New financial regulations will ensure sustainability in Saudi Pro League, says CEO

RIYADH :Saudi Pro League clubs could be pumping the brakes on their free-spending ways after its CEO Omar Mugharbel said new safeguards have been put in place to make the league financially stable ahead of the new season.

SPL clubs have spent more than $1.5 billion since its 2023 boom, which included the prized capture of Cristiano Ronaldo that paved the way for players to move to Saudi Arabia on wages European clubs could not compete with.

Ronaldo has since topped Forbes' list of the world's highest-paid athletes three years in a row since his move to Al-Nassr.

But sky-rocketing transfer fees and eye-watering salary packages, which once sounded the death knell for the Chinese Super League, may be a thing of the past after new regulations were announced by the Saudi Ministry of Sport on July 1.

"A lot of what we do today is injecting better governance within the league in terms of how we operate and how we govern clubs as a whole," Mugharbel told Reuters before the new season kicked off on Thursday.

"The main objective is to raise the financial strength of the league and ensure sustainability of the league. Most recently, we launched, before the opening of the summer transfer window, our financial regulations."

Oversight of financial sustainability, previously managed by the Ministry of Sport, has been transferred to the SPL under the newly established Financial Oversight Committee in a move aimed at ensuring clubs meet all financial compliance requirements.

"That is enabling us to better govern how the clubs operate financially, but also enable them for better sustainable financial planning for the future," Mugharbel added.

"When it comes to governance, we're doing a lot of things in terms of re-looking at our regulations and