fans are loyal to clubs, not players, that is what the "businessmen" don't understand

I think another issue is people can see through what they're doing. They can see they're not trying to develop a strong, exciting league. They're not focusing on what makes football so great (rivalries, underdogs, clutch games, multiple exciting comps / chances for silverware) They're just buying big name players, chucking them all together and hoping it works out. It's alll about money and everyone can see it.

Had to work in Riyad a few years back. Spoke to some locals about football. They all looked at me shocked when I said I supported Crystal Palace. They asked why when Arsenal and Chelsea are also in London. They just couldn't comprehend that I would support a local club and not a good local club. When a Saudi supports a European team, ain't none of them rooting for Benfica or Ajax. They are a bunch of glory hunters

They also have virtually no established youth academies or domestic player development. Its not a sustainable model. Even the MLS in the US/Canada have established these development systems and increased exposure of the game to youth players....it has grown exponentially in the past 20+ years and now the fan base is stable and growing too.

The fact that my local team from Tønsberg, Norway, who play in the third division, averages a higher attendance (about 3-400) than several Saudi Pro League teams, fills me with undescribable joy 😊 Edit: Typo

To the Arabs in the comments saying "oh but look at the how many people show up to [insert state owned club]'s games" You still had a team in the TOP DIVISION of Saudi Arabia bring less than 1000 fans to a game. Thats absolutely pathetic.

It's taken football around 150 years to get to where we are now, the Saudi Pro league can't expect to reach those levels in a few years.

Even in the league of ireland (LOI) 🇮🇪 where no investment or advertising has been put in by the national association and where Premier league dominates even the LOI is growing year on year. 20% attendance growth on last year. This growth has exploded since covid and most of the top division has just turned full time professional this season. My team Bohemian FC (Bohs) is fan owned and we are sold out every home game 4000 approx fans. Football culture reigns supreme and Other teams in the LOI bar a couple sell loads of tickets and are sold out each week. Football culture wins over big names. Without emotional investment you'll never get long term growth in a league. Also tickets for the league of ireland vary from 10 to 20 euro a game and the league runs from March to October so you can get a football fix while big leagues are on off season. Also the atmosphere is class look up KZfaq vlogs and you'll see serious atmosphere with pyro and all (even though its banned 🤣) as we say no pyro, no party

1:34 696 people is actually mental, pretty sure my villages sunday league club crushes that on derby days 😂 German 9th division btw

I really love that you don’t take it easy on anyone and call out all the fraud, corruption, and callousness on display even if it’s your own nation or players from it. Bravo.

I was puzzled because I knew there's no shortage of football fans in Saudi Arabia, but honestly forgot about the geographical accessibility problem for a second. There are 'white elephant' stadiums in many countries, but, with this amount of money flowing into the sport, I assumed that the wider infrastructure would also be invested into along with the project, especially when they are making a bid to host the World Cup

There are 3 truths in the world of football. No player is bigger than a club. Buying big player names won't make you a big club. Fans are loyal to the club first. Players are secondary

In Tasmania (the little island of the arse end of Australia) with a population of 560,000 we have regularly had local league crowds of 1000+ 😂

the weird thing is Australian "soccer" has bigger crowds than the Saudi Arabian games and our players aren't even top level but you get like at least 5 thousand people in lower level games, no game goes into the hundreds in terms of attendance and top flight games get 20 thousand at least

@HITCSevens you’ve as always carried out a better analysis and breakdown as to why the Saudi Pro league is highly unlikely not to take off and become profitable, than any other pro ‘pundits’ on tv or radio. 👏🏾

I think there is something else going on. When you compare this to the Australian A-League, when Australia has a smaller population, much larger in size, has more deserts, games are also played in 40 degree heat and major cities are much much further apart. Football is also the 3rd most popular sport, the highest profile foreign player is Jack Rodwell and yet the A-League has a higher average attendance.

Good point about the distribution of the league. I became a regular viewer of the Japanese J. League this season precisely because they air games for free on KZfaq to my country.

