ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Politics, Policy and Law
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1649310
This article is part of the Research TopicSports Policy and Management in the Era of Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and OpportunitiesView all 13 articles
The take-off of the Saudi professional football league in the context of the 2030 vision: effect on the competitive balance
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
- 2Arab Open University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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This study examines the impact of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 on the competitive balance of the Saudi Professional League (SPL), focusing on how the entry of public investment funds into club ownership has transformed the league's structure. Using the Normalised Herfindahl Index of Competitive Balance (NHICB), the research evaluates the concentration of league performance and its evolution over ten seasons (2014/15 to 2023/24). The findings reveal that while the SPL has experienced rapid growth in market value and international visibility, this expansion has been accompanied by a significant decline in competitive balance. The inflow of capital and arrival of foreign talent have not been evenly distributed but concentrated in a few elite clubs, making league outcomes increasingly predictable and diminishing the overall competitiveness of the tournament. Nevertheless, the SPL's rise in global profile aligns with the geopolitical objectives of Vision 2030, which aims to enhance the Kingdom's international image through sport while also reducing its dependency on oil. The use of sport in this strategy raises debates about 'sportswashing', yet it also represents a first step toward broader socio-economic transformation.
Keywords: Football, Saudi Arabia "Vision 2030", Resource dependency theory, competitive balance, Market competition
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Martín, Bataineh, Guevara-Pérez and Guevara-Pérez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Emilio Martín, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
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