Addressing critical needs: Inside the PIF sports strategy

0:00Faisal Al Sabah:Before getting into the conversation, here's a quick reminder that Leaders Week London is almost here. Next week, in fact. On the 7th and 8th of October, the global sports industry will gather at Stamford Bridge for the biggest and most senior gathering in sports business. More than 2 ,000 leaders from over 50 countries and every major league from every major market.

0:23Mohamed Alsayyad:Leaders Week London, where global sport does business. And to find out more and to snap up your pass, head to leadersinsport.com forward slash leadersweek.

0:33Faisal Al Sabah:We hope to see you on the 7th and 8th of October.

0:45Faisal Al Sabah:Hello and welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of Addressing Critical Needs, a series of podcasts going inside the PIF's sports strategy. The first episode is a top-line explanation of what that strategy is and how it has evolved from two of the people who know it best within the PIF, the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Mohamed Al-Sayed is Head of Marketing, Corporate Brand and Strategic Advisory at the PIF. He's been with the organisation for over 10 years and has seen sport develop in importance across three different eras and three distinct strategies. He now runs sports sponsorship activity.

1:26Faisal Al Sabah:Faisal Al-Sabah is his relatively recently installed colleague. He looks after meaner sports investments for the PIF and spent time earlier in his career at McKinsey and the NFL in New York. I sat down with Mohamed and Faisal in September, where they were visiting the US Open in their capacity as major tennis shareholders. The PIF is a sponsor of both the WTA and ATP and has an ATP 1000 tournament license it intends to use with a new event in the Kingdom next year. The conversations explore the objectives of the PIF's current sports strategy, clarifying the importance of the sector in the wake of this year's release of a refreshed overall PIF strategy for 2026 to 2030.

2:13Faisal Al Sabah:The conversations also look to set the PIF in its national context as one of three major funders of sport in Saudi Arabia, each one of them with their own mandate, strategy and objectives. Before we get into the conversation, it's worth clarifying that neither Mohamed nor Faisal work on international sports investments for PIF, which means that neither are qualified to talk about the PIF's investments in Live Golf or Newcastle United, so neither of those entities were on the table to talk about. If you'd like a glimpse into the PIF's sports sponsorship strategy in particular, do scroll back in the feed to January and February when we published the first series of Addressing Critical Needs, which featured conversations with Alanoud Altenayam, the PIF's Head of Events and Sponsorship, as well as WTA Ventures CEO Marina Storty and ATP CEO Enno Polo.

3:03Faisal Al Sabah:the PIF will be out in force at the Leaders Sport Business Summit on the 7th and 8th of October I'll be moderating a session on the business and leadership stage on the afternoon of the 7th that will feature Alan Oud the head of sponsorship and events also Firas Sharif head of MENA sports investments uh Xavier Campbell the CEO of Radia and Mark Archer the senior director sports strategy and partnerships at Qadir. But for now, enjoy this conversation with Muhammad al-Sayed and Faisal al-Sabah of the PIF. Okay, here we are in an anonymous hotel conference style room in New York with Muhammad al-Sayed and Faisal al-Sabah from the PIF.

3:53Faisal Al Sabah:Folks, thanks for being with us today. Would you mind, in your own words, introducing yourselves, giving us a bit of background on your role and responsibility? Maybe we'll start with you, Mohamed.

4:06Mohamed Alsayyad:Thanks so much for having us today. It's great always to be in New York. My name is Mohamed Sayad. I look after marketing corporate brand and strategic advisory in PIF. I was fortunate enough to be with PIF almost now for nearly 10 years. So I've seen the transformation and the story from the beginning with the new facing of PIF since I joined. In my role, I look after different things, as I mentioned, and part of it is the sponsorship strategy of PIF and activating the sponsorship strategy, which is as well working closely with our colleague in the investment team of establishing the sports sector in the kingdom and how to grow it in the kingdom and as well of our activities globally.

