Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Award for Sports Research

Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Award for Sports Research is an award dedicated to research grants and financing projects concerned with international sports research with a connection to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is one of the entities supporting academic activities in the development of sports knowledge, in addition to being one of the initiatives of the Quality of Life Program, one of the Saudi Vision 2030 programs. It is overseen by the Leaders Development Institute affiliated with the Ministry of Sport.

The award supports scientifically based research methods and provides practical answers to the questions arising in the sports industry. It also sheds light on critical opportunities in sports-related areas in the Kingdom, in addition to providing financial support to research based on knowledge hypotheses directly affecting the sports field.

The award was launched in 1983 by Prince Faisal Bin Fahd for supporting research in the sports arena in the Arab world. In 2019, the Award's committee decided to amend some aspects of the award in this edition to support researchers and foster enthusiasm for conducting research based on sound scientific and linguistic methods. The value of the award's grants was increased to USD2 million and its projects coverage to seventeen projects. The public health track was also incorporated.

The award supports research projects with grants ranging between USD80-120 thousand for each research, with total grants amounting to USD2 million all of which are devoted to serving sports research and plans with the aim to scale up the development of sports thinking in the Kingdom.

The perks of winning the award include the authority to reach out to all sports entities in the Kingdom with the help of the Ministry of Sport, obtaining full funding to address every area of the project, in addition to attending an honoring ceremony in the Olympic capital, Lausanne, in Switzerland.

The mission of supervising the award was assigned to the Leaders Development Institute which is an educational entity working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Sport. It aims to enrich sports and bridge sports knowledge through education, research, and innovation. Selecting the winners is the responsibility of the independent scientific committee emanating from the International Academy of Sport Science and Technology (AISTS) based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The committee has identified 435 research proposals submitted by sixty-three countries, whereas seventeen research proposals were selected as winners.

The award research tracks consist of several areas, including the youth track which supports sports research projects targeting age groups under twenty-four, which includes four research proposals, the training and education track focusing on supporting different age groups across different levels of community participation, and which includes around five research proposals, in addition to the tracks addressing public health by focusing on the negative impacts of physical inactivity, and its relation with many chronic diseases, and which includes eight research proposals.