With Icelander Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir, a prominent European is moving to the Saudi Women’s Premier League for the first time. The country is working with sophistication and foresight to dominate world sport.
A distorted image of a carefree country without discrimination: a football match in the Saudi Women’s Premier League.
Jose Hernandez / Anadolu / Getty
Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir, of all people. Iceland’s record international player is now under contract in the Saudi Arabian Women’s Premier League. The 33-year-old has joined the club al-Qadsiah, where her signing is being celebrated as a coup.
Saudi Arabia’s experiment to change the country’s mixed image of sport is extraordinary in its dimensions. In recent years, the kingdom has invested or made commitments to invest more than 50 billion dollars in events, clubs and athletes, and since 2020, spending has exploded. Male superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar have been here for a long time. The fact that prominent female footballers are now being lured to the country with a lot of money is, in a sense, the next escalation stage: they were among the last remaining critical voices.
Just over a year ago, when the desert state wanted to sponsor the 2023 Women’s World Cup with its “Visit Saudi” campaign, there were protests. Players also expressed criticism. The unwanted sponsor withdrew.
Now it seems as if those responsible have taken the setback personally. A European football agent reported in astonishment to the portal «The Athletic» of a recent conversation with the director of a Saudi club. “We want the best,” the director told him bluntly. The agent thought his counterpart was joking and asked back: “Are you sure you can afford the salary and everything they want?” The answer was: “Of course we can afford it.”
That was true. The kingdom’s clubs are now circumventing the laws of the transfer market for women and outbidding the competition. The tax-free basic salaries in Saudi Arabia are now almost twice as high as the minimum wage in the long-time world-leading women’s league, the National Women’s Soccer League in the USA. Flights and accommodation are also reimbursed to the players. Mind you, these are not private projects of wealthy sheikhs: the Premier League clubs are owned by the government. The offensive in women’s football is therefore also a state maxim.
Gunnarsdottir fought for her rights as a mother
Following the lure of money is human nature. But the transfer of the Icelandic player Gunnarsdottir is out of the ordinary. The 145-time national player was considered a courageous personality and was committed to women’s rights.
She was considered a courageous personality: the footballer Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir.
PD
In January 2023, she wrote the story of her struggle for the online portal “The Players’ Tribune”: Her then club Lyon had cut her salary when she became pregnant. The decision was not only economic, but also emotional. Gunnarsdottir felt abandoned. The impression was reinforced when she returned to training in January 2022, three months after the birth of her son. The Icelandic woman felt like a disruptive factor.
Gunnarsdottir took legal action against Lyon and won. A tribunal of the world football association FIFA ordered the club to pay back 80,000 euros. The ruling was groundbreaking because it made it clear to the clubs that the maternity protection rules established by FIFA in 2021 must be applied.
The Icelandic woman’s text began with the words: “I know that this story might upset some powerful people in the football world. But I have to tell the truth.” Her victory is a guarantee for the financial security of all players who have a child during their career.
Saudi Arabian women have completely different concerns. Only in 2022 were discriminatory provisions enshrined in a new law, as Human Rights Watch documentedIn order to marry, women need the permission of a male guardian. In marriage, they must obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner”. While men can divorce unilaterally, the reverse step is much more complicated.
There has also been progress in recent years: women have been allowed to drive since 2018, and have enjoyed freedom of travel since 2019. But journalists and activists who campaigned for these and other rights have been imprisoned. The organization Grant Liberty lists in their latest study Examples include Nurah al-Kahtani, a mother of five, who tweeted demanding reforms and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Or Israa al-Ghamgham, who took part in demonstrations and is serving eight years in prison.
It seems that Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not becoming more progressive in terms of freedom of expression, but is actually increasing repression. The football leagues broadcast by international channels present the world with a different image that inevitably becomes entrenched in viewers’ minds: that of a carefree, rather apolitical country where people enjoy life.
A Swiss national has also apparently agreed to help spread the distorted image. This week it was announced that Cameron Puertas is moving from Union Saint-Gilloise to the Saudi league. The 26-year-old Spaniard grew up in Vaud and is in the process of obtaining Swiss citizenship. He is considered a promising player for the national team. After he was voted the best player in the Belgian league, clubs from the top European leagues were interested in him. But Puertas chose al-Qadsiah, Gunnarsdottir’s club.
His advisor Fahd Adamson told Blick: “There are offers you can’t refuse.” In figures, that means around 6 million francs per year plus bonuses.
In the overall context of the Saudi Arabian “sportswashing” campaign, these are peanuts. Some of the larger expenditure items in football are: 537 million dollars for Cristiano Ronaldo, 415 billion dollars for Newcastle United, and the offered 200 million dollars for sponsorship of the African Super League.
But even these sums pale in comparison to the efforts to dominate the sport’s largest future market. The Savvy Games Group, which belongs to the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, wants to invest 37.8 billion dollars in the e-sports industry. The group announced this in September 2022 and has already partially implemented it. It is acquiring shares in manufacturers, entering into partnerships with well-known players and wants to create tens of thousands of jobs in its own country.
Traditional sports consumers in Europe have so far shown little interest in e-sports. But its importance is growing rapidly, especially among young fans and especially outside Europe. The fact that Saudi Arabia is striving for dominance in e-sports is an indication of strategic sophistication and foresight.
The kingdom wants to dominate the sport for decades to come. And the International Olympic Committee is open to actively supporting the rise. In June 2024, it announced to introduce Olympic e-sports gamesthat they were already in talks with a potential host. Less than a month later, another press release followed: The host for the next twelve years will be Saudi ArabiaEven by IOC standards, the procedure was unusual. There was not even the semblance of an open competition.
FIFA and IOC as supporters of the Kingdom
There are still critical observers who are struggling with the new realities in world sport. In May, Basel anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth and two lawyers turned to FIFA. Saudi Arabia, which is set to host the 2034 World Cup, is falling short of international human rights standards, they warned the world football association. In a 22-page document, they backed this up with numerous examples, from arbitrary arrests to torture and the exploitation of guest workers. FIFA must be prepared, the lawyers said, to reject Saudi Arabia’s application. They demanded that independent experts assess the situation in the country.
Pieth, who was once chairman of the FIFA Governance Commission, has not yet received a response to his initiative. When asked, the world football association pointed out that Saudi Arabia itself had submitted documents, including on the human rights situation. They are now examining these in detail and will present the results in the fourth quarter.
In summary, this means that FIFA considers the involvement of external experts to be unnecessary. However, reading the application dossier makes the need obvious. In a document, Saudi Arabia’s national football association mentions a supposedly independent “risk assessment in the context of human rights”. It was carried out by a law firm from the country’s own capital, Riyadh.
FIFA is prepared to take claims about supposed progress from Saudi Arabia at face value. In this way, the stories take on a life of their own, regardless of their truth content. The world football association is just as much a facilitator of this clever “sportswashing” as the IOC.
The same applies to footballer Gunnarsdottir, who did not respond to inquiries from the “NZZ am Sonntag”. In an interview with the Icelandic newspaper “Morgunbladid” she said that she herself had not experienced any bias against women in Saudi Arabia. She had been told that a lot had changed in recent years and that women were much more independent than before. She continued: “There are many people who have an opinion about the country and who may have formed this opinion through the news and media. I want to experience the things, the culture and the people.”
Generalizing one’s own experiences, denying the existence of discrimination, sowing doubts about Western narratives: the spin doctors of Saudi Arabia’s government could hardly wish for anything better than interviews like the one with Gunnarsdottir.
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