4:55Faisal Al Sabah:Faisal? Yeah, thanks for having us again. My name is Faisal Sabah. I sit on the sports investment side within the MENA investment division. So I help oversee sports and media assets that the kingdom has invested in through the PI through the MENA investments division. Our focus is really on trying to diversify the economy away from oil. Sport and media is a critical focus for us. And we try and find unique and opportunistic ways to do so and really focus on trying to drive increased event days, increased participation in the kingdom more broadly around sports. Two follow-ups there. 10 years at the PIF.

5:27Faisal Al Sabah:Do you get a gold watch for that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do they give you a commemorative sort of gift? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

5:36Mohamed Alsayyad:The good thing about PIF, I can't believe that I stayed in PIF for 10 years because every day is another day. Like every day is a new day. in PIF every day that you're coming with a new challenge, new thing to achieve. It's a huge organization. However, internally we work as a startup, like achieving ideas, brainstorming with your colleagues and bringing different ideas to life. And the great thing about it, that sometimes that you start the thing and you've been involved just of the ideation and then you are seeing it happening in front of you. this is like the beauty and the moment of let's say of pride of seeing things that you started from the beginning just an idea and you took all the process of building it and you're seeing

6:27Faisal Al Sabah:from the queue yeah um i appreciate this is something of a cliched question but uh i think it often gets to the way of working at particular organizations i wonder if you could talk me through what a typical day looks like at the PIF? Are you predominantly office-based? Is it lots of meetings? Are you here, there, and everywhere? What does it look like, typical day? Faisal, we'll start with you. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a typical day is in the office generally. Look, I think from our standpoint, I think sport is unique in the sense that a lot of people kind of reach out to us within the kingdom knowing that we're doing a lot of investments and trying to expand the broader sports economy locally.

7:03Faisal Al Sabah:So a lot of those are having conversations, whether with local investors or international investors in the kingdom, with different types of rights holders in the kingdom who are looking to explore a bunch with our different stakeholder groups, whether it's the Ministry of Sport or the General Entertainment Authority. But it's a typical day kind of in an office behind a desk for the most part. But a lot of meetings, a lot of phone calls.

7:22Mohamed Alsayyad:I'm lucky in my position that we have great partners across the world and part of the beauty of my job as well of engaging with them. It's great of growing this kind of network with people that we're working with. and the most important thing that in our culture as well it's all about trust that it's not only about just the transaction it's about how you build this kind of trust between partners across the world and sometimes just sponsorship started with transactional the point of view it's becoming into like you have like life friends forever with people that you are working with so we are very agile in terms of like the and active in terms of like the way we are doing our relationships across the world we hate like just uh sitting in virtual meetings or virtual conferences we like to engage uh physically with people it gives it of course completely different feel

8:19Faisal Al Sabah:and talking about engaging physically we are out here in person obviously uh for this in new york city we're all in a different place from home uh right now or although maybe you've got a stronger history here than Ramir Mohamed Faisal. What are you doing here generally in New York City? What's sort of on the agenda over the last few days and going forward? And will you be taking in some tennis once you're here?

8:44Mohamed Alsayyad:Of course, it's a great time of the year to be in New York in September every year. It's the US Open. And with our partnership with the ATP, we are here to engage, of course again with our partners and to discuss ideas with them and to look at our partnership with them and how it progresses every year. Of course it's great as well to be in the stadium engaging with tennis and looking at this beautiful sport. Again as I mentioned we are a frequent visitor of the city every year. We have great partners. they are they are here in new york of course like the hub of the world of uh activating businesses or activating um investments or activating even sports similar answer yes from a different lens

9:35Faisal Al Sabah:so from our side with the atp we obviously own a master's 1000 license yeah around the u.s open i think the whole tennis world kind of congregates in new york there's a series of meetings with the atp tour and atp media that we were here for but yeah it's obvious opportunistic because we also get to take in some tennis and the weather's been nice today which is great yes and you forgive me for ourself making this assumption sound like you might be, you know, you might have some New York history in you. Yeah, I think I have an interesting story within the PIF construct. I think a couple of things.

