Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent the other Gulf states, pursuing projects like this leaves me very confused. In the news, it seems like luxury projects are often employed as a means to break their economies off of oil, but it would seem to me like luxury and entertainment are rather odd choices. My gut feeling is that these are just vanity projects.<p>Does anyone have any insight as to why such projects of luxury and entertainment (e.g. sports) have such an appeal in the region for reducing dependence on oil as opposed to other other pursuits? Or is it just these projects that get headlines and there isn't out of the ordinary spending on such projects?<p>I feel like lots of the public has many negative perceptions of the region which makes these seem more unreasonable. There was a time when I was working for an ad tech company which got probably most of its revenue from a certain Gulf state, but the employees were always disparaging the country in conversations.
I suppose I'm not the target market since I'm not a billionaire, but it's amazing how ugly these Saudi megaprojects manage to be.<p>The brief always seems to be "make it clear it cost over a million dollars to decorate this room" and not "make a pleasant space to be in"