Saudi Arabia Hosts IPL Auction: What It Means for Sports Tourism
Skift Take
Last week, Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah hosted this year’s player auction for the Indian Premier League (IPL) — the highly popular annual cricket tournament in India. While Saudi Arabia is only hosting the auction, it is part of its larger strategy to bring big sporting activities to the country.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's sports minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki bin Faisal said that over the past four years, about 2.5 million tourists visited the kingdom for 80 global sporting events.
During the IPL auction, the 10 franchise teams bid for participating players from across the globe.
While IPL has always been hosted in India, it has been hosted outside the country three times — in 2009, it was in South Africa, and then in UAE in 2020 and 2021, held acros