Because you can find a better quality game at your local park on a Sunday

My club, Nashville SC, has seen average attendances of about 22,000 this season. That more people turn up to watch Hany Mukhtar than do Cristiano Ronaldo makes me happy. 😊

I actually watched a couple of Saudi games last season, soon after Ronaldo went there. The only reasons I did were 1) morbid curiosity, and 2) Sky Sports were streaming them live, for free, on their KZfaq channel, and there was nothing else on at the time, so I figured, why not? The thing is, those free streams have stopped now because of the new broadcast deals the Saudi League have agreed, and I'm not exactly falling over myself to watch more. I literally couldn't care less about the Saudi League, no matter who's playing there! Asking me to pay _anything_ to watch that league makes it an instant "no" from me. It's not even that good to watch! If it was free, and there was nothing else on? Maybe I'd have it on, in the background. Pay for it??? No chance mate! There's zero prestige. Zero stakes. Zero reason to watch it or even care about it. Like, I'm English, but I do watch a LOT of foreign football. If Real Madrid are playing Barcelona, I'm interested. If Bayern Munich are playing Dortmund, I'm interested. If AC Milan are playing Juventus, I'm interested. If Monaco are playing Lens, I'll probably stick it on. Hell, if Erzgebirge Aue are playing Duisburg in the German 3rd division, I'll probably still give it a watch, just because I'm interested in German football! But if Al-Ittihad are playing Al-Hilal? I literally don't care. I don't care that N'Golo Kante and Neymar might be involved in the match. I care so little that I *literally had to Google those teams* just now to find out that those two players even played for them! Those teams mean absolutely nothing to me. I'd genuinely much rather watch the upcoming Barnsley vs Horsham FA Cup game than a Saudi Pro League game! That game actually has some prestige attached to it!

Saudi league will never get eyeballs if it's old players moving to the Saudi league, The league will only start to get eyeballs if its young Saudi players moving out of the Saudi league to go to big European clubs and performing consistently... this is something the Chinese seem to have realised .

one thing I've noticed is that a lot of football fans in Asia prefer European football to domestic football, what I mean by that is people would watch the prem, La Liga, and Seria A rather than watching their leagues, its not that the sport is not big it is but the focus is on European leagues and comps rather than domestic leagues and comps

I find it odd that nobody involved in planning the Saudi league's marketing thought "Should we sign Neymar for the team that wears yellow shirts and blue shorts and Benzema for the team with the blue jerseys?" or "should we try and sign a couple of the best Malaysian / Indonesian / Thai / Vietnamese players to try and get some attention / viewers in those markets?", but then again, I'm not sure there was much planning going on at all...

There is another example of this sportswashing program: Kazakhstan. It joined UEFA since 2002 by leaving its former confederation (AFC), yet for most of its UEFA membership, it has been running football completely unrelated to the way how Europe runs football. Technically UEFA membership, Kazakhstan remains deeply AFC by its football system. When people talk about recent shock successes of Kazakhstan in European football, especially in Euro 2024 qualifying, many critics claimed that the modern Kazakhstan national team is full of Astana players. FC Astana, the biggest football club in the country, is financed by none other but the despotic Kazakhstani government of Nursultan Nazarbayev and is currently succeeded by his henchman Kassym Jomart Tokayev, using the vast oil money from the Caspian Sea (Kazakhstan has the 12th largest oil reserve in the world). And this is extremely notable because Kazakhstan is not a democracy, it is an authoritarian state, very much similar to Saudi Arabia (albeit more liberal). This is even more so when Kazakhstan League itself is not a league for the common. For most part since independence, it is Astana who dictated football in the country while other clubs are left starved and poorly financed, fans typically don't watch games of domestic league unless if they are up against some European clubs. There is also zero interest in developing grassroot movement, as Kazakhstan's football structure is shockingly abysmal. This means their shock Euro 2024 qualifying performance is not based on merit, but it is entirely a lucky chain of event, plus suddenly they got a good coach. The only difference is Kazakhstan has made itself outcast of European football since Kazakhstan is not a democracy, equivalent to Belarus, Russia and Azerbaijan. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy either, but it sticks with the AFC since AFC, unlike UEFA, is far more acceptance to dictatorships. Had Kazakhstan stayed inside the AFC instead of UEFA, their sportswashing program could have had more chances to succeed in Asia rather than unveiling their incompetence and widespread mismanagement in Europe.

