Across the Middle East, governance, risk, and compliance are undergoing a quiet but consequential shift. What was once treated as a supporting function is increasingly becoming a core driver of credibility, investment, and long-term resilience.
This change is not being led by speeches, slogans or strategy documents. It is showing up in how regulation is designed, enforced and operationalized, in practice, particularly in sectors where failure is highly visible and reputational tolerance is low.
Saudi Arabia’s new sports regulation is a great example of a clear signal of this shift. Not because sport is special, as an industry but because it is exposed. When governance tightens in industries like this, it tells us something deeper about how power, accountability, and risk are being reorganized across the region.
What does this new Saudi sports regulation change?
(The parts leaders should care about)
- A unified legal framework for the sports sector under Royal Decree No. (M/121)
- Activity-based licensing across the value chain (events, facilities, academies, institutes, training centers, and licensing of coaches and technical staff)
- A formal inspection and adjudication model that separates federation discipline from regulatory non-compliance handled through the Ministry process.
- Introduction of sanctions with teeth, including administrative fines up to SAR 5 million, license suspension/cancellation, facility closure, disqualification from licensing, and governance interventions for non-company clubs (including board suspension/dissolution).
- A structured pathway for clubs/leagues to convert into companies under the Companies Law, with assets, contracts, rights, and liabilities transferring.
- NOTE: Importantly, conversion does not wipe legacy liabilities.
- Foreign ownership limits for clubs/leagues are not set in the law itself and are expected via future ministerial decisions, while many adjacent activities sit under the general foreign investment regime.
If you operate in the region, that mix matters because it’s a template: registration, licensing, inspection, sanctions, and dispute resolution that can scale into other high-exposure industries.
The real signal: Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) maturity in the Middle East is shifting from awareness to execution
Recent reforms in Saudi Arabia are explicitly designed to create a legal environment that is more transparent and predictable for investors, and to rebuild confidence in how rules are enforced. This aligns closely with OCEG’s definition of governance, risk, and compliance: the integrated capabilities that allow an organisation to achieve its objectives, manage uncertainty, and act with integrity.
But the real story is not what the law promises on paper. It is what day-to-day execution reveals.[1]
The new sports law is that logic turned into an operating model.
Across the region, regulators and organizations are increasingly focused on how governance works day to day. Who owns risk. How compliance is evidenced. Whether controls still function when systems scale, pressure increases, and scrutiny intensify.
And that’s where the shift becomes uncomfortable for leaders: the conversation moves from intent to evidence.
For leaders watching the Middle East, sports regulation is not the story. It is the signal.
“When regulation becomes interconnected and enforceable, governance has to move from policy awareness to execution you can evidence.”
Michael Rasmussen, Pundit and Founder, GRC 20/20
That’s not simply “sports commentary.” That’s a warning label for every enterprise program that looks good on paper but fails under scrutiny.
Why sport exposes governance maturity before other sectors
High visibility compresses the cost of failure
Sport attracts capital, scrutiny, and reputational risk faster than most industries. That makes governance failures harder to hide and easier to expose. That compresses the timeline between weak controls and public failure.
As Saudi Arabia positions itself as a global sports hub through major tournaments and high-profile club investment, regulatory expectations rise accordingly. Tightening oversight in sport reflects a wider institutional shift, not a sector-specific fix.
Complex delivery accelerates governance expectations
This dynamic is particularly visible in projects where high-profile sport is combined with complex delivery.
Through our work with NEOM, we have seen how governance expectations tighten rapidly when sport is developed alongside large-scale infrastructure, advanced digital systems, and international partnerships. In these environments, third-party oversight, data controls, operational resilience, and clear accountability chains stop being “nice-to-have.” They become deal requirements.
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Digital exposure expands the governance perimeter
Sport also operates within a highly digitized space, sports organizations also face growing exposure to cyber and data risk. Ticketing platforms, athlete data, fan engagement tools, and commercial systems significantly expand the governance perimeter. [2]
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has explicitly assessed that organizations hosting major sporting events face a higher cyber threat than the industry average. Therefore, data protection is one of the earliest pressure points.
“Data protection is not an issue confined to large businesses. Data protection requirements apply to all organisations that process personal data, and failure to comply with legislation could have devastating effects on your organisation no matter its size or occupation.”
