Cristiano Ronaldo fans at a loss with no legal way of watching Al-Nassr debut

04 January 2023 , 19:00

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Cristiano Ronaldo's matches for Al-Nassr won't be available to millions (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia has generated a wave of unhappy and confused fans, as well as a torrent of headlines.

“@btsport can you please acquire the rights to broadcast the Saudi Pro League of football in the UK so that we can keep watching Ronaldo playing?,” wrote one fan on Twitter. Another, based in Ghana, pleaded : “@DStv @SuperSportTV please make arrangements to broadcast Saudi pro league, we need to watch @Cristiano this year....Thank you.”

Google searches reveal a similar picture, with Ronaldo fans across the world desperately looking for a way they can watch their hero, who may be made to wait for his Al-Nassr debut, with a Football Association ban for smashing a fan’s phone ruling him out of Thursday’s match against Al-Ta’ee.

Ronaldo was officially unveiled to Al-Nassr fans in Riyadh on Tuesday at the Mrsool Park Stadium. Supporters paid 15 Saudi Riyals (around £3) to attend the ceremony, which saw Ronaldo hit back at his critics, list the other offers he turned down and explain his reasoning for moving to Saudi Arabia.

Once his ban has been served, he will be ready to begin earning his £173million-a-year contract by playing some football. But unless you happen to live in the Middle East or North Africa and pay to watch the Saudi Pro League via the Saudi Sports Company rights deal, or you live in North American and are willing to shell out $18 for a monthly subscription to streaming platform Shahid, you will not be able to watch it via a legal means.

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Cristiano Ronaldo is a major coup for Saudi Arabia (Mohammed Saad/Getty Images)

Ronaldo has 528m followers on Instagram, 159m on Facebook and 106m on Twitter. His move to Al-Nassr helped the club’s Instagram account balloon from 887,000 followers on December 29 to more than 9m at the time of writing. That is a lot of disappointed people.

At present, the state-controlled Saudi Sports Company owns the broadcast rights to the Saudi Professional League (SPL), Saudi Arabia’s King’s Cup and the Saudi Super Cup. They have not yet struck a deal to broadcast Ronaldo to the world.

And despite having landed one of the greatest players of all time, they may still struggle to sell their product, according to Dan Harraghy, a senior analyst at Ampere Analysis.

“I think they (Saudi Pro League chiefs) will go out and speak with broadcasters in as many markets as they can with this new product, now they’ve got Cristiano,” he told Mirror Football.

“One of the key setbacks for them is that it’s still only one player. The attraction is clearly there, but the rest of the league is still a very small, very niche league comparatively. I think broadcasters will be a little bit reluctant to spend so much because of one player.

“They might be interested if there’s increased investment in other players from Europe. They might wait to see if this is a trend that continues for the next few years. For example, we’ve seen big players go to China and Qatar before and there’s no real evidence that any major deals have been struck with broadcasters in Europe on the back of those.”

Cristiano Ronaldo trained with Al-Nassr for the first time on Tuesday (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

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Harraghy expects that those Ronaldo fans looking for their fix may well turn to illegal streams instead. “Piracy is what you’d expect,” he said. “And because it’s not impacting broadcasters outside of Saudi Arabia, because they don’t have the rights anyway, it’s not necessarily impacting the league itself. It’s more of a promotion. They might not love piracy, but it’s not such a bad thing for them.”

Ronaldo has been signed by Al-Nassr to play football for their team, who are managed by Rudi Garcia and sit top of the Saudi Pro League. But he is also much more than that: he is a marketing tool for Saudi Arabia generally, and for the country’s bid to host the 2030 World Cup more specifically.

Cristiano Ronaldo's matches won't be visible to many of his fans (Khalid Alhaj/Getty Images)

And he can still serve that purpose without a broadcasting deal. Harraghy believes one video on Ronaldo’s Instagram is worth more than a broadcast deal. “That is going to raise so much more awareness for the league and get so many more eyeballs than a whole-season broadcast deal,” he said of the social media account.

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“I think a substantial broadcasting deal is probably a long way down the line, if it were to happen. For now, it’s about raising awareness and getting as many eyeballs on any clips they can to promote what is essentially a sponsorship of the Saudi league.”

So, unless Ronaldo’s move to Riyadh sparks a trend of copycat transfers, his fans are going to have to make do with social media clips and illicit streams for the time being.

Felix Keith