Saudi Arabia’s rise as a host nation of major sporting events has positioned the Middle East’s fastest-growing sports market as a global industry player. In response to its popularity on the international stage, the Kingdom is looking at ways to boost interest in its domestic sports at all levels, while rights-holder demand for data-led decision-making is inspiring new and improved digital transformation strategies throughout the Saudi sports sector.

As part of its strategic vision, including ambitions to grow national sports participation to 64 percent by 2030, the country’s Ministry of Sport (MOS) has been working closely with N3XT Sports to re-imagine the technological and data capabilities at the forefront of Saudi Arabia’s sporting evolution. Among its flagship projects, N3XT Sports collaborated with the MOS and its strategic regional partner, Link Development, to transform Riyadhi, the ministry’s core operating system for the past 30 years, into a fully scalable stakeholder platform, which unifies Saudi Arabia’s entire national sports ecosystem.

The project involved the design, development and integration of a best-in-class, modern National Sports Platform (NSP) – officially launched in November 2025 at the Government Digital Summit – to position the ministry as a digital and data-led organization and to help build towards a more active society. Among its key steps, N3XT Sports’ project team led a multi-phase process to assess the digital and data infrastructure of 85+ MOS stakeholders and to find the best solutions for integrating every stakeholder system within a centralized user experience (UX). 

This involved more than 50 discovery sessions with MOS employees and stakeholders to gain a comprehensive understanding of the ministry’s existing operational infrastructure. The process also included constructive data mapping of 14 systems used by the MOS and identifying its future aspirations for its multi-stakeholder ecosystem. As part of this process, N3XT Sports highlighted three primary areas of focus raised by MOS stakeholders which interacted with the old Riyadhi system and were used to help shape the current NSP’s frameworks. 

These areas included: 

• Upgrading systems infrastructure including data quality, personnel identification, data migration and integration, club and sport disciplines rules management and integrations with other programs in the sport ecosystem.
• Automating manual processes such as athlete and club registration, validation, data entry, approvals, sports event authorization, among the many other services provided by the ministry to clubs and federations.
• Transforming governance procedures around reporting, cross-sports engagement and data harmonization, change management, and digital upskilling.

“By consolidating its multiple stakeholder channels into a unified sports sector platform, designed to optimize stakeholder engagement and strategy delivery, this project represents a major milestone for Saudi’s burgeoning sports market,” says Hisham Shehabi, OLY, N3XT Sports COO and MENA Lead. “In allowing for a strong data ecosystem across stakeholders, N3XT Sports led the delivery of a focused operating model that combines Saudi’s public and private sports sectors, opening new avenues for high-level investment and cross-market collaboration.”

The challenge | Delivering data harmonization across stakeholders

Overseeing the entire Saudi sports sector and its national sports strategy, the decision of the MOS to upgrade its operational systems into a unified NSP came because of the need to gain more accurate representation of sport disciplines athletes, clubs and events results, and to enable sports-based systems that serve stakeholders – all of whom expect more support, services and access to accurate data from the MOS. 

Since the rollout of Saudi Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s economic, social, and cultural blueprint, the MOS has experienced:

• A higher number of stakeholder requests for data.
• Stakeholder-demand to design and implement new policies quickly.
• Improved management of steering committees and working groups across its high-profile “giga projects”.
• An advisory process for the best areas of sporting investment and funding allocation.
• A framework to develop new strategies for entities across the Saudi sports ecosystem.

At its core, the NSP will enhance the Saudi sports sector’s ability to scale with the ambitions of its national sports strategy and will seamlessly integrate with key MOS digital transformation initiatives. The aim is to create an effective Saudi sports sector through efficient use of resources and data-driven decision-making. These include initiatives to encourage a more active society and consolidate through data storytelling recognition of Saudi Arabia as an international sporting destination.

By adopting a “futureproof architecture” designed for scalability, agility and security at every level of the sector, the NSP will provide:

• A 360° view of all stakeholders to enhance engagement, personalize experiences, and inform decision-making.
• High data integrity management and secure data exchange between all stakeholder systems.
• Re-engineered processes which reduce the number of manual tasks and help increase operational efficiency.
• Access to a streamlined, frictionless UX for all stakeholders.

