In 2016, there were no public cinemas in Saudi Arabia. I want you to sit with that for a second, because I lived on both sides of that line. Ten years later I am writing this from Riyadh, in a country that now hosts Formula 1, the largest electronic music festival in the region, and tens of thousands of concerts and exhibitions a year.
The number that should make you move
The Saudi entertainment and events market hit roughly $12.96 billion in 2025 and is projected at $14.61 billion in 2026 — heading toward $34.24 billion by 2035 at a 12.8% annual clip. The creative industries are targeted to reach 3% of GDP by 2030, up from under 0.5% when the programme started. Read that last part again. A sector multiplying six times over in under fifteen years. Most people will read that as a statistic. A small number will read it as a window.
What a window actually looks like from inside
Windows are uncomfortable. When I started building Raw Studios, there was no established playbook for a studio like it here. There was no queue of people who had done it before that I could ask. That is precisely what made it possible — and it is also why most people wait. Waiting is the expensive choice. The creative economy alone is projected to generate 80,000+ jobs across film, design, fashion and digital arts. Those roles will be filled by whoever is already standing there when the infrastructure finishes maturing — not by whoever was most qualified on paper in 2030.
The mistake I keep watching people make
They treat Vision 2030 as a government project to observe rather than a market to enter. They read the press release and then do nothing differently on Monday. I built L&O Apparels and Hdaiacom Perfume in this environment, alongside MLO Technologies, because the same shift that opens a film sector opens a consumer sector, a retail sector, a technology sector. Culture does not expand in isolation. It drags everything adjacent to it upward. My entire career here has been built on being early and slightly unqualified. Voice acting on Netflix’s Takki. Design work for Pepsi. 60+ film credits. None of it started because I was the obvious choice. It started because I was in the room while the room was still being built.
What I would tell you to do this month
Stop researching. Ship something small and real into this market — a product, a service, a portfolio, a single paying client. The goal is not to get it right. The goal is to be a known quantity before the field gets crowded, because it is going to get crowded. Talent development programmes are producing their first cohorts right now. Production infrastructure is maturing right now. The gap between ambition and capacity has never been wider, and a gap is just an opportunity that has not been claimed yet.
Nobody gets to be early twice. This is the window — walk through it or watch someone else do it.