Saudi Arabia is making an unprecedented move to infiltrate Western sports leagues using its vast financial resources to buy teams and bribe players with lucrative contracts. The Professional Golf Association (PGA) has recently merged with LIV Golf, a Saudi-owned golf company that has been recruiting top golfers by offering tens of millions of dollars in exchange for participation in various tournaments. The outrage over this deal is twofold: first, the bribery removes the distinction between amateur and professional sports, and second, Saudi Arabia has a history of human rights violations, and the merger indirectly compromises golf’s legitimacy. Congress and the Justice Department have announced an investigation into the matter.
However, golf is not the only sport that could be affected. In recent years, the Saudis have been buying soccer teams in Europe and paying top players exorbitant salaries to play in Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis decide to start a professional basketball league or any other sports league, the salaries will jump tenfold, making it challenging for existing leagues to compete. College football, in particular, is vulnerable to this threat since it has no collective bargaining agreement or limits on what a third party can compensate athletes under the NIL. Some players already earn millions of dollars, and if Saudi Arabia decided to use its unlimited resources to pay the top players $10 million-plus per year, it would create an uneven competitive balance that would undermine the sport’s integrity.
To address these issues, a delegation of SEC officials, including Alabama coach Nick Saban, recently visited Washington to urge Congress to regulate compensation under NIL. However, the NCAA has been slow to address this issue, and there is a need for a feasible solution. The suggestion is to unionize the players and negotiate a CBA that addresses NIL and limits the influence outside parties can have. This solution would save the competitive balance that college football is losing and prevent the exploitation of young athletes. The resources, assets, support, and capital of foreign countries will impact players’ agendas at the college level and manipulate the innocent. It is time to stop pretending that college football players are amateurs and declare them professionals. Time is not on our side, and without dramatic changes, we face an inevitable loss of integrity in Western sports.
