Sports
The Gulf's Sporting Decade: What F1, Boxing and LIV Golf Actually Bought
Billions poured into golf, motorsport, boxing and tennis. As the numbers come due, the Gulf's sports strategy is quietly being rewritten.
Sep 10, 2025
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22 stories for“Gulf sport”
Sports
Saudi Arabia 2034: Inside the Gulf's Long Game in World Sport
A record-high bid score, five host cities and a 92,000-seat stadium. Saudi Arabia's World Cup win is one piece of a much bigger plan.
Mar 14, 2025
Sports
The Asian Games Open in Nagoya on Saturday: 15,000 Athletes, 43 Sports, 469 Golds, and a Route to Los Angeles 2028
The second-largest multi-sport event on Earth returns to Japan for the first time since Hiroshima in 1994. The ceremony is at Paloma Mizuho Stadium at six on Saturday evening. What is new, where the swimming is, and why the Gulf's squads matter this time.
Sep 15, 2026
Sports
New Rules Turned Formula One Upside Down: Antonelli Leads, Verstappen Is Sixth, and Two Gulf Races Are Gone
Twelve rounds into the most significant regulation change in a decade, the four time champion is more than a hundred points adrift and a driver in his second season leads by fifty. The war removed two races from the calendar as well.
Aug 24, 2026
Sports
The Saudi Pro League Is Selling More Players Than It Buys
With the season opening on 13 August, outgoing transfers outnumber incoming ones by a wide margin and summer spending sits far below the headline years. That is a strategy shift, not a slowdown.
Aug 8, 2026
Sports
Dubai Hosts Every Ball of the Women's Asia Cup This Month
Fifteen matches, eight teams, one ground. The Women's T20 Asia Cup runs at Dubai International Stadium from 28 August, and the single-venue format is a deliberate choice rather than a compromise.
Aug 16, 2026
Diving
Freediving in Dahab: Why the Whole Sport Ends Up Here
Deep water a short swim from shore, no boat, no current and warm all year. Dahab's geography explains its status, and the same geography is why the Blue Hole has the reputation it has.
Aug 9, 2026
Sports
Bednarek Did the Sprint Double, Dos Santos Ran 45.98, and the First Ultimate Championship Ended With a US Sweep
Three nights in Budapest, no heats, prize money only. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden won the 100 and closed the meet with a world-leading 21.47, Kenny Bednarek beat Oblique Seville and won the 200, Duplantis cleared 6.20. Every winner, and what the format proved.
Sep 15, 2026
Sports
The Saudi Pro League Spent About 230 Million Euros This Summer, and the Biggest Deal Was a Winger From West Ham
The seventieth season began on 13 August. Crysencio Summerville to Al Hilal at 64.5 million euros is the summer's largest move, and the shape of the spending says more about the league's direction than the total does.
Aug 24, 2026
Sports
There Is a Three Week Bicycle Race Going On and This Desk Has Never Once Mentioned It
The Vuelta a Espana runs from 22 August to 13 September, 21 stages and 3,310 kilometres from Monaco to Granada. If you have never followed a grand tour, the thing to understand is that it is not really a race. It is twenty one of them.
Sep 2, 2026
Sports
The World Number One Has Withdrawn and the Defending Champion Has Not Played in Four Months
Jannik Sinner is out of the US Open with a knee injury. Carlos Alcaraz arrives as defending champion with no warm up tournament behind him. The draw is made on 27 August and the men's title is genuinely hard to call.
Aug 24, 2026
Sports
Expected Goals, Explained Without the Spreadsheet
The number on the broadcast graphic is simpler than it looks and more limited than its critics admit. What xG measures, what it cannot see, and how to read it over a season rather than a night.
Aug 9, 2026
Sports
There Are So Many English Clubs in the Champions League That the Draw Needs a Special Rule
Thursday's draw in Monaco has a provision that exists for one reason: with Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City all in the top pot, every non-English club in that pot must be handed two English ties or the draw cannot be completed.
Aug 26, 2026
Travel
The World's Tourists Went Somewhere Else This Year, and the Gulf Is Counting the Difference
UN Tourism has global arrivals up two per cent in the first quarter and Middle East arrivals down fourteen. Bahrain lost more than a quarter of its visitors. Egypt, three hours away, gained sixteen per cent.
Aug 26, 2026
Business
Paramount-Warner Wins EU Approval, but Not a Finish Line
Brussels cleared the entertainment mega-deal after a distribution concession, but a US states’ lawsuit and questions over Gulf backing still block certainty.
Jul 23, 2026
Diving
Freediving in the Red Sea and the Gulf: Where People Actually Train
Dahab's Blue Hole draws freedivers year round for a reason: shore access to real depth, warm water, forgiving conditions and an established training community.
Nov 14, 2025
Design
Gulf Architecture's Bold Decade: GCC Skylines Transform
Neom, Qiddiya, Red Sea Project. The GCC is building at a scale that rewrites the architectural conversation. These aren't buildings. They're competing visions for the future.
Jan 14, 2026
Health
Nobody Ever Found the Study Behind Eight Glasses of Water a Day, Because There Is Not One
A physiologist went looking for the origin of the rule in 2002 and came back empty. What the reference intakes actually say, why food and coffee count, how much the number varies between people, and when in a Gulf summer it genuinely matters.
Sep 6, 2026
Business
Saudi Arabia and US EXIM Sign a $15 Billion Understanding
The kingdom's sovereign fund and America's export credit agency have agreed a memorandum worth up to fifteen billion dollars. What it is not is a committed investment.
Aug 6, 2026
Diving
DAN's Safety Guidance, Condensed: What the Research Body Actually Recommends
Divers Alert Network is not a training agency and issues no certifications. It collects the injury data, then publishes guidance based on it. Here is that guidance, in the order it matters.
Aug 12, 2026
Lifestyle
The Quiet Disappearance of Places to Sit Without Buying Something
Home is first, work is second, and the third place is everywhere else you can exist without a transaction. In fast-built cities that category has been squeezed hardest, and people feel it before they can name it.
Aug 8, 2026
Diving
Deep Dive Dubai: 60 Metres of Water and No Weather at All
The world's deepest pool holds 14 million litres at a constant 30C, with a sunken city at the bottom. What it removes from diving turns out to be the interesting part.
Aug 6, 2026
