The entertainment industry in Saudi Arabia is poised to boost diversification of the state’s revenues with consumer spending on the sector expected to reach 36 billion Saudi riyals ($9.6 billion) by 2030, a Saudi official said.

Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Faisal Bafarat, the chief executive officer of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority (GEA) said that the entertainment sector in the kingdom is also expected to generate 114,000 direct and 110,000 indirect job opportunities by 2030, according to the authority’s official twitter account.

“We want to put Saudi on the global entertainment map, so keep your eyes open for 2018. The target is to have at least one top tier international event every weekend in 2018,” Bafarat said.

“In 2017, there were more than 2,000 events. We were able to entertain more than 8 million audience, and we managed to enable 149 event providers and vendors,”  he added.

Saudi Arabia plans to create a thriving domestic tourism and entertainment sectors to redirect some of the $22 billion Saudis spend on tourism outside of the kingdom back into the local economy. (Read more here).

The kingdom set a clear target to increase household spending on entertainment and cultural activities inside the country from 2.9 percent  to 6 percent by 2030, according to its Vision 2030 economic overhaul plan.

http://vision2030.gov.sa/en/goals

“To realise the Vision 2030, there were 12 different programmes, and the key program for entertainment was the quality of life,” Bafarat added.

In December, Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year old ban on cinemas, and theatres will be able to start showing films next month. More than 300 cinemas are expected to open by 2030, according to the government, contributing around $24 billion to the economy.

(Reporting by Nada Al Rifai; Editing by Michael Fahy)

(nada.rifai@thomsonreuters.com)

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