Air France Launching Riyadh Flights As Of March 2025

How much is saudi paying for all of these airlines to start adding flights there?

These Airlines need to fly Riyadh daily to get
incentives.

Yeah it's almost certainly incentives.

RUH is a bona fide Saudia hub, plenty of connections can be offered irrespective of any deals with the new airline.

Will they serve wine?

Yes, until you reach the Saudi border

Like everyone else, I suspect there are Saudi incentives for AF/DL/VS to all fly to Riyadh for at least a year or two. As to Saudia and Riyadh Air, I am beginning to think ultimately they may just merge into one carrier group (definitely staying in SkyTeam) but perhaps keeping the two separate brands (like Alaska and Hawaiian) based on serving Riyadh vs. Jeddah and possibly premium demand v. leisure/lower-cost.

If AF/KLM buys Air Europa then I suspect AE will also fly to Riyadh from Madrid. Riyadh Air is the naming rights partner/jersey sponsor for Atletico Madrid, one of the 10 biggest soccer teams on the planet by pretty much any standard.

They are definitely going the Qatar route with the football/soccer advertising. There are pitch side advertisements for every concacaf champions league match, which signals to brand awareness in Mexico. This also signals to Aeromexico on the sky team vein.

@Ben Lufthansa also flew their A340-600 from Frankfurt to Riyadh to Dammam for a few months this past winter. Riyadh also offering strong incentives to LH, or just strong business between FRA and RUH for first class?!

Why is Riyadh Air cooperation suggested when there's an established SkyTeam airline based in Riyadh (Saudia)? Surely a cooperation with Saudia is more likely and reasonable than cooperation with a carrier that's not in AF's (or any) alliance and doesn't even have any flights yet?

typo in title: March 2025 -> May 2025.
It looks like AF will operate this route with A220-300 aircraft. As a Riyadh resident, not excited at all with this news, prob better take a KLM A330 or ITA A320neo lie-flat flight as usual.

Purely in my guess, once Riyadh Air is launched, Saudia will be primarily based & operated in Jeddah while Riyadh Air's operation is based in Riyadh. Riyadh air also have a partnership with Delta, so it totally make sense AF will cooperate with Riyadh Air in the future.

It will be operated by the A350-900

People talking about incentives don’t understand just how large the Saudi market is, QR alone serves 11 destinations in the kingdom
.
Riyadh Air’s CEO always talks about how underserved Riyadh is and how other airlines are taking advantage of Saudia’s inability to fill the gap.

Doesn't matter, as the Western carrier would still need some amount of home-side demand to realistically make the route work, even if its main objective is introducing Saudi-originating traffic into its connecting network.

Outside of the energy industry, Saudi Arabia isn't exactly the easiest sell to Western audiences at the moment. That can change, but an incentive that brings in capacity/promotion/etc can help (but not guarantee) that change happening on a faster scale.

As someone who travels frequently in the region and has seen traffic to and from Saudi, I can tell you’ve never been there.