八年前，沙特女性被禁止进入足球场。如今，2017年因无处踢球而在吉达联合创办业余球队的巴扬·萨达加，身披吉达联合队球衣，在国家支持的职业联赛中征战，彭博社报道称。自2022年沙特女子超级联赛启动以来，奖金已翻了四倍，利雅得胜利俱乐部因夺得上赛季冠军获得200万里亚尔（约合53.1万美元）。尽管奖金仍远低于男子联赛，但各俱乐部正以免税薪资和外籍福利吸引外援。
Eight years ago, Saudi women were barred from football stadiums. Now Bayan Sadagah, who co-founded an amateur team in Jeddah in 2017 because there was nowhere to play, wears the jersey of Al-Ittihad in a state-backed professional league, Bloomberg reported. Prize money has quadrupled since the Saudi Women’s Premier League launched in 2022, and Riyadh’s Al-Nassr club took home 2 million riyals ($531,000) for last season’s title. While the paydays are still well short of those in the men’s league, clubs are luring foreign players with tax-free salaries and expat perks.
不过，上座率依然低迷；吉达联合队的英格兰后卫阿什利·普拉姆特雷一直在组织学生观赛。并非所有人都因此却步：美国科技投资人本·哈伯格去年收购了阿尔库鲁德俱乐部，他对Semafor表示，正在考虑收购一家女子俱乐部，押注女子足球未来有望超越男子足球。
Still, crowds remain thin; Al-Ittihad’s English defender Ashleigh Plumptre has been organizing school trips to the games. Not everyone is put off, however: American tech investor Ben Harburg, who bought Al Kholood last year, told Semafor he was weighing a buyout of a women’s club, betting the women’s game could one day outpace the men’s.