Riyadh Season goes on tour as Saudi Arabia shapes future of boxing

Shows in Los Angeles and London just the start as kingdom's influence grows

Terence Crawford, left, fights Israil Madrimov in the main event of a Riyadh Season card in Los Angeles. AP

Riyadh Season is fast becoming an all-year-round affair for fight fans.

The festival, started in 2019 and held in the winter months to promote arts, culture and entertainment in Saudi Arabia, is now famous for one thing above all else – big-time boxing.

For several years the kingdom has been rolling out the red carpet and writing the cheques required to lure major fights on to Saudi soil.

But on August 3, at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, the Riyadh Season brand went on tour for the first time as pound-for-pound great Terence Crawford headlined a stacked card described stateside as the best in a generation.

The next stop is London for another Saudi roadshow on September 21, when Anthony Joshua takes on Daniel Dubois at the top of another card so deep that Wembley may appear unusually full long before the sun recedes behind those vast red stands.

By planting a flag on America’s west coast, and also in the English capital, the Saudi boxing project has entered a dynamic new phase in its development.

It’s one thing to host an event in Riyadh – it’s entirely another to venture into two of boxing’s traditional heartlands and open for business.

It raises the question as to what the end game is, what the future might look like should the kingdom maintain interest and fully commit to boxing as part of its aggressive pursuit of opportunities in the sporting arena, including hosting the 2034 Fifa World Cup.

And unlike golf, for example, where LIV encountered an orderly and robust sport at least partially resistant to change, boxing is ripe for a takeover.

Fragmented and devoid of governance, boxing has for years been banished to the fringes of the market, in desperate need of investment, leadership and structure.

With no overarching framework, it has been left to rival promoters, each with their own stable of fighters and TV deals, to jostle for position, with precious little cross-promotional business being done.

Sanctioning bodies exist, but only to provide nominal rankings and attach gravitas to bouts in the form of shiny championship belts in return for a piece of the action.

The man leading the Saudi surge into prizefighting is Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, advisor to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and a lifelong fight fan who understands its enduring appeal.

"We are committed to the long-term success of this industry, prepared to navigate challenges as we work towards our goal," Alalshikh told ESPN earlier this year.

"We will collaborate with all stakeholders to advance boxing and optimise the market. For that, everyone understands that we're taking this very seriously. There is a big opportunity in boxing. But you must improve the market. You must fix all the problems."

In the short time that Alalshikh has played an active role, his achievements as a galvanising force are already significant. In February, The Independent placed him at number one when ranking the most influential figures in combat sports.

His presence – and the financial clout behind him – has turbocharged the heavyweight division, including the crowning of Oleksandr Usyk as its first undisputed champion in 25 years.

Then there’s the healing of the promotional fault-line that had run through British boxing for decades. The enmity between the Hearns and the Warrens was such that they’d loathe to mention the other by name, let alone do business. Yet, by Saudi design, last summer we got ‘Queensbury v Matchroom’ as the two families pitted their fighters against each other.

And, if the dream is that boxing should be a meritocracy free from promotional rifts, then there was poetic justice in Crawford headlining in Los Angeles. The brusque Nebraskan is the outstanding American fighter of his generation but has spent much of his career starved of worthy opposition having been outside the orbit of Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions (PBC).

Amid the excitement generated by the sudden flow of big fights, it’s probably gone under the radar somewhat that Alalshikh has concluded partnerships with US outfits Top Rank and Golden Boy to build upon existing relationships with Matchroom and Queensbury, effectively aligning the sport’s major promoters – with the exception of the PBC – although initial meetings are said to have taken place.

The Top Rank deal alone has scope to sponsor 12 cards annually, while partnerships have also been sealed with the WBA and WBC, the two most established of the sanctioning bodies.

Alalshikh says the logical next step is to consolidate with a preferred broadcast partner, and he believes the streaming platform Dazn is leading the race.

