2019ve been seen as] interlopers. And of course EA is the big video game company now that they\u2019re going for, but in all these cases, what stands out is not \u201cOh man, it\u2019s so cool that Saudi Arabia has a hand in this.\u201d Instead it feels like they are very deliberately trying to improve their image with these vehicles. People can sense that lack of authenticity, and they\u2019re like \u201cOK then, you\u2019re just interfering with a thing that I already liked where you\u2019re taking it over.\u201d <\/p>\n

Or in the case of EA, everyone\u2019s worried that [Saudi Arabian ownership] is gonna make games more expensive or add more microtransactions. It\u2019s also nakedly motivated by money or power, and these things generally do not result in good outcomes for the things that are being purchased.<\/p>\n

Luke: The fear is that if the Saudis have basically come in and propped up a number of these organizations and sports and pastimes with their money, and now that money is in danger of disappearing, it\u2019s basically cutting the legs off the table. There\u2019s no one else left to support those organizations if Saudi money\u2019s gone, because we\u2019ve already tried Chinese money. We\u2019ve tried our own money; that stuff\u2019s either pulled back or withdrawn or doesn\u2019t work anymore. The Saudi money was literally the last thing propping up a lot of these things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if that disappears, a lot of these things are in serious trouble, because who else can afford to buy them or operate them at the scale and cost that they were running at if they weren\u2019t tapping into billions of dollars of Saudi money? That\u2019s where the real concern comes from across the board. It\u2019s in football, but also football will live just fine without the Saudi money. But if they\u2019ve got major stakes in video game publishers, we\u2019re already having enough trouble in video games as it is.<\/p>\n

Nathan: In games, some dominoes have apparently already fallen. A couple days ago on Bluesky, Cat Manning, who is narrative director at Firaxis, said<\/a>, \u201cWatching a certain Saudi game investment company cancel all their meetings 48 hours before GDC was an incredibly telling indicator that US markets have not caught up to [Saudi Arabia losing so much money].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now people are speculating that the EA deal could be in trouble\u2014which has not been confirmed in any capacity; my guess would be that they still try to close the deal and then pump EA for money\u2014but the most concrete thing I\u2019ve heard so far is Mikhail Klimentov, who I used to work with at The Washington Post, replied to Cat\u2019s tweet and said<\/a>, \u201cThere will be extremely funny news about this [fingers crossed] soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked him what about, and he said that it will somehow be funnier than if the EA deal fell apart. I can\u2019t imagine anything funnier than that, but OK!<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

Congressman Teams Up With Popular Sims Streamer To Oppose Saudi Purchase Of EA<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is that [the deal gets blocked]. Of course, it doesn\u2019t look good, but we\u2019re going to get in every fight that we need to get into on behalf of people and to fight corporate greed and corporate monopolies\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a while there, it seemed like the only constants in life were death, taxes, and Saudi Arabia\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-407690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}