The Vision That Promised to Reinvent a Kingdom
When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled Vision 2030 nearly a decade ago, it sounded less like a policy blueprint and more like a fever dream. A zero-carbon megacity stretching 170 kilometres across the desert with no roads, no cars, and mirrored walls visible from space. A $500-billion entertainment hub. Golf tournaments, Premier League soccer clubs, and Formula 1 races bought up like collectibles.
The goal was audacious: transform one of the world's most oil-dependent economies into a diversified, tourism-driven global powerhouse — all before the planet stops needing petroleum.
But the scale of ambition may have always been the problem.
Reality Bites
Reports from inside the kingdom paint a starkly different picture from the glossy promotional videos. NEOM — the centrepiece of Vision 2030 — has reportedly seen significant project scaling back. Timelines have slipped, budgets have ballooned, and some components appear to have been quietly shelved or dramatically reduced in scope.
The issue isn't just logistics. Oil revenues, which still fund the vast majority of Saudi government spending, have come under pressure from fluctuating global prices and an OPEC+ environment that limits production. The math underpinning Vision 2030 was always optimistic — it assumed oil would remain lucrative enough to bankroll the transition away from oil.
A Spending Spree With Consequences
Saudi Arabia's global acquisition strategy — sports franchises, entertainment companies, luxury tourism infrastructure — was never just about fun. It was a calculated soft-power play designed to reshape the kingdom's international image and attract foreign investment and tourists.
Some of that has worked. The Saudi Pro League drew global football stars. LIV Golf upended professional golf's power structure. F1 races in Jeddah now attract tens of thousands of international visitors.
But buying attention and building a sustainable economy are different things. Foreign direct investment has grown, but not at the pace Vision 2030 projected. Unemployment among young Saudis — the demographic the whole plan is supposed to serve — remains a challenge. And many of the headline megaprojects have struggled to attract the private-sector co-investment the plan assumed would follow government spending.
What Comes Next
The kingdom is recalibrating. Officials have begun quietly adjusting deadlines and scaling back some of the more fantastical elements of the plan. Insiders describe a shift from spectacle-first thinking toward projects with clearer near-term economic returns.
Whether Vision 2030 survives contact with reality in any meaningful form remains to be seen. Saudi Arabia is not going anywhere — it still controls enormous oil wealth and has genuine strategic importance. But the dream of a post-oil kingdom built on megacities and global sports franchises looks considerably more complicated than it did when MBS first unveiled it to the world.
The vision, it turns out, was always easier to sell than to build.
Source: BBC World News
