Eight years ago, Saudi women were barred from football stadiums. Now Bayan Sadagah, who co-founded an amateur team in Jeddah in 2017 because there was nowhere to play, wears the jersey of Al-Ittihad in a state-backed professional league, Bloomberg reported. Prize money has quadrupled since the Saudi Women’s Premier League launched in 2022, and Riyadh’s Al-Nassr club took home 2 million riyals ($531,000) for last season’s title. While the paydays are still well short of those in the men’s league, clubs are luring foreign players with tax-free salaries and expat perks.
Still, crowds remain thin; Al-Ittihad’s English defender Ashleigh Plumptre has been organizing school trips to the games. Not everyone is put off, however: American tech investor Ben Harburg, who bought Al Kholood last year, told Semafor he was weighing a buyout of a women’s club, betting the women’s game could one day outpace the men’s.
— Ed Clowes