On May 13, 2026, the agency NettResults published an analysis — corroborated by Kolsquare's 2026 Middle East report — arguing that Saudi Arabia's Mawthooq licensing regime has "changed influencer marketing forever." The headline number is stark: the Kingdom's active commercial influencer base has contracted by roughly 35% since the General Authority for Media Regulation (GAMR) made its license mandatory, falling from an estimated 60,000-plus monetizing creators to under 40,000. That figure is a directional industry estimate, not an official census. But the direction is the story, and it is worth taking seriously.
What the rules actually require
Mawthooq is not new. As Arab News reported when the rules took effect in early October 2022, any content creator earning revenue from advertising or promotional content on social media must hold a GAMR permit costing SAR 15,000 (about $4,000) for a three-year term. Saudis abroad are covered; non-Saudi residents must first secure a Ministry of Investment work permit and operate through licensed agencies. Operating without the permit can draw fines of up to SAR 5 million — and, in the harsher readings of the statute, imprisonment.
Mawthooq no longer stands alone. It now sits alongside the Communications, Space and Technology Commission's (CST) Regulations for Providing Digital Content Platform Services, adopted in January 2024 with a compliance deadline of October 8, 2024. That framework sweeps in OTT video, video-sharing, social media, internet radio, online gaming and e-sports. Pay-TV and IPTV providers need a ten-year license with a SAR 50,000 annual fee; OTT platforms above 35,000 subscribers must register and pay the same; social and video-sharing platforms above 100,000 users must register with the CST, though without a fee. Taken together, the two regimes treat individual creators as licensed media channels and the platforms beneath them as licensed broadcasters.
The case for licensing — stated fairly
The strongest argument for Mawthooq is consumer protection. Influencer marketing in the Gulf grew faster than any disclosure norm could keep up with, and undeclared paid promotion — including for financial products, health claims, and outright scams — left ordinary followers exposed. As the digital-rights group SMEX documented, even some creators welcomed the regime: one argued a license could "protect influencers" and force "a transparent conversation" with the brands paying them, since unlicensed sellers could vanish after taking a follower's money. A registry, mandatory #Ad disclosure, and a clean-record requirement are, on their own terms, recognizable consumer-protection tools. Many democracies pursue the same ends through advertising-standards rules and tax enforcement.
Why proportionality matters here
The problem is not the goal but the instrument. A SAR 15,000 prior license — paid before you publish a single sponsored post — is a blunt entry tax that falls hardest on exactly the small and emerging creators a healthy digital economy depends on. A 35% contraction is not a sign of fraud being purged; it is a sign of supply being priced out. Saudi Arabia's own Vision 2030 stakes national strategy on a thriving non-oil creative sector. A licensing wall that thins the talent pool by a third works against that goal, even as the NettResults analysis frames the survivors as a more "professional" cohort. Professionalization achieved by attrition is a poor substitute for professionalization achieved by competition.
A proportionate version of the same policy is easy to imagine: free or nominal registration rather than a four-figure fee; disclosure obligations enforced after the fact, as advertising regulators elsewhere do; tiered thresholds so that a creator earning a few thousand riyals is not regulated identically to a media company. The SAR 5 million ceiling — the same order of magnitude a platform faces — is wildly disproportionate when applied to an individual posting a sponsored reel. Penalties this severe do not just deter fraud; they deter participation.
The free-expression overhang
Licensing regimes are also leverage. SMEX and the Gulf Center for Human Rights warn that vague content standards — barring material that could "harm national security" or "offend public morality" — invite self-censorship, since a creator's livelihood now depends on a renewable government permit. That concern is not abstract. In late April and May 2026, Access Now and partner organizations reported that Meta had geo-blocked over 100 Facebook pages and Instagram accounts from Saudi and UAE audiences at government request, including human-rights NGOs and researchers. When the state both licenses speakers and pressures platforms to restrict critics, the licensing fee stops looking like a consumer-protection measure and starts looking like a gatekeeping one.
The takeaway
Saudi Arabia is entitled to regulate deceptive advertising, and a registry of commercial creators is a defensible policy aim. But the Mawthooq-plus-CST architecture is calibrated for control, not competition: a high prior license, ruinous fines, and elastic content standards layered onto a platform-licensing regime. The 35% contraction is the price already paid. Regulators who want a credible, fast-growing creator economy should treat that number as a warning, not a win — and replace prior licensing with the lighter, after-the-fact disclosure tools that protect consumers without thinning the market.