Except for the big 4 clubs: Al Hilal, Al Ittihad, Al Nassr and Al Ahli. The rest of the clubs have close to zero fanbase. Its so weird

I love that even though you clearly do not like what the Saudis are doing here, you created a well balanced and reasoned video explaining what is going wrong here without resorting to "they are evil and deserve to fail."

The craziest thing I get from watching this video is that knowing after the success of the Gamers8 esports tournament series, Saudi Arabia are planning their own "Esports World Cup" and they most likely will do exactly what you said with utilising Twitch and/or other streaming platforms like they did with Gamers8.

Just like China, albeit Saudi Arabia is far more passionate to football than China. But you should be not surprised why Saudi Arabia has never advanced past the group stages of a World Cup since 1994.

Just from your title I instantly understood why Messi and others opted for America. Money isn’t everything, though that’s part of it.

I must say I like the opening punch on Saudi Arabia about the bombing of Yemen. I find it disgusting that players go there, a country who has started a war of aggression against a neighbour. If Russian clubs were buying players for hundreds of millions a year, there would be public outrage. But UEFA and FIFA banned them for their war of aggression... Whereas nobody cares about the Yemenite, both because they're not europeans like the ukrainians, and because Saudi Arabia is a good ally of many western states because they buy tons of weapons from France, the UK, the USA, etc. We are even going to give them world cup hosting ! It's disgusting... Their war is just as horrible as the one Russia has started. Or Israël for that matter. But allies of NATO seem to be protected from any judgement for any of their crimes. Buy weapons from the USA and western Europe and you're safe from any sanctions. As a Liverpool supporter, I'm really disppointed in Gerrard and Henderson mainly, but also Mané and Fabinho...

In Brazil we have something somewhat similar, regarding the concentration of clubs, in Rio for example, you have 4 big clubs and the rest is mostly neglected with very little support in comparison We also have the issue of the country being really big, so attendance can vary a lot However, people tend to be really loyal to the clubs they support, and matches usually get decent crowds

What a prediction with Henderson mate.

The machine of football as a business forgets one simple thing, sport isn't just a product that you can spend money on and market if there isn't the emotional connection there. Football is a fundamental part of society in Europe, and Latin America, I'm not saying the rest of the world doesn't and can't have a connection to football, but there is a profound emotional connection to supporting our clubs, growing up we learn the hurt and joy of watching our teams win and lose in the heat, in the rain, for me during my now long ago teeange years, my father and I didn't communicate well, except we could always talk about and watch football together, you can't just throw money at something an expect to artificially create passion.

To compare it to another Saudi-backed sports league, LIV Golf has averaged about 150,000-250,000 tv viewers for its broadcasts this year on The CW, which is a channel that exists. Considering that these events are strategically scheduled to compete with less prestigious PGA Tour events such as the John Deere Classic which are getting nearly 4x that, it's not great.

I think you should also talk about Thai League. Thai League is one of the richest football leagues in Asia and in fact, Thai clubs have financial capabilities beyond imagination to even some of the most powerful clubs in Asia or even mid-sized clubs in Europe. Just a few months ago Thai richest club Buriram bought Ramil Sheydayev from Azerbaijan's richest club Qarabag because the Thai team could offer to pay more than double than Qarabag is such an example. This is one of the key reasons why Thailand has one of the best football leagues in Asia. Yet their national team is pathetic at the fullest as they have never been able to advance beyond the Southeast Asian boundary and has struggled to even find the first win at the final round.

