The Australian Soccer Player Running Saudi PIF’s SURJ Sports

GREAT TEW, England — Saudi Arabia is investing billions of dollars across soccer, MMA, and more, as part of its ambitious Vision 2030 plan. A key cog is SURJ Sports—a firm led by former Australian soccer player Danny Townsend that invests in sports domestically with the aim of strengthening the country’s sports ecosystem.

Townsend was appointed CEO of SURJ in 2023, a few months after its launch. He has overseen investments in Kings League (7-on-7 soccer), Professional Fighters League (MMA), and Professional Triathletes Organisation (triathlon). 

He’s well aware of the critics of the Kingdom who say SURJ is part of a “sportswashing” campaign to distract from its human rights record, including the fallout from the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Townsend doesn’t dodge the baggage, but insists there is “genuine commitment” from Saudi Arabia to use sports to drive real social and economic change at home, not just improve its image abroad. 

“This is the job of someone like me—I’m not a Saudi, but I live in Riyadh,” he told Front Office Sports on the sidelines of the IMG x RedBird Summit 2025, a three-day conference in the U.K. focused on the future of sports.

“I can legitimately sit here and talk about it because I live there, I see it, I breathe it, and it’s real,” he said. “There is genuine commitment to the long-term impact of sport, but more importantly, social change domestically.”

He also says sports is a “great vehicle” for making progress toward gender equality and getting more women to play sports.

A recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers on the sports industry outlook for the Middle East suggests there is substance behind Townsend’s vision. Sports has been integrated into girls school curriculum in the country, and more than 700,000 girls now participate in school soccer leagues, the report says. Since 2021, the Kingdom has experienced “remarkable growth metrics,” the report says, including a 195% increase in professional female athletes and a 56% increase in the number of women’s sports teams.

“This growth in women’s sports not only demonstrates the region’s progress in inclusivity but also contributes to a more diversified and dynamic sporting landscape, which is critical as the Middle East looks ahead to hosting transformative global events,” Mona AbouHana, a partner at PwC focused on the Middle East, says in the report.

In addition to the investments named above, the SURJ portfolio includes a stake in the global sports streaming platform DAZN, and the firm has reportedly held talks with World Athletics, the international governing body of track and field, about investing in a new company to manage the sport’s commercial rights.

“Probably the best is yet to come, if I’m honest,” Townsend tells FOS. “One of the challenges in our investment mandate is to try and invest in a sport—not just a stakeholder in the sport, but the sport itself. That takes time. It’s complicated.”

A common misconception is that SURJ is involved with LIV Golf. The investment in that organization was separate from SURJ; it sits within the PIF.

“LIV was established before SURJ,” Townsend says. “We are not involved. That’s a question I get quite a bit.”

Another question he often fields is whether SURJ will follow the trend of investing in pro sports teams, particularly in the major U.S. sports leagues, where valuations are soaring and the need for capital has led to leagues loosening their rules around who can invest (the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL all now allow some form of private-equity investment, for example). Townsend is quick to draw boundaries.

“I’m not interested in U.S. sports teams,” he tells FOS. “Not because they’re bad investments, but because our mandate is return on capital and driving the sports economy in the Kingdom. I can’t pick up the Minnesota Timberwolves and move them to Riyadh.”

Editors’ note: RedBird IMI, of which RedBird Capital Partners is a joint venture partner, is the primary owner of Front Office Sports.