LeBron to Saudi and a UK NFL team: our bold sports predictions for 2025
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On the heels of another sports year that was chock full of surprises, Guardian US contributors make their bold predictions for the months to come. Here are our bold predictions for 2025 in sports. Please note the bold (or should that be bold?) in bold predictions: these are mostly to be taken with a pinch of salt.
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LeBron’s tongue-in-cheek reaction to Kylian Mbappé’s rejection of a $776m offer from Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal might have seemed innocuous enough. As did subsequent responses from Draymond Green and Giannis Antetokounmpo. But you have to believe the NBA was at least a little nervous when the Kid from Akron paid a visit to the Kingdom six weeks later at the behest of the Saudi Ministry of Sport.
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Whether the NBA’s all-time scoring leader joins the 49-year-old Saudi Basketball League on a one-year contract (for, say, $800m?) depends entirely on whether Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – valued at an estimated $650bn – expresses an open interest in jumping into basketball, which to date they have not. But after seeing how those bottomless coffers have disrupted one traditionally Western sport after another in an unprecedented demonstration of soft power – from soccer to golf to Formula One to boxing to women’s tennis to horse racing to professional wrestling – it seems almost naive to believe that basketball’s day won’t one day come. The idea of a quadragenarian King James taking his talents to Umluj Beach is no more daft than Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar joining the Saudi Pro League might have sounded only a few years ago. Bryan Armen Graham.
