Yasir Al-Rumayyan has spoken about the PIF’s ambitions for 2030 – Fans should be excited

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Newcastle United Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan has been speaking about the PIF’s wealth and plans to expand in the future.

In a short clip circulating on Twitter, The Newcastle Chairman and Governor of the PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan has boasted about the growth of the Public Investment Fund since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control of the fund in 2015.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Summit in Miami on Thursday, Al-Rumayyan said: “PIF when the Crown Prince became the Chairman back in 2015, we had $150billion [approximately £100billion based on 2015 conversion rates] assets under management, today we’re around $650billion [£525.6billion] and our target by the end of 2025, we want to go to $1trillion. By the end of 2030, we’re hoping to between somewhere between $2-3trillion.”

The figures Yasir Al-Rumayyan are talking are beyond comprehension

Personally, I cannot compute what those numbers mean in reality. Here’s a YouTube video using grains of rice to demonstrate how much a billion is. It goes on to show what 120billion would look like, now imagine that pile of rice five times over and that’s where we are now. Double that pile and you’re at 2025’s goal then triple that again in five years. That’s a LOT of rice.

So it looks like Newcastle‘s title of “Richest Club In World Football” while technically incorrect, is not under threat. A more appropriate title would be “Football Club With The Richest Backers In World Football” but that’s not as catchy.

Bottom line is that once Newcastle United get to a point where they’re generating revenue on a similar scale to Manchester City and Chelsea, there will be no stopping us. If it weren’t for Financial Fair Play, the possibilities would be literally endless.

Imagine if FFP wasn’t a thing

One key thing to note here, however, is that what Al-Rumayyan said is “assets under management”, so that’s not a pot of cash, that’s businesses, properties, sports teams etc. That’s not to say that they don’t have a huge pot of money to use as well, of course. Also, that doesn’t mean that Newcastle United have access to this vast wealth as a matter of course, you don’t get to that level of wealth by being frivolous.

But if we use that rice video analogy again, Newcastle could be handed a huge bowl of rice and the PIF wouldn’t even notice it was gone.

We’ve seen already that Yasir Al-Rumayyan is more than happy to sanction spending when it’s needed. However, our board are very wary of the FFP restrictions, so as that becomes less of an issue, I don’t foresee any problem with the PIF sanctioning more spending to match it.