VinciWorks, Data Protection for Sports Clubs and Societies (2022)
In high-profile sporting environments, compliance cannot remain theoretical. It must be operational, trained, and enforced.
The stress-test effect leaders should not ignore
In other words, if an organization cannot operationalize governance in a sector this exposed, it will not succeed when the same regulatory posture spreads into other industries.
Why global leaders should care:
Sport functions as a governance stress test. The controls that fail here will fail elsewhere.
Why professionalization in sport increases risk before it reduces it
As clubs corporatize and attract investment, governance risk rises before it stabilizes.
- Legacy liabilities do not disappear.
- Controls must operate at scale.
- Informal practices are no longer tolerated.
This is where immature governance models fail, not because of bad intent, but because systems cannot keep pace with complexity.
Risk data reinforces this point. In comparable high-exposure organizations[3], 74% of respondents cite the increase role of technology and cyber risk as their top category, while 55 percent rank fraud and financial crime among their top five risks.
As one large-bank Chief Risk Officer observed:
“Considering how dynamically differently we have to manage the risk, we are nibbling around the edge. You have to completely rebuild your risk framework.”
What business leaders should take away from this legal development (and what to do next)
This law is not “a sports update.” It’s a preview of how governance, risk and compliance is about to be measured across the middle east region:
- Licensing and registration become mechanisms for control, not admin
- Inspection and sanctions make non-compliance a managed business risk, not a reputational surprise
- Dispute resolution becomes part of investment confidence, not an afterthought
- Evidence becomes the currency: ownership, audit trail, enforcement, follow-through
If you’re running an enterprise GRC program in the Middle East, the uncomfortable question is simple:
If a regulator asked you tomorrow to prove control performance, could you do it without a scramble?
Because the next phase of GRC maturity in the Middle East is not about awareness. It’s about whether your governance survives contact with reality.
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FAQ on GRC and sports law in the Middle East
Saudi Arabia’s Sports Law is a unified regulatory framework governing licensing, inspections, sanctions, and dispute resolution across the sports sector. While it applies to sport on its face, its real significance lies in how it operationalises governance, risk, and compliance. It shows how regulation in the Middle East is shifting from high-level policy intent to enforceable, evidence-based execution. That same regulatory model can be applied to other high-exposure industries.
The law demonstrates a move from GRC as a supporting function to GRC as a core driver of credibility and investment confidence. It embeds accountability through licensing, inspection, and sanctions, rather than relying on voluntary compliance or internal policy frameworks. This reflects a broader regional shift from awareness of governance principles to measurable execution.
Sport is highly visible, capital-intensive, and reputationally sensitive. Governance failures in sport are exposed quickly and publicly. That makes it an effective stress test for regulatory enforcement. When governance tightens in a sector like sport, it signals how regulators expect accountability, risk ownership, and compliance to function across the wider economy.
Key mechanisms include activity-based licensing across the sports value chain, formal inspection and adjudication processes, separation of disciplinary issues from regulatory non-compliance, and sanctions with real financial and operational impact. Importantly, it also establishes clear pathways for corporatization without wiping legacy liabilities, reinforcing the principle that accountability survives restructuring.
As organizations corporatize and scale, informal practices stop working. Legacy liabilities remain, operational complexity increases, and technology and third-party risk expand rapidly. Governance systems are often not mature enough to absorb this complexity immediately, which is why risk spikes before it stabilizes. This is where weak GRC models are exposed. As organizations corporatize and scale, informal practices stop working. Legacy liabilities remain, operational complexity increases, and technology and third-party risk expand rapidly. Governance systems are often not mature enough to absorb this complexity immediately, which is why risk spikes before it stabilizes. This is where weak GRC models are exposed.
Resources and further reading
[1] Alotaibi, I.M.S., Alhejaili, M.O.M., Badran, D.M.I. and Abdelhady, M.A. (2024) ‘Reassessing Saudi Arabia’s foreign investment laws: from protectionism to liberalization’, International Journal of Law and Management, 66(4), pp. 496–517.
[2] National Cyber Security Centre (2020) The Cyber Threat to Sports Organisations: Ensuring Fair Play Online. London: National Cyber Security Centre
[3] ProSight Financial Association (2025) The 2026 ProSight CRO Outlook Survey: Technology’s Promise and Peril. Chicago: ProSight Financial Association, in collaboration with Oliver Wyman.
