Saudi Arabia beats Italy and South Korea to host Expo 2030 world fair
- Riyadh won the right to host the event, with 119 votes to Rome’s 17 and Busan’s 29
- The five-yearly world fair attracts millions of visitors and billions of dollars in investment
Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh has won the right to host the Expo 2030 world fair, vote results showed on Tuesday, in another diplomatic victory for a Gulf country after the Qatar soccer World Cup last year.
South Korea’s Busan and Italy’s Rome were also in the running to host the world fair, a five-yearly event that attracts millions of visitors and billions of dollars in investment.
Riyadh won 119 votes, Busan 29 and Rome 17, results from 182 members of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) showed. Saudi Arabia needed to garner two-thirds of the votes to win from the first round.
The Italian contestants were scathing in their disappointment.
“This huge result for Saudi was unexpected in those proportions,” Giampiero Massolo, head of the Italian Expo bid, told reporters. “It is no longer about the merits, but about transactions.”
“Yesterday it was a soccer championship, tomorrow it will be the Olympics,” he added.
