The high-adrenaline sailing league founded by former America’s Cup winner and Oracle founder Larry Ellison and champion sailor Sir Russell Coutts returns to the UAE this weekend for the final race of the season.

The Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix will see 12 national teams race their foiling catamarans at speeds topping 100 kph (62 mph) off the city’s Corniche in a winner-takes-all showdown for the trophy and a $2 million cash prize.

The Grand Final comes as the nascent league broke a 31-year-old viewership record set by the 1992 America’s Cup last weekend, with almost 3.5 million U.S. fans tuning in to watch “The Race to Abu Dhabi” on CBS, making it the most-watched sailing race in U.S. history.

“This is huge for SailGP and proof that nation-vs-nation, high-octane sailing has mainstream appeal,” Coutts, SailGP’s CEO, said.

The record is a boon for Abu Dhabi and SailGP sponsor Mubadala, as the Gulf and its sovereign wealth funds continue to splash billions into U.S. sports in a competitive pursuit of soft power, prestige and investment returns from far-reaching media rights deals.

Launched in 2019 and rapidly expanding to 12 teams and events, SailGP has attracted a host of high-profile competitors and investors, including Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and F1 champion Sebastian Vettel.

Qiddiya officials say the $40 billion “city for play” project will rely comfortably on Saudi sovereign funding for years, despite recent calls for greater involvement from the private sector.

“We recognise that creating a brand-new city from scratch in the desert is a sovereign undertaking,” Qiddiya Investment Company Vice Chairman Morgan Parker said at the Cityscape conference held in Riyadh last week.

He added that building a city the size of Las Vegas will “take some time.” Qiddiya is located outside Riyadh with a motor racing track, 12 theme parks, 40 sports venues and 27 entertainment attractions.

The city expects to develop around 120 hotels with 41,000 rooms over the next 20 years.

The Six Flags Qiddiya amusement park held its soft-opening earlier this month, with an official launch expected on New Year’s Eve. 

Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills and Italy’s Coima will jointly invest $463 million to transform Rome’s Guido Reni Barracks in the Flaminio district, as cash-rich UAE developers increasingly eye overseas projects.

The Rome initiative builds on Eagle Hills’ expanding European footprint, including its €200 million restoration of Venice’s Hotel Des Bains and a recently announced €3 billion waterfront development in the Latvian capital, Riga.

Founded by Emirati businessman Mohamed Alabbar, the company now operates more than 35 luxury hotels and leads major mixed-use projects across 14 countries.

Alabbar also recently purchased the historic Castello di Antognolla in Umbria for $55 million to convert it into a luxury resort and wellness center.

Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, fresh off a $55 billion takeover of Electronic Arts, is getting ready for its next blockbuster deal.

The PIF-backed firm, centerpiece of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s strategy for dominance in the global gaming market, is in talks with TikTok owner ByteDance to buy its Shanghai Moonton Technology unit, Bloomberg reports.

Along with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Savvy was backed by investors Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners on the EA deal.

If Savvy succeeds in buying Moonton, the acquisition would add one of the world’s most popular mobile developers – creator of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang – to a portfolio that already includes some of gaming’s biggest console and PC properties.

Extending control from popular titles to fast-growing mobile hits could help Saudi Arabia influence how and what billions of gamers play. Bloomberg notes, however, that negotiations are still at an early stage, and as with an earlier failed attempt, the deal could unravel again.

The Trump family’s $1.5 billion crypto deal with Canada’s Alt5 Sigma is going south.

Alt5 CEO Peter Tassiopoulos was suspended after the merger and the company has warned employees it may face lawsuits and regulatory probes, The Information reports.

The merger, announced in August and signed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on behalf of their company, World Liberty Financial, was meant to boost both firms through a new Trump-linked WLFI cryptocurrency.

Eric Trump earlier touted the digital coin at the TOKEN 2049 conference in Dubai before it was first generated.

Now, Alt5’s stock has fallen 75% on the Nasdaq and the WLF token has plunged by nearly half its value.

Momentum, the company behind the UAE’s only licensed lottery, has launched two online betting and casino platforms, TrueWin and Dream Island, Arabian Gulf Business Insights reports.

Both sites offer casino games and sports betting and are already live.

Their launch comes as the UAE weighs a historic policy shift that could generate an estimated $6.6 billion in annual gaming revenue.

Both TrueWin and Dream Island were registered in March 2023, several months before the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority was established.

It comes as the UAE Lottery announced on Tuesday that it would be revamping its flagship Lucky Draw, just weeks after handing out its first Dh100 million ($27 million) grand prize. 

Aramco Ventures, a VC arm of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, is opening an office in Paris to oversee hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in artificial intelligence planned across Europe.

While heavy red-tape has hindered Europe’s ability to compete on the scale of the U.S. and China, it has produced some successful AI startups, including Paris-based Mistral, a maker of large language models, which counts Sanabil, the tech arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among its investors.

Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter, Aramco’s Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation, highlighted Aramco’s growing collaborations with French companies and plans for deeper investment in next-generation technologies across Europe at the Adopt AI International Summit in Paris this week.

On Sunday, French quantum computing start-up Pasqal installed its most powerful system at Aramco’s datacenter in Dhahran.

Another part of Aramco’s VC arm, Wa’ed Ventures, was an early backer in Pasqal’s 2023 funding round and has been working with the company to adapt its technology to the kingdom’s industrial needs.

“This will expand quantum computing expertise in the region, and accelerate quantum applications in the energy, materials, and industrial sectors,” Al-Khowaiter said. “We are committed to our partnerships here, and also to the infectious spirit of innovation that surrounds the French tech industry.”

Abu Dhabi’s state oil company ADNOC is moving ahead with a $150 billion capital spending plan for the next five years aimed at boosting growth and meeting rising global energy demand.

During a meeting in Abu Dhabi on Monday, which was chaired by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, the company’s board approved its 2026-2030 spending program, noting that its oil reserves have grown to 120 billion stock tank barrels, up from 113 billion. Natural gas reserves have also increased.

ADNOC is focused on “leveraging advanced technologies and AI to future-proof our business,” Group CEO Dr. Sultan Al Jaber told the board. “We will continue to transform how we create value at speed and scale, driving a new era of intelligence-powered performance, operating at the intersection of AI and energy, to deliver growth for the UAE.”

ADNOC reported that its investment arm, XRG, has grown in value to about $151 billion since its November 2024 launch and will target global deals in chemicals, natural gas, and renewables as part of the UAE’s energy diversification efforts.

The board also approved a new operating company for its Ghasha offshore concession, which is expected to produce 1.8 billion cubic feet of gas and 150,000 barrels of oil and condensates per day.