Finance guru: News from Qatar could sabotage Newcastle United owners’ £33bn master plan
The latest flare-up in the dispute between the Qatari and Saudi governments could harm the Newcastle United owners’ ambitions to host the 2030 World Cup.
That is the view of finance expert Doctor Dan Plumley, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about the Saudis’ reported £33billion bid to host the tournament in conjunction with Egypt and Greece.
Qatar, the hosts of the current World Cup, own the broadcaster beIN, whose content was pirated on an industrial scale in Saudi Arabia between 2017 and 2021, with the government of the latter gulf state seeming to turn a blind eye.
But tensions between the two nations’ media sectors appeared to have cooled after beIN signed a marketing deal with a company linked to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the state-financed owners of Newcastle, in October.
There were even reports that PIF wanted to buy a significant stake in the broadcaster.
But as relayed by Sports Pro on Monday (28 November), the Saudi media ministry has blocked beIN’s coverage of the start of the World Cup within its borders.
Plumley claims that the incident could have a detrimental effect on Saudi’s bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
“There was a lot of positive noise that the relationship was cooling, but this looks like it might have set it back a bit,” the Sheffield Hallam University expert told Football Insider’s Adam Williams.
“It’s never one thing that solves the problem because there are wider tensions that have been there for a while.
“I don’t think it will have a detrimental impact on Newcastle but it will have an impact on Saudi’s bid to host the World Cup further down the line.
“It looks like they are very much in the mix for 2030. They want to generate even more interest in the region, so not having the World Cup on screens will have some sort of knock-on effect.
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