Matchroom Sport Inks Riyadh Season Partnership

Across Major Boxing, Darts, and Snooker Events!

(October 6th) Matchroom Sport and Riyadh Season today announced a new groundbreaking collaboration that will cover a host of huge events across Matchroom Boxing, Professional Darts Corporation, and World Snooker.

The landmark deal ensures Riyadh Season continues to play a key and visible role in some big nights ahead for Matchroom Sport – with a multi-channel partnership and the Riyadh Season brand featuring prominently across Matchroom Sport events.

Riyadh Season launched in 2019 and achieved a major milestone during its most recent Season when the number of visitors exceeded 20 million for the first time. Riyadh Season’s impact has also seen boxing and a number of sports – including snooker – transformed by delivering some of the most memorable nights in the modern era.

In its partnership with Matchroom Boxing, it has already brought some of the sport’s most exciting showdowns to Riyadh, as well as across the globe, including in the UK, USA and Mexico, attracting high-level international attention and top-tier talent such as Anthony Joshua, Dmitry Bivol, Jai Opetaia, and Conor Benn, who faces bitter rival Chris Eubank Jr in their eagerly awaited rematch ‘Unfinished Business’ on Saturday, November 15 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London - screened exclusively worldwide on DAZN. And on November 22, in Riyadh, pound-for-pound superstar Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez fights Fernando "Puma" Martinez for the Unified Super-Bantamweight titles – including the coveted Ring Magazine belt - as part of The Ring IV fight card, ‘Night of Champions’, headlined by Anthony Yarde and David Benavidez.

In the same week, snooker’s all-time greats – such as Ronnie O’Sullivan and defending champion Mark Allen – return to Saudi Arabia from November 19 to 21 for the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship, delivered by WST and broadcast in the UK on TNT Sports. The tournament is best known for the unique gold ball, worth 20 points and can only be potted at the end of a maximum 147, for an unprecedented ‘super-maximum’ of 167 – and $1million, the snooker’s biggest ever bonus prize.

Darts' biggest names will also join this year’s Riyadh Season for the first ever Saudi Arabia Darts Masters in January 2026 – part of the PDC's 2026 World Series of Darts global roadshow, which will see star-studded events taking place across four continents, all available to watch in the UK via ITV Sport. The inaugural event will take place on January 19 and 20, giving local fans the chance to be part of darts' unique atmosphere for the first time ever, while millions of fans will be tuning in around the world through the PDC's global network of broadcast partners.

The sixth edition of Riyadh Season officially launches this month, with standout events including October’s Six Kings Slam, where six of men’s tennis’ leading players including Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcarez and Novak Djokovic will compete, with more boxing to come in December involving Japan’s biggest fighters in ‘Ring V: Night of the Samurai’, featuring Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani. Riyadh Season will also make history in January 2026 when WWE’s 39th annual Royal Rumble is held in Riyadh – the first time the landmark event will be staged outside of North America, with cultural phenomenon Wrestlemania 43 set to follow in 2027.

His Excellency Turki Alalshikh, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) said: “Riyadh Season’s reputation is built on being connected to events that carry huge and global interest and Matchroom Sport has been an important part of many of these occasions with us so far. We look forward to continuing our relationship and building on what we have already developed together to deliver even more ground-breaking and exciting tournaments and events in the future.”

Matchroom Sport Chairman Eddie Hearn added: “We are delighted to enter an exciting partnership with Riyadh Season as our special relationship continues to thrive. And we’re just getting started.

"We are incredibly grateful to His Excellency Turki Alalshikh for his continued investment in Boxing – and now into Snooker and Darts. The future is bright and we are hugely excited to deliver many more unforgettable nights for sports fans all over the world together in partnership with Riyadh Season.”

About Riyadh Season:

Saudi Arabia's capital embraces one of the world's biggest entertainment events every year during winter.  Since the launch of the Riyadh Season in 2019, the festival has welcomed visitors from all over the world to experience thousands of concerts, sporting activities, and other unique cultural events.

About DAZN Group

DAZN Group is one of the fastest growing sports media companies in the world. Headquartered in the UK and with employees in over 25 countries, our businesses touch every aspect of the way fans engage with sports; from production, through to content distribution and commercialization. DAZN Group is home to DAZN, the leading global sport destination, as well as the popular sport portal, DAZN News. DAZN is leading the charge to give sports fans around the world access to sport anytime, anywhere. DAZN guarantees affordable access on most connected devices including smart TVs, set-top boxes, streaming sticks, smartphones, tablets, PCs and game consoles. DAZN is now live in more than 200 countries and territories after first launching in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan in 2016.

DAZN is a leading digital sports platform in Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, Canada, US and the UK.  Its wide range of exclusive content includes top-flight football from the world’s most popular competitions – Bundesliga, English Premier League, J.League, LaLiga, Serie A, and the UEFA Champions League, in addition to the biggest sports from around the world - Formula 1, NFL, NBA, MotoGP and the UFC.  

DAZN is the NFL’s global partner and, from the 2023 season, will be the only place for fans around the world to watch every NFL match. DAZN is a global home for boxing and combat sports through its partnerships with Matchroom Boxing the Professional Fighters League. With the most authentic voice in the sport, DAZN is the only brand that can reach across all markets and audiences cohesively in boxing, unlike any other broadcaster. DAZN is also a global home for Women’s Football with UEFA Women’s Champions League and Finetwork Liga F.  DAZN is adding more and more sport to its platform to create a destination for sports fans.  

DAZN is reimagining the way people enjoy sport. With a single, frictionless platform, sports fans can watch, bet, play, share, socialise, and buy tickets, NFTs and merchandise. Live and on-demand sports content, anywhere, in any language, on any device – only on DAZN.  

DAZN is a global, privately-owned company with employees in over 25 countries.

DAZN is available on most connected devices including smart TVs, set-top boxes, streaming sticks, smartphones, tablets, PCs and game consoles, ensuring that fans have access to ground-breaking rights catalogue and slate of incredible content. In the UK and globally, DAZN can be accessed on Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic Smart TVs and on Games Consoles including Playstation and Xbox. Subscribers also have access to DAZN on their Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Google Chromecast and Apple TV and find the app on their iPhone, iPad, android and mobile.  

About Matchroom Boxing

After the success of snooker in the 1980s, Matchroom Sport moved into boxing with two small hall shows followed by Frank Bruno v Joe Bugner at Tottenham Hotspur’s ground – the biggest boxing event of 1987. That launched the company into the boxing big-time, a position it has maintained ever since.

Through the 1990s Matchroom Sport’s boxing roster featured many of the biggest names in the sport including Lennox Lewis, Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank, Steve Collins and Naseem Hamed, all in world title fights and it continues to work with some of the biggest names in UK boxing including Audley Harrison, the 2000 Olympic Super-Heavyweight gold medalist.

Over the years, Matchroom Sport has built up long-standing relationships with broadcasters around the world and with the advent of the Prizefighter phenomenon, the company’s boxing division has never been in a stronger position.

From fantastic six round scraps between the sport’s journeymen, up to multi-million-dollar World Championship contests featuring the above fighters, the Pro Box series has it all. Each show is packed with the very best in boxing action in a series that encompasses almost 25 years of Matchroom Sport’s commitment to bringing the highest quality to the global television market.