12:50 "when you've got a two-hour road trip [in 40-degree heat ] just to get to the game." *And can't even have a cold beer once you arrive.*

🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 Day 5 - Alfie, please do a video on the pitiful situation the Bulgarian national football team is currently in. Here are a couple of points to give you an idea about what I'm talking about: - Currently, the team is in a streak of 8 winless games, at the bottom of its qualification group for the 2024 Euro, with no chances of qualifying, after losing to opponents such as Montenegro and Lithuania. - The team's last win was almost a year ago - on 16.11.2022 in a friendly against Cyprus. Our last win in an official match was more than a year ago - on 26.09.2022 against North Macedonia. - The national football team of Bulgaria has been constantly performing bad for at least the last 20 years. The last big tournament we played was the 2004 Euro in Portugal, where we were humiliated in the group stage. - Many supporters blame the current bosses of the Bulgarian Football Union for this downfall. The most notable of them are Borislav Mihaylov, Emil Kostadinov and Yordan Lechkov - 3 players who were part of the great 1994 WC team which reached the semi-finals of the tournament. Sadly, those people's success as players has been overshadowed by their lack of capability or willingness to resolve many of the problems in our football - the out-of-date training systems, the poor football infrastructure etc. What's worse is that they refuse to resign a failure after another and they have changed the rules of the union in a way that makes them irremovable for more than 18 years. - Recently a couple of players from the next generation - Dimitar Berbatov, Stiliyan Petrov and Martin Petrov started a campaign, trying to overthrow the aforementioned but as I said the rules are in the bosses' favour. - Meanwhile fans are getting really angry with the situation and are starting to take measures. Last weekend, during many matches of the First and Second Football Leagues the fans were chanting against Mihaylov and company and displayed banners against them. Of course, the BFU fined the clubs for "obscene chants and banners". - There is a campaign on social media calling fans of all local clubs to put their differences aside and come to the Euro qualifier with Hungary on 16.11 and show their disapproval of the current BFU leaders. That's the main points, I'm sure that if you dig a little you'll find much more. Please consider doing such a video, the anti-BFU sentiments are getting stronger and we need to disturb those self-serving ex-legends in every way possible. Thank you and keep up the good work!

You should a video on a top ten list of Scottish derbies outside the Old Firm...would be good to promote more of Scottish football on here.

great video! it is very clear that you did your research on the region!

I think you also need to remember that Saudi Arabia and the majority of Gulf regimes, in general, function their football leagues very closed off to outsiders. They are okay to let transfer of foreign players to their countries, but they ban their own local players from moving abroad. This isolated mindset explains why they cared nothing about grassroot, but only from the position of strength.

Here's the thing - European clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona, Bayern etc. are recognized brands worldwide and naturally football fans will gravitate towards those recognizable brands. Sure, some do support their local clubs, but to a lesser scale than say Manchester United or Arsenal. The Saudi governament tries to elevate 4 of the country's most decorated clubs to the same level of brand recognition as Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, but what they do not realize is that they can't expect this to happen overnight. It's a process that takes years and there are more failed experiments than success stories.

You didnt really consider that there is a difference between fans that are happy to go to big, interesting games and people who will religiously go to games every week. Its okay that Saudi Arabia took a lot of fans to Qatar for the world cup, but that doesnt really show interest in the actual sport more so the occasion.

Always perfect with the timing. I’m a big football fan, never even seen highlights of Saudi Pro league but I’ve seen almost every Messi played in MLS

Bradford City getting two mentions and two shots of Valley Parade ❤ Love to see it

Unlike Saudi ,MLS has Produced actual talent btw

You can buy teams, players and maybe even fans but you can't buy passion or culture. Those things develop over time and can't spontaneously exist upon demand, no matter how much money you spend.

Asking why no one watching the SPL when the league just got a tv deal and starting to rebuild its leagues with with big name players Wtf

Great video explaining the football culture in Saudi Arabia and Middle East in general

topping out around 60,000 for big games and dropping into three figures with an average of 8,000 is roughly the same distribution as the 32 teams in the top 3 flights in Scotland. From the Old Firm down to Alloa and Annan The Saudi Pro League has 18 teams and a population about 7 times bigger than Scotland

Really great research and presentation on this one!

i really liked this video. didn't expect solutions for the failures in the saudi arabian business model but i'm grateful you provided them

You support your team not because they buy star players, but because you feel part of the community, win or lose. Saudi football now is just show business

it’s because true football fans don’t watch oil leagues.

Great journalism once again. You are bang on with the free to air on Twitch observation, people are financially strapped and would happily watch Ronaldo et al for free.