10:03Faisal Al Sabah:One is I'm actually a Kuwaiti citizen, which is unique within the broader PIF. So I'm not actually a Saudi. I am Kuwaiti, though, from the GCC family. I grew up in the US. I moved here when I was two years old. I moved to Saudi three years ago. So I spent over 30 years of my life in New York. I worked at the NFL for a number of years prior to this covering international business development, particularly international media rights and international strategy. Yep. So I have a huge history here. I love the city. But I think the mission of PIF has always been interesting to me in two lenses. One is, as someone from the GCC, the idea that the PIF is focused on dramatically changing the economy locally in Saudi Arabia is a phenomenal mission that I cannot be more excited to be participating in.

10:42Faisal Al Sabah:And second, I was also doing it in a sports lens, which is obviously a personal interest of mine also. So those two things really drove my interest in joining the PIF three years ago.

10:50Mohamed Alsayyad:Mm-hmm.

10:51Faisal Al Sabah:One of the things that you guys have been doing since you've been here, we just took part in this morning. You hosted a little off-the-record roundtable discussion with a few journalists and reporters from around here, essentially explaining what the PIF is and talking through the refreshed strategy, the refreshed overarching strategy the PIF has and where sport sits in the mix. That's going to be the goal of the rest of the conversation today. Mohamed, you did a really good job, I think, as the veteran in the PIF, of telling that history of what the organization was and what it's become and then sprinkling in some sort of modern strategy updates to get us to where we are today.

11:38Faisal Al Sabah:So if you wouldn't mind repeating yourself for the podcast, that would be great.

11:43Mohamed Alsayyad:My pleasure. So maybe people they are hearing about PIF recently in the media in the past eight years globally. But if we take it from a step back, PRF is a very, very old entity that was established in 1971, but with different mandate that the mandate that we are looking at at the moment. So when it was established, we're just looking of establishing different national champions companies in Saudi Arabia, of establishing different companies that are leading the economy of Saudi at that time. A big example is the Saudi telecommunication company, STC, and Saudi energy, the Saudi water, etc. Moving forward, when the Crown Prince His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman, he announced the Vision 2030 and one important aspect of achieving Vision 2030 is diversifying the economy of Saudi Arabia from being depending on oil.

12:41Mohamed Alsayyad:And at the time, there was the big transformation of the mandate of PIF on how can we get an entity is responsible of achieving this mandate of diversifying the economy and it was given to PIF at the time. So from our DNA we have always this dual mandate. Of course we have the mandate of building our nation. However we are a sub-wolf fund so we need to maximize our returns. We need to get profit to our shareholders and our stakeholders as well. In 2017, we announced the first strategy of PIF. It was the foundation of the years of building this new face of PIF. At that time, you heard for the first time of the idea of the Giga project, projects with size of the land of the projects with the size of nations.

13:35Mohamed Alsayyad:For example, Red Sea project, the size of the land is bigger than Belgium and Europe. and Neom is the same. So it was a new concept at that time when we established the Giga projects. We have five Giga projects, Neom, Red Sea, Gidea, Roshan, and Darhia. And of course, of the expansion of the global investments at that time, Lucid at that time, it was established and different international investments were announced at that time. Moving forward, 2021, It was the second strategy of BIF, which is covering from 2021 to 2025. And it was the moment of expansion, of realizing that we have 13 strategic sectors that we need to develop in the country.

14:24Mohamed Alsayyad:You name it, from alternative energy to advanced manufacturing to sport to entertainment, tourism, etc., etc. And from 2021 to 2025, we established more than 60 companies that they are achieving the mandate of the 13 strategic sectors. And one example of this was search. The companies are responsible for our sports investment as well in the region. again fast forward 2026 this year uh earlier in april we announced our next five years strategy the 2026 20 2030 which is focusing more of the value realization of everything that we've built and the past uh let's say uh eight years from 2017 until now how we make things in terms of like optimizing the way that we are doing things in investment being more efficient in terms of like realizing the value of every single portfolio companies and the most important thing introducing a new concept which is the ecosystems if you look at it for example if you are visiting a country that you want to enjoy the tourism in a country you cannot get this done without having a great airline great infrastructure great logistics that it surrounded you so the whole idea of the ecosystem of connecting dots together from the sector so moving from sectors to ecosystems connected ecosystem that they are achieving this mandate of the value realization and within the new strategy we have three investment portfolios I will give very simple metaphor if you think about it the first investment strategy the investment portfolio is the financial portfolio which is like if you look at it if you have a farm which is a citrus farm that you can get the product very fast and you can maximize on it it's the portfolio that it's responsible for public markets dealing with assets managers etc etc the second portfolio is the strategic investment portfolio which is maximizing and enhancing the ability of us taking Saudi national champions to the world as well and big example of this humane the company that was established and responsible of national champion of ai in saudi arabia maadid with with mining and aqua power one of the leading companies now across the world for alternative energy so you think about it like an olive tree that you need to wait for it to maximize on the return with the national champion concept and then the third portfolio which is the vision portfolio which is let's say the lab the new ideas that we are establishing and you are preparing those new companies to be the national champion one day and you have under this portfolio all the new companies that we have established in the past five years so this is not in a nutshell an overview of our journey so if you were going

