Back on 7 October 2021, Yasir Al-Rumayyan was the key figure as the Saudi Arabia PIF took control of Newcastle United.
Mike Ashley finally biting the dust after NUFC had kicked off 15 seasons under his control.
Amanda Staveley and the Reuben family were also involved in the takeover but naturally the Saudi Arabia PIF taking a controlling (80%) interest was the thing that made the big headlines.
The Governor of Saudi Arabia PIF (and therefore a Saudi Arabia Government Minister), Yasir Al-Rumayyan became Newcastle United Chairman.
The vast majority of major clubs were bought and sold, some more than once, during the decade and a half Mike Ashley was the NUFC owner.
When the fans revolted after he forced Kevin Keegan out in September 2008, Mike Ashley came out and told the Newcastle supporters he had got the message and they could now stop their protests, as he promised he would sell Newcastle United ASAP.
As the Newcastle United fans painfully discovered, Kevin Keegan wasn’t the only person who Mike Ashley would happily mislead.
For more than a decade he pretended he was trying to sell the Newcastle United when the reality was he had no intention of doing so. As I said earlier, so many other major clubs were bought and sold during the time Mike Ashley was pretending to try to sell NUFC. Newcastle United was a key part of his overall business strategy, particularly the role it played in providing such huge and overwhelmingly free promotion of his retail empire. Especially via the wide ranging Premier League TV broadcast contracts for the UK market and overseas.
This only ended because eventually enough Newcastle United fans stayed away and Mike Ashley was forced to give away 10,000+ free season tickets during the 2019/20 season to fill up all the empty seats surrounding his St James’ Park retail empire adverts. Clearly a one-off desperate stunt that bought Ashley a little bit of time but the game was up.
He then agreed a buyout of the club by the Saudi Arabia PIF, with Amanda Staveley and the Reuben family helping to facilitate that. They agreed to pay Mike Ashley effectively a total of £350m for Newcastle United, a buying price of £305m plus other costs to be covered that took the total up to that £350m mark.
After the price was agreed and signed off, the takeover was delayed though, for what felt like forever at the time. The Premier League only allowing it to go through on 7 October 2021 once Saudi Arabia settled a longstanding TV piracy dispute with Bein Sports/Qatar.
Mike Ashley had come to realise he had panicked, had agreed to sell Newcastle United at a well below true value price, he tried to find a way out of the sale as the delay went on. However, the deal was watertight and Saudi Arabia PIF were determined to get Newcastle United at the agreed price.
We had heard it said plenty during the takeover delay but once 7 October 2021 happened, “Sportswashing” was the word of the day, the week, the month, the year…it was relentless. The claims that the Saudi Arabia PIF had bought Newcastle United purely to distract from the human rights issues in their country. The media universally reporting that the new owners would spend billions and billions, money no object, whatever it would take to make Newcastle United the most successful club in the Premier League and indeed the world, so that Saudi Arabia would benefit from all the reflected positivity and that would be what people would think of when their country was mentioned, sporting excellence and dominance, rather than the human rights issues.
The reality has proved a ‘little’ different. Financial constraints implemented by both the Premier League and UEFA can of course be pointed to as obstacles faced by the Newcastle United owners and those who control certain other clubs.
However, that doesn’t explain it all away. If money was really no object when it came to the Saudi Arabia PIF making Newcastle United a huge success whatever the cost, why is it that almost five years after buying the club (and almost seven years since beginning the process of doing so) we haven’t seen the much vaunted brand new stadium or state of the art training complex? Not a single official announcement confirming they will even happen, no plans put forward to the local authorities, not a single brick laid. The financial constraints laid down by UEFA and the Premier League don’t stop you going ahead and doing these major infrastructure projects. They can be financed by the club’s owners and not impact on FFP, PSR, SCR, whatever.
If you needed any more proof as to how this isn’t a case of get as much money into Newcastle United by any means possible from Saudi Arabia funds, via the Saudi Arabia PIF. The new 2026/27 NUFC home shirt was launched without a front of shirt sponsor after the three-year Sela deal ended. Why was no alternative Saudi Arabia PIF business introduced as the front of shirt sponsor? That makes zero sense if you are still trying to say it is purely “Sportswashing” and the Saudis putting as much money into the club by whatever means possible. At the very minimum they could have easily justified as fair value to the Premier League, repeating the same £25m a year deal Sela had but replacing them with another Saudi sponsor. Instead, we belatedly saw an outside (non-PIF) company KNOX agreeing to pay significantly less for their three-year deal than the Sela one.
So what is the truth?
Why did the Saudi Arabia PIF actually buy Newcastle United.
Well actually, Newcastle United Chairman and Governor of the Saudi Arabia PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan has told us why they did.