Another good and fearless Video Alfie and well-researched as always

The Saudi work week starts on Sunday meaning some of these games are the equivalent of a Monday 3 PM kick off away at Luton. Of course, the crowds are gonna be low, not to take away from their fast. That is the Saudi league. But context should be delivered in full form.

I feel like no one there has any idea who Henderson and Gerrard are.😅

I am Saudi myself and agree with most of the things you stated about marketing strategies and league promotion, It is really a crucial issue and I hope they can acknowledge it and try to fix it.

I wasn't expecting an excellent business analysis and business strategy idea at the end of the video 📊📈👍 More reasons why you are the best Football journo on KZfaq. Keep up the good work, Alfie! 👍👍

I love how this channel morphed from a list channel "top 7 biggest flops" into a good quality sports journalism channel, kudos! 👌👌

honedtly the twitch idea is such a good one I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet

One of your best videos so far, Alfie, love this channel!

Another fascinating watch

To be fair, most Asian leagues have low level attendance, not just Saudi league. K-League of South Korea also historically struggled to attract attendance despite South Korea’s powerhouse status. Even with regard to J. League of Japan, there are a lot of empty seats. This means unless an Asian nation crowned the men’s World Cup title (Japan did so in women’s), they will remain neglected.

in the US, the local high school team gets around the same crowds.

Well done again Alfie. Great analysis and no punch pulling.

You do know when Messi got injured in the MLS or got substituted people would leave or not go. People heard he wouldn't play and tickets were resold for 70-80% off. I don't think this is a Saudi only problem. You simply cannot build a world class league overnight no matter what country you're in or how much money you have. The fans are a major part of it. 12 year olds going to see Taylor Swift and Beyonce twice a year are not what make concerts great. It's the fans going 2x a month to their local venues to see midtier acts, THEY are the ones keeping the show going. The stars just get all the attention and get the people that don't really like football/concerts to go.

Hi Alfie!! Another great, wonderful and informative video as always! I have request for a video i think would interseting about the current state of Argentinian football. Now you might say “but thats not interesting at all, you won a world cup, and your the best team in the world” but the national team and the recent tournament wins have really papered the cracks on our league football. Every season we have new formats, there are teams that get promoted because theyre linked with political figures, team like Barracas Central who as recently as 208 were in 3rd division, but rapidly ascended when a fan of them got elected as AFA president (they even named their parking lot of a stadium after him, imagine) and every season their are rumors of relegation being suspended, the 2nd division has 38 teams. Etc etc. I think its a train wreck that should be shown to a larger audience, and to show what we call “The most damaging world cup win in history”

So glad this video was made. I’ve spent so much time (which says a lot about what I have going on) arguing with people about how the lowly MLS is a much smarter, better run, and more sustainable system with to the a more entertaining game than the Saudi league

Great video, very very interesting.

I couldn't tell you which network even has rights in the US. I think they tried to make it a thing before Messi arrived in Miami but after that even X, formerly Twitter stopped caring. I guess the thing I could say is it really helped out MLS and CONMEBOL state-side.

short answer from saudi guy: People don't support the teams closest to their location, they support one of the bigger teams in the country, also some stadiums are awfully designed where it's a pain in the ass to get into the stadium and go out home from it

Fan of an MLS side, my best friend is a Ghanaian whose a huge supporter of Liverpool that loves to dunk on MLS. We got into an interesting debate on which league is objectively "better". What metrics, and how weighted those metrics should be when comparing the quality of two leagues. Is it solely on player contract values? Do things like attendance or stadium quality, quality of life of a country, youth academies; come into play? If so, to what degree. It is perhaps impossible to come up with an exact formula to make such a comparison, but it was a really fun discussion, this video reminded me of it

Brilliant stuff as always brotherman (y)

I think you hit this spot on as an American it’s cheaper for us to watch thePremier league and Champions league via streaming than it is to watch our own MLS so a lot of my friends follow english teams or other European teams more a cheap/free good deal with star players in the long run would generate way more revenue and excitement for the clubs

We have the same problem in South Africa (when it comes to attendance in the pls) however when it comes to chiefs, pirates and Sundowns then we get quite good attendees

Maybe for the time being avoid the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Alfie.

