SURJ Sports Investment chief executive Danny Townsend believes the Saudi company’s joint venture with soccer’s Kings League reflects the “dynamic changes” happening in sport.
SURJ, which is a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), announced a deal with Kings League earlier this week that will see the pair launch the tournament in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), engage local fans, and develop a new pipeline of soccer and content creation talent in the region.
According to Townsend (pictured above, right), Kings League was attractive to SURJ because of its strong social media presence – the organisation said it generated over seven billion impressions and 400 million engagements globally in 2024 – and youthful audience, with 80 per cent of its 30 million social media followers under the age of 34.
“When you look at the demographic profile of the broader GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] area, particularly in Saudi, it skews very young,” Townsend told SportsPro.
“70 per cent of Saudis are under 30 years of age. They’re digital natives. They love football. So when you think about the combination of the country’s most popular sport and the youth demographic that is super digital savvy, it just made for a perfect fit.”
Kings League MENA will be the seventh league in Kings League’s global portfolio, joining competitions in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy and Germany.
The new league is due to kick off later this year and while a firm date has yet to be confirmed, Townsend said the plan is for play to begin in the fourth quarter.
Saudi Arabia will host Kings League MENA’s inaugural season. Specific venues are still being discussed but Townsend revealed the initial plan is to operate out of a “little hub” in Riyadh, though he noted there are multiple venues across the kingdom that are “suitable for a Kings League product”.
“As the [Kings League MENA] title says, we’ll certainly be taking the Kings League more broadly, both to other cities in Saudi like Jeddah and, over time, certainly into other GCC and North African countries,” he added.
The upstart Kings League, which is backed by Gerard Pique’s Kosmos Group, has garnered widespread attention by streaming games for free on platforms like Twitch and securing high-profile individuals as team owners, including content creators with massive followings.
Kings League MENA will have a similar setup, with Townsend promising a mix of household names and local personalities.
“When you look across the different Kings Leagues around the world, they’ve got a mixture of some really interesting football talent from years gone by and also some new talent that is also interesting,” he said.
“We’ll follow that same lead. They’re the ingredients that make it successful.
“We will certainly be announcing those in due course and there’ll be some really interesting ones. [There will be] global names but also, importantly, ones that resonate here in Saudi and the MENA region more broadly.”
Townsend told SportsPro at the end of last year that SURJ was hoping to finalise its next investments in early 2025 and the company has stayed true to that timeline. In February, SURJ acquired a minority stake in sports streaming service DAZN in a deal reportedly valued at US$1 billion, while it has also partnered with US-based Enfield Investment Partners to identify new sports investment opportunities.
The DAZN and Kings League deals add to an investment portfolio that already features the Professional Fighters League (PFL), which led to the launch of the mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion’s MENA division in April 2024.
SURJ has been consistently linked with making investments in other sports. This has included taking a minority stake in the EuroLeague basketball competition, spending €250 million (US$283 million) to establish a new cycling league, buying into a new World Athletics commercial entity, and backing a new global Twenty20 cricket league.
Townsend again declined to name the sports or specific organisations SURJ is in discussions with, but said it is clear what types of investments the firm is pursuing.
“I steer away from the term ‘disruptive’ and focus on more positive words like ‘transformative’,” he explained.
“When you look at foundationally strong sports, like football and combat, like others that you’ll see announced in our portfolio going forward, we want to take foundationally strong sports that have rich histories, that require innovation, that are going to have to meet the market dynamic changes that are clearly coming at us.
“The shift from traditional, linear broadcast into direct-to-consumer, digital consumption is a really key challenge that sport, more broadly, is going to have to overcome. So sports that are willing to lean into that challenge and take advantage of that as an opportunity, rather than a threat, they’re the type of investments that we’re interested in.
“Not every sport is embracing that change from our observation. We spend a lot of time in meetings with lots of different sports and you typically have sports that are embracing change and are willing to look at governance and other things that will enable them to take on that opportunity.
“Others that want to stay in the space they’re in and hope that they’ll find a solution, they’re the things we try and steer away from frankly.”
Townsend reiterated that SURJ is focused on making investments at the league level, rather than taking stakes in individual teams or franchises, believing this approach will have a greater domestic impact in Saudi Arabia. He also described SURJ as having the “patience and aptitude” to source suitable deals and bring them to fruition.
“There’s lots of different ways in which we can impact the growth of the sports economy here in Saudi and the MENA region more broadly,” Townsend said. “You can’t do that with a franchise in a sport that’s domestic somewhere else.
“An NBA franchise can’t add value to this ecosystem here on a regular basis. So we’re typically focused on those type of investments that meet that mandate.
“By definition, they are more complex deals than buying a franchise in a sport somewhere else. But that’s okay. We’ve got the patience and aptitude to go and source those investments and see them through.”
As for the rest of 2025, Townsend said that SURJ is working on “a number of really interesting, transformative deals” – some of which have been in negotiation for as long as two years – that are “getting closer” to being announced.
“Hopefully over the next couple of months you’ll see some more announcements,” he continued. “The focus now is really closing out the deals that we’ve been working on for some time.”
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