Report Lays Out Unanswered Questions Regarding WWE Royal Rumble Stadium Construction

A report emerged on Friday highlighting concerns over the construction of a purpose-built venue for the WWE Royal Rumble event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday. 

Images and videos of the venue, built in the King Abdullah Financial District, have been circulated over the past month, showing it in its various different stages of construction, and there had initially been some concerns over whether it could be finished in time for the event. Those concerns were refuted by WWE afterward. 

However, with the construction being completed so quickly, new concerns have arisen over how that could have been done without worker exploitation. In a report on the matter, POST Wrestling noted that human rights organizations had pointed to the timeline as enough to warrant scrutiny; Amnesty International's Ella Knight is quoted as saying that in Saudi Arabia, migrant workers "continue to be subjected to systemic human rights abuses, such as wage theft, excessive working hours, appalling living conditions and hazardous working environments."

Crucially, WWE, TKO and several local government organizations have yet to provide any insight or comment on the matter. 

POST notes that the General Entertainment Authority, the Public Investment Fund, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, Riyadh Municipality, and the Saudi Arabian embassy in the United States were all contacted; as were the embassies in Saudi Arabia for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and the Philippines, all nations with large migrant worker populations within the kingdom. 

The Migrant Workers Office of the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh said that it could not answer queries about labor oversight or worker protection, saying it had not processed any requests for the WWE event and had received no information from Filipino workers about involvement in the project.

The Saudi kafala system was abolished in June 2025 in lieu of a contract-based employment model, supposed to grant workers greater freedoms and rights as part of its Vision 2030 plan. Under the kafala system, employment and residency of a migrant worker was bound to a specific employer throughout their residence in the country, giving the employer control over the workers' ability to explore further employment opportunities or permission to leave the country. 

However, the reforms are not enough in the present moment, according to Catriona Fraser, a migrant workers researcher for Business & Human Rights Centre. "Unions and protests are also banned in the country, curtailing workers' ability to protest rights abuse and gain remedy and justice."

Amnesty's Knight reportedly outlined that despite changes in recent years, the system leaves migrant workers "heavily dependent on the goodwill of their employers for their legal status and livelihoods, directly enabling forced labor practices."

Nicholas McGeehan, a Programme Director for FairSquare, is quoted as saying labor conditions for migrant workers are "generally very abusive and deeply exploitative," with those risks exacerbated by timelines for events such as the Rumble. 

The report mentions that several organizations have concerns over the due diligence of WWE and other sporting organizations when it comes to hosting events with governments and countries with the humanitarian track record of Saudi Arabia. However, WWE has itself yet to address any of those concerns.

Though in no way related to the Rumble construction, Human Rights Watch reported only in November that migrant workers had been arrested over an unpaid wages row in a Mecca-based development. Which goes to illustrate the post-reform workers' right issues in the kingdom.