Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is trying to whitewash its murderous regime, and offset the inevitable demise of crude oil based transportation — by buying control of our most visible sports. Namely, tournament golf in the U.S. and soccer in Europe. Both sports are already suffering because their involvement is causing prices to watch to rocket up for the average fan.
They are attempting to dominate golf by buying control of the PGA tournaments in the U.S. — helped by golf enthusiast Donald Trump. Coincidentally, he’s the owner of several private golf courses and is being enriched as one of the first tournaments was run at one of his private clubs. Naturally, Trump is angling for more — though none of his courses are currently rated among the best. Moreover, Trump has championed a sweetheart deal where the Saudis are financing Trump’s son-in-law’s development of new businesses — sight unseen. I’d call that a bribe!
In Europe, soccer is much bigger than golf and the competitions run all year at hundreds of locations on both the national and international level. Hundreds of millions of fans all over the world watch it on TV. In this case, the Saudis have launched a two pronged attack. 1. They’ve actually bought control of some of the top clubs in France and the U.K. and are now buying top players — for sky high salaries of as much as $100 million per year — to play in a fledgling Saudi league.
2. They bought the rights to stage the biggest sports tournament in the world — the soccer world cup — in which every four years 32 countries who’ve won regional qualifying tournaments play a knockout tournament to determine the world champion. Last year Argentina won by a whisker, though — for the very first time — several African countries came close.
Are the Saudis already buying our legislators in addition to Trump? Or have rich Americans cornered that market?
Frank Fish, Taylorsville