17:36Faisal Al Sabah:to pinpoint, maybe we'll come to you Faisal for this, if you were going to pinpoint fundamental changes in the strategy for this new cycle that we've gone into, that's going to take us up to 2030, an important sort of macro endpoint, I suppose, of like a grander vision, how would you describe the fundamental changes? Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think from our standpoint, the vision continues to be the North Star. And I can talk about more from like a sporting lens to an extent. So within the vision, there are basically three objectives that we have overall that touch the sporting world.

18:09Faisal Al Sabah:One is increasing the GDP contribution from the local sports economy, which is important from a diversification standpoint. The second is growing mass participation within the kingdom more broadly in terms of getting younger people more active playing sport. And then the third is just improving the entertainment offerings that are available to the local population, but also driving domestic and international tourism. As it ties towards your question around how does that change with regards to the strategy, Our objectives are the same, but what we're doing is slightly different, which is in the initial iterations of the strategy that Mohammed had brought up, a lot of it was on new company creation, capital deployment, because at the end of the day, a lot of these sectors, particularly sport, were nascent.

18:46Faisal Al Sabah:As of right now, we've done a lot in that deployment space, and now it's realizing the value creation opportunities that exist and the synergies that exist. For example, Kadia is a massive giga project that we're building. It's a massive sport entertainment city, about 30 to 40 minute drive, southwest of Riyadh. As we think about what Kadea is doing in the infrastructure that it's building, a huge component of that is what is, call it, the software that's going to fill that hardware that they're building. So as we think about the interconnectedness between Kadea and, for example, Surge, which is an investment company that we've established that invests in sports, opportunities to find synergies between them around, hey, Kadea is building a national tennis center.

19:19Faisal Al Sabah:It's going to be a world-class facility. What kind of content can we put in it? And what kind of content can we own? Well, a natural evolution of that was something along the lines of the ATV Masters 1000. So it's realizing those value creation opportunities and those synergies between the companies that is a true nexus in terms of what the new strategy will entail for us. And that's a bit of a mindset shift from our standpoint, but something that we've always known was important and something that we've been continuing to work through. Take us inside the sort of structural landscape behind the development of sport and entertainment in Saudi in general.

19:52Faisal Al Sabah:The PIF is obviously a very important entity in this process, but it's not the only entity. Talk to us about some of the key stakeholders involved here, how everybody fits together and works together or otherwise in this kind of multi-stakeholder environment. Sure. Well, one, I'm glad you brought that question up because I think a lot of times what we hear is typically in the Western media, we tend to hear Saudis doing X, Saudis doing Y. But there's a lack of nuance on who in Saudis do X, who in Saudis doing Y. Why are they doing things? Are the objectives potentially different? To simplify a complicated situation, there's essentially three different entities one should know when thinking about sports in Saudi Arabia.

20:31Faisal Al Sabah:The first is the Ministry of Sport. The second is the General Entertainment Authority. And the third is PIF. I can touch upon what each one does and what their specific mandate is. So I'll touch first on the General Entertainment Authority. The General Entertainment Authority is mostly known for putting on the sports and cultural entertainment festival in Saudi called Riyadh Season, which takes place between around October to around March. It is an opportunity for Saudi to showcase itself to the world. It's focused on driving domestic and international tourism. They put on music concerts, comedy festivals.

