Saudi Arabia will host the UFC tournament for the first time. As reported on the Front Office Sports website, the Fight Night 2 series tournament will be held in the Persian Gulf state in March 2024.
The venue of the event has not yet been announced. According to Sportcal, Riyadh is highly likely to host the tournament, since the event will successfully coincide in dates with the annual sports and cultural festival, which is held in the capital. It is also already known about plans to organize competitions under the auspices of the UFC in Saudi Arabia regularly.
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Nothing is known about the composition of the participants. It is only necessary to take into account that the events of the Fight Night series, as a rule, collect a less stellar composition than numbered tournaments. The next one, UFC 294, was held on October 21 in Abu Dhabi. The main event of the evening was a rematch between the UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and Alex Volkanovski.
Saudi Arabia plans for the development of MMA
The promotion’s entry into Saudi Arabia was facilitated by the recent merger of the UFC and the WWE wrestling organization. The union of the two biggest sports entertainment and martial arts brands resulted in the formation of the new holding company TKO Group, which has a valuation of $21.4 billion. A 10-year partnership has already been in place between World Wrestling Entertainment, LLC, and the General Sports Administration of Saudi Arabia in support of Vision 2030, the state’s socio-economic reform program. The first event within the partnership was the Greatest Royal Rumble sports show in April 2018 in Jeddah. In addition, Riyadh annually hosts the Crown Jewel tournament under the auspices of WWE. Given the merger of the UFC and WWE, Saudi Arabia has direct access to the world’s main mixed martial arts promotion.
The Vision 2030 program was published by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman in 2016. Since then, the country has invested huge amounts of money in professional sports – football, golf, motorsport, and other sports. Saudi Arabia thoroughly took up mixed martial arts (MMA) last summer. The State Investment Fund (PIF) in August created the company SRJ Investments, which will specialize in sports transactions. Three weeks later, the PIF division invested $100 million in a minority stake in the American MMA promotion Professional Fighters League (PFL) – which is considered a competitor of the UFC.
Saudi Arabia scored three goals in the PFL, according to Sportico. Starting with the Middle East and North Africa, the PFL league will be the first of them. One of the two initiatives is the establishment of a PFL division dedicated to broadcast sales. Paying for the attraction of stars is the third objective. Pay per view (PPV) will be used to allow viewers to purchase individual broadcasts during several major league events that are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia in the upcoming years.
In September, news about SRJ Investments’ investments in PFL for a while even brought down WWE’s market capitalization from $9.6 billion to $8 billion. At the same time, there was also a drop in the share price of Endeavor Group Holdings – the parent company of the UFC and WWE – from $7.4 billion to $6.6 billion. The shares went up again after the merger of the two promotions was completed.
On October 28, Saudi Arabia hosted another major event with the participation of the MMA star – a boxing match between Tyson Fury and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. The country also expects to accept Fury’s fight with Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk, and recently it was confirmed to be held on February 17th, 2024.
