![\"Shay](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1b9d4fb5-857f-4a6a-bf0f-f1e87f63b5e7.jpg\")
The assurances made this week by Townsend, right, are already ringing hollow Sofya Grebenkina\/DAZN<\/p>\nThe timing was peculiar, maybe actually unfortunate, but anyway, this is how it played out: on Tuesday night the story broke about the Saudis possibly pulling their funding of LIV Golf; on Wednesday it spread like wildfire, and then on Thursday morning a podcast dropped containing an hour\u2019s interview with Danny Townsend, chief executive of the Saudi government\u2019s sports investment fund, in which he gave as reassuring and persuasive an explanation as you\u2019ve ever heard about the legitimacy and authenticity of what Saudi Arabia is up to.<\/p>\n
But you can\u2019t be both, can you? You can\u2019t be an authentic investor in sport and,\u00a0at the same time, be pulling out of your biggest and most public project and leaving it dead on the floor.<\/p>\n
Townsend is the chief executive of SURJ, the Riyadh-based sports investment firm owned by the PIF, Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund. His mandate is aligned to the national sports strategy, which has 20 priority sports. One of the 20 we don\u2019t know much about is camel racing; one of the other investments that we are starting to learn a bit more about is tennis, and that\u2019s an intriguing case study too.<\/p>\n
The assurances made this week by Townsend, right, are already ringing hollow Sofya Grebenkina\/DAZN<\/p>\n
Townsend\u2019s interview took place on the Money Maze Podcast, which attracts a lot of heavy hitters in business and industry. The crucial point about the timing, here, is that the interview was conducted before the American invasion of Iran<\/a>, before global economies became obliged to return to their respective drawing boards and certainly before LIV Golf was being reported as a dead duck.<\/p>\n What Townsend said in the interview was that \u201cwhat you\u2019re going to see over the next decade is a sustained commitment to sport for [financial] return reasons, for social changes reasons, for gender equality\u201d.<\/p>\n The point he repeated was that this was a long-term thing. \u201cThis is not a ten-year flash in the pan,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a 50-year commitment to changing the country. What we\u2019ve achieved in the last ten [years] will continue to evolve and accelerate over the next 40 because we have leadership with a long-term vision that is impatient.\u201d<\/p>\n That long-term vision for the next 40 years apparently didn\u2019t last 40 days.<\/p>\n Some points need to be made here. First, the end of LIV is unconfirmed, though it remains a matter of informed speculation. Second, LIV Golf started before SURJ was formed so it does not sit under its investment umbrella.<\/p>\n However, the investment in men\u2019s tennis<\/a> does sit in the SURJ portfolio and that is interesting because, as reported by The Athletic, a deal with women\u2019s tennis is simultaneously coming to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n The WTA Finals have been held in Riyadh for the past two years; this November will bring the end of a three-year deal. The WTA had hoped to extend; the answer was no.<\/p>\n Back to Townsend. In the interview he explained why his sports investment plan is related to social change.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t change your behaviour, unless there is something that inspires you to do something different,\u201d he said. And that\u2019s fine, I can buy that. But not if it\u2019s three years of women\u2019s tennis and then over and out. That\u2019s three years when the world\u2019s leading women tennis players were on Saudi<\/a> turf and saying nice things about it. You could say that that\u2019s three years of buying PR and legitimacy, but what you can\u2019t say is that it\u2019s a long-term strategy for social change.<\/p>\n The WTA Finals were played out in a 3,500-seat university campus arena that was sometimes half empty. That doesn\u2019t sound like an effort to trigger social change either. The Athletic reported that recouping the investment \u2014 $25million (about \u00a318.5million) a year \u2014 \u201cwas never likely\u201d, which leads to the conclusion that a return on investment is a priority above having girls on tennis courts.<\/p>\n Of course there has been no investment more outrageously foolish than LIV Golf. Its losses thus far have exceeded \u00a31billion and, even from within, it has admitted that it won\u2019t be turning a profit for another five to ten years.