Considering how much has been said and written about the Newcastle United takeover, it is bizarre how little is made of this below. Probably because it doesn’t fit in with the lazy “Sportswashing” accusations.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan speaking on 4 October 2022, a few days before the first anniversary of the Newcastle United takeover:
“We bought the whole team (Newcastle United) for £350m, instead of only having 30 per cent in another team (Manchester United) for £700m.
“You can see Chelsea was sold for $3.5bn (£2.5bn).
“So, my potential now is to go from £350m to at least $3.5bn (£2.5bn).
“Football of course is one of the most important sports there is, whether domestically (in Saudi Arabia) or abroad.
“It is the number one sport in the world and why the English Premier League?
“Well, because it is the best league in the world, no other league competes with it.
“There are 20 teams, three are relegated, three are promoted, the advantage of the Premier League is that any of the 20 teams can beat the best team in the league.
“When we looked at it, we looked at it from a financial perspective.
“By the way, it wasn’t the first offer we got regarding a football team. We looked in Italy, France and the UK as well.
“In the UK there was a team (Manchester United) that approached us on the basis that we take 30 per cent of the ownership and (on the condition that) we don’t interfere at all in terms of managing the club, for £700m.
“Then we bought Newcastle, who offered us 100 per cent of the ownership, but Amanda Staveley and her husband who got us the opportunity told us, ‘We like it so much, we would like to be with you’….and that was perfect.
“Then came the Reuben family, who are one of the biggest property investors (in the UK), saying that, ‘We would like to come with you’, and these are one of the biggest investors in (the City of) Newcastle (Upon Tyne).
“I said, ‘Perfect! Tell them to come’. So now they (Amanda Staveley, her husband and the Reubens) have a skin in the game.”
Just under five months later, Amanda Staveley was speaking at the FT Business of Football Summit in Mayfair, London on Thursday 2 March 2023 and she then gave further insight into why the Saudi Arabia PIF had decided to buy Newcastle United:
“We tried to buy Liverpool.
“When we walked into a Newcastle United game we said why spend X Billion when you can spend three hundred and some million and put in….I think we have put in two hundred plus to date of new money since we bought the club.
“We had a particular business plan, based on a five, ten, fifteen year timeline.
“Critical to that plan was making sure we had the right partners.
“So making sure (Saudi Arabia) PIF, who are very long-term investors.
“In the last year it’s extraordinary…
“Hoping potentially there might be the chance of Champions League.
“I love the valuations that are reflecting in Chelsea….because it makes our valuation look very compelling.
“We bought the club at under two times revenue.
“When you are looking at five to seven times revenue, that is a lot of money.”
The bottom line is that the Saudi Arabia PIF bought the club at an absolute bargain price. After the misery inflicted by Mike Ashley on the Newcastle United fans, the city, the region, the football club, I take great pleasure in the fact that he panicked and sold for £350m (including costs that were covered) and got far less than he could have done. No wonder he tried to get out of the sale agreement during the long wait for the Premier League to ratify the takeover.
Maybe “Sportswashing” did play some part but I am not convinced, to me it was overwhelmingly just “Business”, Amanda Staveley taking the idea to the Saudi Arabia PIF and they saw a glorious opportunity to buy a business at a bargain price.
Amanda Staveley no doubt looked after by the Saudis for bringing the business opportunity to their attention and indeed she and her husband were paid significant money by the NUFC owners to help run the club via a management contract, which was then halted at the end of the 2023/24 season and they left the club. Documents made public at Companies House showed that the Reuben family had originally financed Amanda Staveley’s 10% ‘ownership’ of Newcastle United and that money was then shown to be repaid to the Reubens when Amanda Staveley gave up her 10% ‘ownership’. It then made official that the Saudi Arabia PIF were 85% owners and the Reuben family 15%.
Even taking into account the extra money invested by the Saudi Arabia PIF (and the Reuben family) to help grow their business, their asset, they would make a huge profit if selling the club now.
Whether you would call them Sportswashing or vanity projects, the Saudis have dumped LIV Golf and massively cut back on the funding to try and grow their own domestic football clubs and league. Who knows how much it has cost them to win the rights to host the 2034 World Cup but that is the ultimate prize and very understandable on many levels why they thought that was a money no object priority.
So where does that leave Newcastle United?
My belief and understanding is that Newcastle United is seen very differently to vanity projects such as LIV Golf. The Saudi Arabia PIF bought NUFC at a bargain price and it is a business opportunity that has paid off massively.
I think it is a given that the Saudi Arabia PIF will continue to put further investment into Newcastle United but only as part of an overall plan that will see them eventually make even more money out of NUFC when they sell at a later date.
Whether this approach can also see Newcastle United ‘Competing for all major trophies by 2030’ (as per David Hopkinson) and become ‘Number One’ (Yasir Al-Rumayyan) amongst all clubs, remains to be seen.