“I think the situation with boxing between last year and this year is different, now is much better because of what Riyadh Season is pushing to do,” he said on X Spaces on August 15.

“But for boxing’s future, it needs to be on one platform with big fights. This is the only way to get boxing in the top five [sports] again.

“My favourite [broadcaster] is who deserves it, and who focuses on the boxing. It doesn’t matter about the name. Whoever is focused on boxing and puts it at the top level, we will go with.

“Dazn is doing great work and I think if Dazn is focused 100 per cent on boxing they can change the game. They support us greatly, respect us, they deliver the job and I like them. Also, I like Sky, I like TNT, I like everyone. But Dazn is focusing with us and supporting us now. They have the potential to be the home of boxing if they want.”

Matchroom and Golden Boy are already partnered with Dazn, while Top Rank’s existing deal with ESPN and Queensbury’s contract with TNT Sports both expire in 2025. Queensbury are already reported to have held fruitful talks with Dazn.

Boxing, it seems, is moving towards becoming a more integrated and coherent product as Saudi Arabia's influence grows stronger. What comes next will be fascinating to watch unfold as such uniformity would be uncharted territory, and might even provide an opportunity to fix some of the problems Alalshikh mentioned.

A major rebrand, fewer weight classes, substantive rankings and a ruthless cull of superfluous title belts could all enhance the sport's appeal. With 17 divisions and four recognised sanctioning bodies there can be anything up to 68 world champions at any given time, and that’s before you invoke terms like regular, interim or recess. A streamlined system to cut through this morass of meaningless trinkets would bring some much-needed clarity while also restoring prestige to the designation 'world champion'.

Rumours of a full Saudi takeover have circulated throughout the summer with Reuters reporting in June that the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, the PIF, is prepared to meet the cost of codifying the fractured sport. Whether that is the ultimate aim or not remains to be seen, but it looks as though Alalshikh has already begun piecing the jigsaw together.

Responding to that news, Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn said: "Some of what was reported had substance, some of what was reported didn’t. I think His Excellency’s plans for the sport are incredibly exciting, incredibly ambitious and also very smart. I think he sees a world where boxing can come together to make the best fights more consistently, which would be tremendous news for the sport and tremendous news for fight fans."

As for the immediate future, the big Riyadh Season cards keep coming, with September’s London show swiftly followed by an October 12 card in the Saudi capital headlined by the rescheduled light-heavyweight undisputed bout between Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev. After that, 2024 will conclude with the heavyweight title rematch between Usyk and Tyson Fury on December 21. Another major card is expected to land in the kingdom on February 22, 2025.

More shows on foreign soil are also in the pipeline with Alalshikh saying a card in China, likely featuring the heavyweight Zhilei Zhang, is “50-50” for December. He says Japan, Australia and Germany have also been identified as destinations, while it’s his dream to “do something big in Africa for all the people there”.

Mexico is also a priority, and Alalshikh insists that despite a public falling out, the door remains open for this generation’s greatest Mexican fighter to come into the fold.

Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez has been critical of the Saudi boxing boom, and Alalshikh – who revealed that months of negotiations with Alvarez had already ended in failure – responded with a withering attack of his own, accusing the super-middleweight champion of taking “easy, show-only fights”.

Alvarez has been widely criticised for his risk-averse choice of opponents, especially for his upcoming bout with rank outsider Edgar Berlanga on Saturday night. Like most fight fans, Alalshikh wants to see him face David Benavidez in a compelling match-up he has so far shunned or priced himself out of.

“We are looking with respect at all the fighters. We want to do the big events and the big fights. It’s not happened before for a lot of reasons but my door is open to all the fighters, so let’s see,” said Alalshikh.

“It is nothing personal, it is business. I like to see a [fight] against Crawford and I like to see it against Benavidez. Nothing is impossible. Let’s see in the future what happens.

“If someone can do it, then it is Riyadh Season."