<\/p>\n One day soon LIV will be a case study in failure for business studies students. For now, it is an intriguing PR exercise. How do you back out of it and simultaneously minimise the blow to your legitimacy and authenticity?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as if it can sell off a slice of the shareholding, as it has just done with Al-Hilal, the Riyadh-based football club. I strongly suspect this is where it also wants to go with Newcastle United<\/a>, another project that hasn\u2019t delivered on expectations.<\/p>\n The other significant date in the Saudi diary this week was Wednesday\u2019s announcement of the PIF\u2019s new five-year strategy. The key point was that investment was now going to be aimed more domestically and only 20 per cent internationally. That sounds sensible but it doesn\u2019t sound great for LIV Golf.<\/p>\n Some observers have noted that there was no mention of \u201csport\u201d in the strategy plan. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s really significant or if \u201csport\u201d comes under \u201centertainment\u201d.<\/p>\n Either way, it leads to a conclusion that we are at the end of an era of Saudi Arabia chucking preposterous money at sport, unbalancing the marketplace and putting untenable price tags on the likes of golfers and thirtysomething footballers.<\/p>\n And that makes you wonder: what happens next? The answer would be that sport again finds its level. I wonder if boxing, which has become so reliant on Saudi cash, is set to be the biggest loser here.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all a bit crystal ball. For now, what we have is the closest thing to an acknowledgment that the Saudi PIF is a professional investor, not a benefactor, and that to whatever extent there is a commitment to either reputation building (also known as sportswashing) or social change in all this \u2014 and that is not easy to gauge \u2014 then they come a distant second to return on investment.<\/p>\n Is brash Aussie Open better than genteel Masters?<\/p>\n What is the best sports event ever? This is a question often tossed around after the Masters, and we were doing it again this year.<\/p>\n My answer was that the Masters is not even the best event in golf (which is the Ryder Cup<\/a>), but that\u2019s by the by. In the Townsend interview on the Money Maze Podcast I was intrigued by the section where the Australian Open<\/a> tennis was being held up as a challenger. The Aussie Open is such a great event, so good at the food, the music and the entertainment, that people just want to be there, the killer stat being that 40 per cent of its attendees don\u2019t even get to see any tennis.<\/p>\n Townsend is an Aussie so he knows this story. He said that Aussie Open organisers had \u201coptimised that event to an inch of its life\u201d and that they had found a way to make money \u201ceverywhere you can\u201d.<\/p>\n I am interested in the contrast. On the one hand you have the Aussie Open as a market leader in sport as an entertainment event, on the other you have the Masters, which is the polar opposite and which would never countenance anything as gauche as live music; which, for instance, limits the food options down to the sandwich fillings and the colour of the sandwich wrapping.<\/p>\n One event\u2019s appeal is pushing to be cutting-edge modern, the other is pushing to retain everything that feels old-fashioned. Both are regarded as market leaders.<\/p>\n Readers are encouraged to give their opinion below. Best-ever sports event, please.<\/p>\n We\u2019re so lucky that Rory rises above tittle-tattlers\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Aryna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d4354568-d403-4332-a0ef-a69d5b85c00a.jpg\")
Aryna Sabalenka in action at the WTA Finals, which will be held in Riyadh for the final time this yearMatthew Stockman\/Getty Images for WTA<\/p>\n![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/60383bac-d7f5-4861-9778-13f2feeaa33d.jpg\")
Despite the presence of luminaries like Jon Rahm, LIV Golf\u2019s losses exceed \u00a31billionYu Chun Christopher Wong\/Getty<\/p>\n![\"2023](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/590440f6-fb5b-4e9e-b0bf-b699f01e1a3c.jpg\")
Fans get into the spirit of it at Melbourne ParkGetty<\/p>\n![\"Rory](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/572b9003-9d8b-458d-b411-8948647d0e38.jpg\")
McIlroy, looking resplendent in his second Green Jacket, upholds a great Masters traditionHector Vivas\/Getty<\/p>\n