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A consortium that includes Cristiano Ronaldo and RedBird Capital Partners is in talks to buy a stake in Al Nassr from the Public Investment Fund, Portugal’s A Bola reports. The paper put the group at five — Ronaldo, RedBird CEO Gerry Cardinale, former club president Ibrahim Al Muhaidib, Saudi Media Company (SMC) Chairman Mohammed Al Khuraiji, and Hozon Holding Chairman and CEO Sharaf Al Hariri — each committing at least USD 100 mn, for some USD 500 mn it described as a capital injection into the club.
Ronaldo wants in as a co-owner. Asharq Business, which also reported the talks, cited a source close to the negotiations saying Ronaldo is invoking a clause in his contract that gives him priority on 20% of Al Nassr should it open to private investment, and that the buyers are aiming to close before the season ends.
He’s already in business with one of the named investors. Ronaldo owns 25% of Spain’s UD Almeria through his CR7 Sports vehicle; Almeria is controlled by Al Khuraiji’s SMC Group. Seen that way, the consortium looks like the same Saudi-media network extending its football holdings, with its most famous employee turned shareholder.
Why it matters: Al Nassr is the next test of PIF’s plan to hand its football clubs to private capital. The fund took 75% of the Big Four clubs in 2023, spent two years importing stars, and has since pulled back. Sport is absent from its 2026-2030 priorities, LIV Golf funding is gone, and league-wide summer transfer spend fell to c. USD 57 mn from the USD 957 mn Deloitte counted in 2023.
PIF cleared the runway in August, when the Sports Ministry moved the 25% held by Al Nassr’s nonprofit foundation to the fund, taking it to 100%. That collapses the cap table to a single seller, the same tidy-up that preceded the sale of 70% of Al Hilal to Kingdom Holding for USD 320 mn.
But Al Nassr isn’t in the best spot. Compared to Al Hilal, which generated record revenue of USD 340 mn, Al Nassr is a harder sell with debt north of SAR 800 mn from last season’s spending, and a summer spent under a league-imposed transfer freeze after net outlays of EUR 434 mn over five years, the tenth-highest in world football. Against that, the USD 500 mn could be a recapitalization — money going into the club to cover the hole — as much as a price paid to PIF for equity.
Mind the gap (between the headlines). Italy’s Sportitalia describes RedBird’s approach as preliminary and indirect with no binding agreement and says Cardinale is weighing Al Nassr as one option in a multi-club model built around Milan.
