Bringing the world’s biggest events to the Gulf was the start. The bigger prize is using storytelling, broadcast and technology to make the millions who never enter the stadium feel it too.
I still remember how London felt. When I think back to competing at the London 2012 Olympic Games, I don’t just remember the sport. There was an energy across the city that was impossible to escape. As an athlete competing for Team GB at a home Olympics, that feeling was magnified.
I remember arriving at the Olympic Village, hearing roars from nearby stadiums and then spotting our then Prime Minister, David Cameron, walking by with other ‘important-looking political people’. This, in my narrow view of the world, aged 22 and a final-year politics student, was the place to be. Nothing else mattered. The world had stopped for the competition of a lifetime.
I had to wait, though. Full of nerves and anticipation, battling both excitement and fear, I didn’t compete until the final day. On 12 August 2012, I fought a battle against myself and the 35 other competitors in the women’s Modern Pentathlon, ultimately winning an Olympic silver medal.
But my memories extend far beyond the competition itself. London 2012 felt uniquely London. A moment in time for Great Britain and its home Olympics, under the mantra: Inspire a Generation.
From London to the Gulf
Fourteen years on, now living in the GCC and watching this region become increasingly influential in global sport, I keep coming back to that experience. Attracting the world’s biggest sporting properties is only part of the opportunity. The bigger question is: how do you make people feel where they are?
The greatest sporting events don’t feel as though they’ve simply been dropped into a destination. They absorb the culture around them. The people, food, music, architecture and character of a place become part of the sporting experience.
For the GCC this is becoming an increasingly important part of its sporting ambition. When an international visitor travels to Riyadh, Doha, Abu Dhabi or Dubai for sport, they aren’t simply consuming a competition. They’re experiencing a destination. What did they eat? What did they hear? Who did they meet? What surprised them? What story did they take home?
For brands and marketers, this creates a much bigger canvas than traditional sponsorship. A logo beside the field of play creates visibility. Helping create the experience around it can build affinity. But there is one enormous difference between London 2012 and the sporting landscape today: the audience is no longer solely defined by who is in the stadium.
The audience is no longer in the stadium
In 2012, social media was emerging, but the digital sporting ecosystem we know today simply didn’t exist. Streaming, social platforms, apps and athlete-led content have fundamentally changed how audiences experience sport.
Today, you can experience a competition in Riyadh without ever setting foot in Saudi Arabia.
The Gulf isn’t only creating an experience for the thousands of people inside an arena. It is creating one for potentially millions watching around the world. It is also about those who don’t travel and how they feel it too.
This is where media and storytelling become fundamental to the commercial value of sport. Presenters, pundits and commentators are not simply there to explain the result. At their best, they translate an experience. They take the noise, tension and emotion of an arena and carry it through a screen. They give context to a performance; explain why a moment matters and communicate something about the place in which it is happening.
Digital platforms can take audiences further: behind the scenes, into the culture surrounding an event and closer to the athletes themselves. For brands, this changes the proposition. Sponsorship is no longer simply about being visible where the sport is happening. The opportunity is to become part of how that experience is felt, shared and remembered whether the audience is inside a stadium in Riyadh or watching on a phone in London. Done well, sport becomes a window into a destination.
The stories beneath the headlines
Living in Saudi Arabia, I see the human stories beneath the international headlines about investment, global stars and major events: families engaging with new sports, growing sporting communities, new facilities and children growing up surrounded by a rapidly changing sporting landscape.
Those stories matter because ultimately, sport’s greatest asset isn’t a stadium, a broadcasting right or even an athlete. It is an emotion. London 2012 taught me that as an athlete. Working in the media has reinforced it from the other side of the camera.
The Gulf has already demonstrated that it can bring some of the world’s biggest sporting events here. Now comes the opportunity to create experiences that feel unmistakably of this region and use storytelling, broadcasting and technology to allow millions who may never enter the stadium to experience them too.
For brands, that is the real invitation: not to buy a place beside the action, but to help build the experience – and tell the story that carries it to every screen.
The question is no longer simply: how do we bring the world’s biggest sporting events to the Gulf? It is: how do we make the world feel like it is here?
(Samantha Murray is a sports journalist and broadcast contributor based in Riyadh, contributing to Al Arabiya English. A former Olympian, she won modern pentathlon silver for Team GB at London 2012.)
