“Call it whatever you want to call it, but this (vision 2030) is a strategy that has been launched, that is ongoing, that is changing social life within the Kingdom. [Sports] contribution to the GDP of Saudi Arabia in 2016 was SAR2.4 billion ($640 billion), today it is SAR6.5 billion ($1.7 billion) in 2019. All of our programs today that we do in the ministry of sports and the Federation is all about diversity and inclusion. Things are changing and things are changing to the positive and we have to make sure that it changes in the right way.”
-HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, answering a question on what the Kingdom can do more to prove the repeated western media accusations of “sports washing” wrong. [Arab News interview]