I think the main reason why the attendance is super low in the SPL is because some of their matches are around 9pm saudi time on a work day (sun-thu) which makes it difficult for fans such as people who have work or kids who have school to watch these games in person and wake up early the next day for work or school. An example is the Alhilal vs AlAkhdoud match (Which was on a school night at 9pm and only had around 7,000 fans in the stadium) compared to the Alhilal vs Alahli match (which was on a weekend and had a full stadium in attendance). 7,000 fans in attendance might sound a lot for a league like the saudi league but given the fact that Alhilal is one of the top 4 teams with one of the largest fan bases in the league it is quite small. Another reason is probably because only the top 4 clubs have large and new stadiums that can seat up to 20,000- 70,000 fans while the rest of the clubs have relatively smaller fan bases have stadiums that are very small and quite old that probably seat 15,000 fans at most which could be hard to match to the attendance of matches in European leagues.

Hey Alfie. Love your vids. I just found out today about the African Football League, idk what's the point of such a competition, I literally found out because my team, Mamelodi Sundowns' match vs Moroka Swallows was postponed. I hope you make a video on this, it's very interesting, because that competition will generate very little money and I think it's just an experiment/trial run to see whether a bigger European Super league by FIFA/UEFA is feasible.

I love that you banter Henderson in every Saudi video. Get him again!

Great Vídeo!!!!

I have recently started focusing on Asian football , and there is a much needed case for marketing and better strategies as whole . With Saudi being one of the leading leagues it is much needed . Since asian fans are a major viewers in world football. This needs to be done

I renew my petition for you to include international subtitles for your videos. I volunteer for Spanish, but just having them would be great for me and my football loving non-English speaking family.

Every video is gold 🤣 thank you as always Alfie

Great video mate

Thank you so much for this video with its full context regarding politics and human rights. As a Chelsea fan, I’ve been very disappointed to see one of the most prominent Chelsea KZfaq channels do nothing but cheerlead over and over for the new Saudi league, and express outrage and dismissiveness over the very notion that there might be any reason to have the slightest qualms about supporting this new league.

The league just doesn’t have the intrest down the league with historic clubs like the big European teams do. If you are a neutral, you are much more likely to watch Fulham vs Burnley than Al Taawoun vs Abha

i wasn't interested in the Saudi League but Alfie, your mini docs are edifying and hilarious (and sometimes challenging).

Great video

The ticket prices for some of the games are actually insane also. I would not pay more than €100 for a ticket however that is what some clubs are charging

Alfie can you talk about Liga MX please! I want your opinions on any team or narrative

Curiously, here in Brazil we have exactly what you said: online streams of Saudi games on KZfaq and even sometimes on air TV

My local team has 8k season ticket holders, the most in all the country … we are in the romanian third division and haven’t been nowhere near the first league in almost 2 decades. Right now I am texting this as I am on a 3 hours train ride from my university city just to see them play. Saudi could never.

Most entertained I've been while getting educated. Thanks for the great content.

Alfie could you do a video on video on budaspor, a team that went from winning a Turkish super league title , playing liverpool in the champions league and building a 60,000 seater stadium that looked like a giant snake. To semi pro Turkish 4th teir.

The people want Alfie interviewing a potato!

Once again, a most impressive report by HITC sevens. Real talent here, wnich is very rare on KZfaq.

Your tongue in cheek wit is sublime mate

Attendance of Saudi league games is not what Saudi Arabia will measure the success of their player purchases by. Was LIV golf about growing the sport of golf in Saudi Arabia? It's about bigger things than that.

Yeah if you think broadcasting games for free is impossible, why don’t you ask the MLS then? Their broadcasting partner Apple practically broadcasted all the matches this weekend for free on the streaming service Apple TV, and all these matches are playoffs, meaning important matches, with no restrictions or blackouts. Also, MLS signed a 10-year deal with Apple reportedly worth 2.5 billion dollars, so around 300 million dollars a year, that’s way more than SPL’s broadcasting deals (and annual revenue) and it also offered free soccer products in the form of 4 to 5 matches/week during regular season. No, Inter Miami matches are not free though, but appropriately the premium service should only come when you cough up some doughs so I don’t complain.