Saudi women’s football moves from grassroots to a state-backed professional league

Bloomberg spotlights the fast build-out of Saudi women’s football, tracing it through two players at Jeddah’s Al Ittihad: Bayan Sadagah, who went from playing with cousins at home to more than 20 caps for the national team, and England-born defender Ashleigh Plumptre, recruited out of England’s Women’s Super League and now in her fourth Saudi season. Both women’s stories follow the same arc — from no pitch to play on a decade ago to a professional league with state backing, foreign talent, and a development pipeline underneath it.

By the numbers: Licensed women’s coaches in the Kingdom have reached 1k from about 100 in 2021; the schools league now runs some 50k girls; women’s clubs are up more than 50% between 2021 and 2024; and title prize money has quadrupled since the Saudi Women’s Premier League’s first season in 2022, with Al-Nassr’s women banking SAR 2 mn for the 2025-26 crown.

On recruitment, the Kingdom is leaning on familiar Gulf economics: zero income tax stacked on expat packages to pull in overseas players on contracts reported at USD 60-120k a year, comfortably above a UK senior floor of c. GBP 40k.

The caveat? A nascent league still draws thin crowds, and the challenge now is converting the men’s game’s enormous domestic following into support for the women’s.