Saudi Arabia planning to finance new 'Grand Slam'-style T20 league: Report

After taking giant strides in sports such as football, golf, Formula 1 and tennis, Saudi Arabia is setting its sights on cricket where it plans to bankroll a global Twenty20 league devised by an influential Australian cricket figure.

According to a report on The Age, the proposed league will mirror the Grand Slams in tennis, wherein eight teams will play matches at four different locations in a year. SRJ Sports Investments, the sports arm of the $1 trillion Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), is backing the the proposed league that former Australian cricketer Neil Maxwell is said to have come up with.

Discussions regarding the league with the International Cricket Council (ICC), the Dubai-based global governing body body for the sport, are currently underway. The league is being developed in partnership with the Australian Cricketers’ Association, of which Maxwell is a former board member.

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The report adds that the Saudi sovereign wealth fund is prepared to invest up to US$500 million into the league, making them the largest backer among a consortium of investors.

How will the new league fit in a cramped cricketing calendar

It remains to be seen how the new league is accommodated in what already is a hectic cricketing calendar, in which the lucrative Indian Premier League – the world’s biggest T20 league that was launched in 2008 – takes up two months.

The IPL additionally, isn’t the only such cricketing event in existence with the Big Bash League (Australia), The Hundred (England) and SA20 (South Africa) among several other league that occupy a sizeable chunk of the calendar.

There’s also plenty of international cricket in store with the ICC’s introduction of the World Test Championship putting greater emphasis on the red-ball format than ever before. The global body has also been hosting a white-ball event in the men’s game every year since 2021.

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The proposed Saudi-backed league, however, has claimed it intends to complement the existing leagues, and not compete with them. It league also intends to make itself an alternate revenue source for cricket, especially for the smaller nations, beyond the existing financial model that heavily favours the ‘Big Three’ – India primarily, along with Australia and England.

The fate of the league, however, ultimately rests with the ICC chairman Jay Shah, who until recently was the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The BCCI, additionally, will have to relax its ban on active Indian cricketers participating in overseas T20 leagues if they are to allow the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah to play in this new league.

Besides cricket, the Saudi wealth fund has allowed the nation to attract some of the biggest football stars in the world, including Cristiano Ronaldo , to its football league and host the WTA Finals in tennis . It has also created the breakaway LIV Golf which has succeeded in drawing some of the world’s best golfers away from the PGA Tour.

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Saudi Arabia has also won the hosting rights for the 2034 FIFA World Cup .

The Gulf kingdom has long been accused of ‘sportswashing’ – using its investments in sports as a means of deflecting attention away from its poor human rights record as well as for its treatment of women.