However, to achieve this, there were several barriers for the ministry to overcome, including:

• A lack of data harmonization throughout MOS Services provided to stakeholders through Riyadhi.
• Data silos and a lack of proper integration between various programs powering the ecosystem, including medical, governmental, sporting, among others.
• A new operating model needed to be rolled out across the ecosystem to ensure adoption and understanding of the new platform and the MOS re-engineered services.

The strategy | N3XT Sports assessments, benchmarks & delivery

To bring life to the ministry’s new operating model, N3XT Sports acted as the strategic program manager throughout the MOS transformation. This involved an initial benchmark exercise, which outlined existing industry multi-stakeholder operational systems. They included the Professional Footballers’ Association’s (PFA) fully integrated member-centric ecosystem, as well as the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) governing body’s centralized Global Cycling Information Management System. Both projects were delivered by N3XT Sports.

The MOS-project discovery phase also included a situational analysis of the pre-existing Riyadhi system architecture, operational processes, stakeholders, technology stack, and dataflows. Thereafter, a roadmap was created for delivering a unified stakeholder ecosystem which set out the NSP’s ideal future configuration, including re-engineered processes, new data architecture, improvements to the UX, and detailed plans for development. 

N3XT Sports supported the migration of every stakeholder’s legacy data and information to the centralized NSP,  including for athletes and coaches, federations, clubs, event organizers, among many more. This process leveraged Microsoft Dynamics as a core technology solution for integrating the entire NSP with a front-facing employee portal developed by Ejada, and a customer relationship management system (CRM) system which enables stakeholders to personalize the UX.

The impact | Building a ‘blueprint’ for multi-stakeholder data sharing

The new NSP within the ministry’s extensive Riyadhi stakeholder-services portal plays a crucial role in enabling Saudi Arabia’s national sports strategy. Featuring 200+ services, the NSP also serves the development of new sub-sector strategies and Saudi sport’s overall digital transformation strategy. The NSP is effectively the universal “operating system” of Saudi sports and an integral system for all sports stakeholders.

“The MOS has the opportunity to become an international leader among sports organizations and an integral system for all sports stakeholders in Saudi Arabia,” Hisham continues. “The new NSP system plays a critical role in the ministry for maintaining a cohesive and efficient sports ecosystem, seamlessly connecting athletes, coaches, referees, clubs, and national federations. This is truly a blueprint for data migration and digital transformation for sports organizations globally.”

According to N3XT Sports research for the Gulf edition of the company’s Digital Transformation Regional Market Report series, the digitalization and re-skilling of sports organizations in the Kingdom will benefit greatly from cross-market collaboration between domestic and overseas properties. While sport’s transformation forms an important pillar within Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, rights holders and governing bodies will focus on growing the digital literacy of their own workforce as well as efforts to diversify and develop their digital audiences.

Speaking on the subject, Abdulaziz Baeshen, CEO and Secretary General of the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee (SOPC), says: “Saudi Arabia’s commitment to sports is deeply rooted in our Vision 2030, where innovation and digital transformation redefine how we engage with fans and develop talent.”

Among the state’s flagship competitions, the Saudi Pro League (SPL), for example, is driving domestic fandom through the recruitment of global marquee signings. Notably, the majority of web traffic for the Kingdom’s top-flight men’s football competition (~56 percent) comes from overseas markets, according to the report’s findings. This highlights an opportunity for increasing Saudi football’s global appeal during the build-up to the 2034 FIFA World Cup.

Meanwhile, the research clearly demonstrates the role that data and digital transformation plays in participation and consumer growth throughout the Kingdom’s domestic sports ecosystem. This includes the potential to better connect the athlete pathway at all levels (i.e. ~47 percent of Olympic and Paralympic NGBs incorporate an athlete-member registration portal within their digital infrastructure) and deliver meaningful fan engagement powered by new data-informed experiences. At the time of reporting, 74 percent of NGBs owned a dedicated website, according to N3XT Sport research.

About N3XT Sports

N3XT Sports is a specialized agency in the sports industry that works with its clients on strategy development, operational and commercial support, and end-to-end data and digital transformation. The company has delivered hundreds of projects in various geographies, contributing to several topics related to sports commercialization, digitalization, development, investments, sports formats, performance, and more.

With its operational HQ in Valencia, Spain, and a regional office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, N3XT Sports is strategically positioned to drive innovation and excellence in the sports industry, working with key strategic partners to deliver comprehensive digital transformation solutions to the sports markets. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.