Clubs in the Saudi Pro League have all the money in the world, but the one thing they can’t buy is fans.
Even with global superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and Neymar, teams across the league continue to struggle to fill their stadiums on matchday. The match between Al-Wehda and Al-Khaleej on Saturday drew only 447 spectators to Al-Wehda’s 38,000-capacity stadium, a season-low.
Granted, neither team is PIF-funded, so there are no household names to parade to the crowd, but the low attendance figures highlight the enormity of the task ahead of the Saudi Pro League.
Over the summer, Saudi clubs spent more than £1 billion on new players and managers, luring some of the biggest names in European football to the Gulf state. The majority of the superstars, such as Benzema, Neymar, N’Golo Kante, Riyadh Mahrez, and Sadio Mane, are in their twilight years, but young(ish) guns such as Ruben Neves, Malcom, Allan Saint-Maximin, and Franck Kessie were also enticed.
More than half of the teams in the Saudi Pro League have average attendance figures below 5,000
High-profile managers such as Steven Gerrard, Nuno Espirito Santo, and Jorge Jesus were also brought in, and plans are reportedly in the works to bring in some truly elite-level coaches in 2024, including Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti.
But if this season has taught us anything, it’s that football fanaticism isn’t something that can be bought or conjured up overnight. When you consider the context of the matches they’re playing in, the novelty of seeing some of the world’s best footballers wears off, especially given the level of access fans in Saudi Arabia will have had to these players on TV for so many years.
Al-Hilal, which features stars such as Neymar, Neves, Kalidou Koulibaly, and Aleksandar Mitrovic, sells less than a third of their available tickets on matchday, while Al-Ittihad, which features Benzema, Kante, and Fabinho, has a similar sales record.
According to Transfermarkt, more than half of the teams in the Saudi Pro League have average attendance figures below 5,000, and the number of matches attended by fewer than a thousand people has been increasing since September.