Derby County’s potential Saudi investment raises questions | OneFootball

The potential involvement of Turki Al-Sheikh at Derby County will be a litmus test for how the Independent Football Regulator will govern the game.

Derby County have the possibility of significant financial investment on their horizon, but the timing of this news coincides with a seismic change in the way in which English football is governed.

All things considered, the 2025-26 season was a reminder of the potential of Derby County. Having finished the previous season in 19th place in the Championship and only surviving the possibility of relegation on the last day, John Eustace proved to be a transformative choice as the club's manager, taking them to 8th place in the table and keeping them in the hunt for a possible play-off place until the final round of fixtures.

This raises the question of whether Eustace can take them a step further, next time around. Derby will have been watching with interest the precedent set by Coventry City, who emerged from the worst period in their history to clamber back up to the Championship and, with the right management and sensible investment in the team, return to the Premier League for the first time in a quarter of a century. If the Sky Blues can do it, Derby may well think, why can't we?

One potential answer to that question is financial investment. Derby County are one of the majority of Championship clubs who do not receive Premier League parachute payments, and are therefore at a considerable disadvantage in comparison with those who do. But while the news that the club are in negotiations with the Saudi boxing promoter Turki Al-Sheikh has caused excitement among the club's fans, it is happening at a time of great change in the way in which the game is being governed in England.

Al-Sheikh interest in Derby County described as "a defining test for English football's new independent regulator"

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Turki Al-Sheikh is close to the Saudi Arabian royal family, and his potential involvement at Pride Park has already drawn criticism from the human rights charity Amnesty International. The BBC have reported Amnesty's campaigns director Felix Jakens as having described Al-Sheikh's interest in Derby County as, "a defining test for English football's new independent regulator."

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) took control of the governance of football in England and Wales on the 1st May 2026, and among their powers will be "stronger powers to stop rogue owners."

The IFR confirmed in September 2025 that they would be overhauling the Owners & Directors Test, which verifies whether new club owners or other people of significant control are suitable to run clubs, though whether this will cover as broad a base as Al-Sheikh remains open to question.

Jakens added: "Will it allow a senior representative of a government directly implicated in mass human rights violations to take control of one of the country's oldest football clubs? The regulator must ask these questions and answer them transparently", but there has been no formal confirmation of how far those powers will stretch, although it is already understood that their rules will apply to existing owners and directors as well as those coming into the game for the first time.

The BBC reported a statement issued by the IFR which stated: "Good owners, running clubs effectively, will experience minimal impact. However, if the IFR has concerns about the suitability of an incumbent, it will be able to take action." But exactly how that will be interpreted remains unknown, and the devil will be in the detail of how they choose to interpret the remit that they've been given.

The IFR response to Al-Sheikh's interest in Derby will be a litmus test for how they'll treat sportswashing

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Sportswashing, the practice of using sports to improve the reputation of governments, corporations, or individuals that are facing criticism or controversy, has been a growing concern within English football over much of the last two decades. The involvement of the United Arab Emirates at Manchester City and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) at Newcastle United came in for widespread criticism, with both countries having been accused of multiple cases of human rights violations.

There is little doubt that, within the byzantine world of Saudi Arabian politics, Turki Al-Sheikh wields considerable influence, and Amnesty International state that Al-Sheikh's involvement at Derby County "would mark a significant expansion of Saudi Arabia's footprint in English football." He's known to be in the inner circle of the country's de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman.

Turki Al-Sheikh has previously been involved in boxing, which has been widely interpreted as another form of sportswashing, but whether this is all considered close enough to the Saudi government remains unclear, while there has been no comment made by the IFR over how they may feel about the influence of Abu Dhabi at Manchester City or the Saudi PIF at Newcastle.

To fall foul of the new regulator, he'd need to do so on both counts. The IFR would have to agree that the involvement of quasi-governmental bodies at football clubs in this country is beyond the pale, and that Al-Sheikh is close enough to Bin Salman to fall foul of any adjudication on that matter. The football governance pressure group Fair Game believe that the remit of the IFR as published doesn't go far enough on the subject of sportswashing.

And all new investment can come with a degree of risk. One of the big ironies of Al-Sheikh seeking to get involved at Derby County at this particular time is that it comes just a few weeks after the Saudi PIF confirmed that they would be pulling funding for their breakaway LIV golf tour because of the mounting costs of hosting the World Expo in 2023 and the World Cup in 2034. Manchester City still face 115 charges from the Premier League over alleged rule breaking between 2009 and 2018.

Turki Al Sheikh was connected to a possible move to get involved at Bristol City in 2025, but this came to nothing, though his interest in becoming involved at an English football club is clear, as is the appeal of Derby County. This is, after all, a club who have been the champions of England twice, in 1972 and 1975, were one of the original twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888, and who gave one of the most celebrated managers of all-time, Brian Clough, his first big job in the game.

The ultimate question will come down to whether the IFR feel that the risks associated with sportswashing outweigh the value of any investment that he may put into the club, and whether they feel that the very heritage above could be threatened by his involvement at Pride Park. To a great extent, early cases such as this will serve as a litmus test for how far the new body will go.

Derby County came close to going under earlier this decade, and preventing anything like a repeat of that is one of the most important and consequential challenges they face. And in the meantime, the Rams will continue their summer activity, hoping to go at least one step closer to a Premier League return for the first time since 2008, next time around.