20:58Faisal Al Sabah:That also includes sometimes sporting events. Some of the bigger, exciting boxing events that we've held in the kingdom typically run through that entity. And it is run by His Excellency Turkiya Sheikh, who many people in the sports world are familiar with. That's one entity. The second entity is the Ministry of Sport. The ministry of sport has focused on two primary objectives. One is mass participation, really getting more people to play sport. And then the second is providing pathways for talent development for people to be professionals in said sport. They typically manage that through the 90 or so federations that they oversee at the ministry level, which is a vast portfolio of federations doing a lot of great work in terms of driving participation at a local level.

21:34Faisal Al Sabah:At the same time, the main IP that they own and manage is the Saudi Pro League through the Saudi Football Federation, which people are familiar with as well so that's a clear kind of focus area for them and that's kind of where they play a role they will occasionally do certain events as a means of jump-starting participation things like 18 next gem and wta finals yeah and the final end is pif and to mohammed's earlier point pif you can think about it in terms of several investment pools all of which touch sport all of which do it in a different way and then there's also a sponsorship dynamic which i've handed over to mohammed to talk about the three pools essentially are there's a real estate piece which we're building a significant amount of hardware of sport new stadium new arenas new motorsport tracks, new tennis facilities.

22:10Faisal Al Sabah:All around the country. Yeah. All around the country. That is being managed through a series of development companies, including the Giga Projects, Kadea being a centerpiece of that. The second piece is the international department, which is mostly focused on international returns and driving financial returns to the portfolio, less of a dynamic around what they're doing locally. And the third is the MENA portfolio, which is where I sit, which is focused on a double bottom line mandate. One is generating financial returns, yes. But the second is generating broader socioeconomic benefits around GDP contribution, jobs creation, mass participation, event days on the calendar.

22:41Faisal Al Sabah:At the MENA level, we're focusing on the software side of the equation. So as the real estate department builds all this hardware, the question for us is how do we either A service that hardware with IP so that we can build a compelling event calendar that we own and no longer rent? And then the second component is what other services are required around venue operations, et cetera, that are required to manage all that infrastructure. The fourth piece of that is sponsorship within PI, which I'm going to touch on or pass it to Mohamed to talk a little bit more through.

23:06Mohamed Alsayyad:yeah yeah so if you think about our sponsorship strategy it doesn't work in isolation of what we are doing from a corporate strategy or from an investment point of view uh we think about our sponsorship strategy as an enabler of the corporate strategy and it uh it gives a great uh tool of achieving the corporate strategy nothing better than engaging uh with communities uh telling the story of VIF in a better way through sponsorships and through specific sports initiatives. So our sponsorship strategy was established in 2024 and at that time you heard about the great announcement of the ATP and the WTA and of course our as well sponsorships with the Gulf Saudi Gulf Federation and Saudi Gulf and Gulf Saudi and Saudi our sponsorship strategy is focusing on three main pillars the first pillar is sports sports sponsorships and under that you name it from atp wta golf saudi our sponsorship with the fifa our partnership with the concrete cap and different things that we are doing in that vertical the second vertical is art and culture and the third vertical is the thought leadership and mainly is maximizing the value of the Future Investment Initiative.

24:30Mohamed Alsayyad:The Future Investment Initiative is one of the largest, if it's not the largest business event in the world. We have established it in 2017. It was under the supervision of PIF. In 2019, we decided that it's the moment to have a standalone institute that will be responsible of having different business events around the world and as well of establishing white papers, researches regarding the future of investments. So this is like the third vertical that we are focusing on of maximizing the value of the FII globally. And you've seen that the FII in the first years as well grew in a way that it's now across different continents around the world.

25:17Mohamed Alsayyad:And if you think about the way that we pick or evaluate our sponsorships or the IPs that we want to be involved in. We always think about it from the four pinners. The first one is inclusion. We always think about sponsoring things that it's not only one gender focus. It has the inclusion to men or women. The second thing is technology. We are big in technology in terms of drinking as well. Our investment in Saudi Arabia to be part of the story of our sponsorship, of activating our sponsorship and how can we add the layer of technology or innovation of activating the sponsorships that we are achieving in Saudi Arabia.