If you’ve watched sport anytime in the last five years, you’ve probably seen the name Aramco everywhere. In Formula 1, Football, Cricket, Golf, you name it…
The Same logo. The Same green branding. Everywhere.
Aramco is the most profitable enterprise in the history of human commerce. It made about $441 billion in revenue in 2023 and $437 billion in 2024, with profits of $121 billion and $106 billion respectively. In 2025, numbers dipped as oil prices fell, with revenue down around 12% and dividends at $85.4 billion, but the scale is still unmatched. At its peak, ExxonMobil earned about half of what Aramco makes in a typical year, while Apple, roughly two thirds.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia owns 82.2% of the comany. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) holds about 16% after receiving an additional 8% stake in 2024. Only 1.8 % is publicly traded, so around 98% to 99% of the company is controlled by the state of Saudi Arabia.
Most sponsors in sport are easy to understand, Coca-Cola wants you to buy a drink, Visa wants you to use its card, for Hyundai, its cars, and Adidas wants you wearing its shoes and apparel. They all sell products to everyday consumers and use sport to get these products in front of you, that’s been the basic logic of sponsorship since brands first started putting ads in stadiums in the 1960s: reach fans, influence what they buy, and drive sales.
Aramco does not sell something you can go out and buy. There is no app, no subscription, no store shelf, and no customer service number you would ever call. You are not their customer.
Aramco pulls oil from some of the largest reserves in the world, sells it to refineries, and sends the money back to its shareholders. Most of that oil goes to a small group of countries. China takes the biggest share, with about 38%. India, South Korea, and Japan together take another 38%. Europe and the United States take smaller but important amounts, and Southeast Asia makes up the rest.
This model has worked for decades, but for the first time it is facing a deeper challenge - the future of energy. The shift toward cleaner energy sources is expected to reduce global demand for oil over time. Most long term forecasts (OPEC and The International Energy Agency being the main sources) say demand will peak sometime between 2028 and 2035 and then start to fall.
According to the Carbon Majors database, Aramco alone was responsible for 4.28% of global carbon emissions in 2024, more than any other company. The share of renewable energy in Aramco’s own production is extremely small, around 0.01 percent. The company has said it will reach net zero emissions from its own operations by 2050, but this does not include the emissions created when its oil is actually used.
To combat this Aramco has built a global sports sponsorship portfolio worth more than $1.3 billion in committed value across major sports assets. If you rank sponsors by how much money they commit each year across all their deals, Aramco comes out as the biggest sports sponsor in the world.
Inside Aramco’s Sports Strategy, It’s Complete Portfolio: Every Deal, What It Costs, and What It Buys….
