Saudi Arabia's money appears to be underpinning the revamped Club World Cup.
But why has the country helped to bankroll an event that has struggled to generate interest, drawing criticism for the impact it could have on players, domestic leagues, and the environment?
For those wanting to understand the forces at play over the next month of competition in the US, Miami's Hard Rock Stadium on Wednesday would be an ideal place to start.
That, after all, is where Real Madrid will kick off their Club World Cup campaign, with new signing Trent Alexander-Arnold set to make his debut.
The fact the Spanish giants were willing to pay Liverpool a reported £8m to secure the defender's early release so he could play in the tournament is testament to the staggering riches on offer.
With a prize pot of $1bn (£750m), top European teams are in line to earn up to £97m if they win, leading to concerns such money could distort domestic leagues and skew competitive balance.
Real's Saudi opponents - Al-Hilal - highlight another intriguing aspect of the tournament.
The Riyadh club are owned by the kingdom's Public Investment Fund (PIF).
But the vast sovereign wealth fund's involvement in this competition does not stop there.
In December, sports streaming platform DAZN agreed to pay Fifa - football's world governing body - $1bn for the tournament's global broadcast rights.
That was not the only surprise, because it also promised to make the live action available for free. This despite Fifa having previously struggled to find broadcast partners, and after DAZN had posted several billion dollars worth of losses over recent years.
Then, a few weeks later, a subsidiary of PIF announced it had acquired a minority stake in DAZN for what it has since confirmed was $1bn - explaining at the time it was "an exciting opportunity to build on DAZN's significant successes in recent years by bringing more sports to fans and audiences around the world".
Saudi ties with the Club World Cup strengthened further last week, when PIF became an official partner of an event Fifa president Gianni Infantino claims will "make football truly global".
In a statement at the time, PIF claimed the sponsorship deal showed it was "at the forefront of growing football", noting the sport "plays a crucial role in the ongoing transformation" of the country.
But is there more to it than that? After all, Fifa had initially struggled to attract sponsors, and ticket sales for some games have been sluggish, with the event perhaps hampered by a complicated qualification system that means recently crowned domestic champions including Liverpool and Barcelona are not present.
Expanding the event from seven teams to 32 has also sparked a legal complaint from both the international players' union and the body representing European leagues, who - despite Fifa denials - claim their concerns over a congested calendar and player workload have been ignore
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