Sportswashing: Why It’s Time for the Premier League to Ban It
By Student Contributor: Conor McQuillan
Founder of Red Bull, Dietmar Mateschitz, has famously acknowledged that the best strategy of brand exposure is through sports ownership and sponsorship. Why would this not be the case? Towards the elite performance end of the spectrum, most sports, such as Formula One, football, NBA, and NFL, attract hundreds of millions of viewers and engaged fans. This attracts sponsorship investment and ownership from drinks brands, airlines, and recently, states.
Many strategists of the sponsors of these teams will view the high engagement of fans along with increased brand exposure as a great way of promoting either their brand or message. Unfortunately, the increased competition among European teams in football, especially the Premier League, has led to teams sourcing any means of financing in order to gain the edge over their competitors. This has come in the form of dodgy gambling sponsors, state owned firms and insurance companies marred in controversy. This is known as “Sportswashing”.
The simple definition of sportswashing is the act of sponsoring a sports team or event in order to distract from bad practices elsewhere. It originally came to light with the takeover of Manchester City in 2008 by Abu Dhabi United Group, which paved a way to an unprecedented amount of success for the “Cityzens”, coming in the form of five Premier Leagues, three FA Cups, six EFL Cups, and a Champions League.
The takeover of Newcastle United in 2021 by the Saudi Arabia owned Public Investment Fund (PIF) and hosting of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022, allowed people to gain an insight into what sportswashing really is and brought the issue to further light. To many, this was potentially the beginning of a spiral for football sponsors and ownerships.
In reality, this extends much farther than just a narrative of unethical financing in English football. While the ownership of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia, in which it puts the country’s image on a pedestal to “Toon” fans, is vastly misleading. The human rights record of the Saudi Arabian government is deplorable, where there is high gender and racial inequality and activists, journalists and citizens, are murdered for criticising the actions of the state.
According to human rights group the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) the Kingdom has embarked upon a ‘return to the rapid pace of execution of sentences,’ which should not be associated with any football club. On the day Saudi Arabia played a friendly game at St. James’ Park versus Costa Rica, the Saudi Arabian government recorded its 100th execution of 2023.
The statistics, as per ESOHR, state that of the 100, 75 were Saudi Arabians and three were women. 45 of the executions were for Ta’azir sentences, which include crimes punishable by Sharia Law, such as petty theft and attempted robbery, despite the pledge by Mohammed Bin Salaman’s commitment to reduce these punishments.
On the evening Newcastle qualified for the Champions League in May, following a 0-0 draw against former Premier League Champions Leicester City, there were celebrations all over for the Tyneside City. It was the first time in almost 20 years that the club had qualified for the Champions League, sandwiched between relegations in 2009 and 2016.
Meanwhile, over 6,000 kilometres away, the death toll of the Saudi led intervention in Yemen, in the form of bombings and human rights abuses, had reached over 22,000. As a result of this intervention there is widespread famine and extreme poverty, particularly affecting children. While supporters within Newcastle have voiced concerns regarding the ethics of such a controversially governed state to run their football club, the majority of fans are willing to turn a blind eye if success comes in return.
When PIF took over Newcastle in late 2021, the club was rock bottom with a one-way ticket to a third relegation in 12 years. They had a mediocre squad, a deeply unpopular manager in the form of Steve Bruce, and the 52,000 capacity St. James’ Park was rarely sold out. Almost two years on, Newcastle are due away days to European giants Borussia Dortmund, AC Milan, and Paris Saint-Germain.
Tickets are now being touted by resellers for upwards of £800 for high stakes matches, and players are being bought for tens of millions in the form of Bruno Guimares from Lyon for €45 million, Alexander Isak from Real Sociedad for €70 million, and most notably, Sandro Tonali opting for rainy Tyneside over glamorous Milan, for the steep fee of €64 million.
Newcastle have also convinced Lewis Hall, Chelsea’s most exciting prospect, to join the club in a loan deal with an obligation to buy for £35 million, and fellow Cobham graduate Tina Livramento to join for £40 million. The PIF cash injection has allowed Newcastle to go from a sponsorship from Asian gambling outfit Fun88 for £8 million a year to a 300 per cent increase, to Saudi owned real estate company Sela for £25 million a year. They also have attracted the investment of Noon, a United Arab Emirates owned shopping brand for a steep fee.
This has enabled Newcastle to spend hundreds of millions in the form of transfers. The regulated UEFA “Financial Fair Play” has prevented Newcastle from spending more than the likes of well-established clubs such as Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool. They must sell players or find other forms of revenue streams, such as selling out of favour French winger Allain Saint-Maximan to PIF owned Al Ahli for €27 million, the same price that Manchester City paid for 2018 World Cup finalist and four-time Champions League winner, Mateo Kovacic.
Although there is a “rigorous” ownership and directors test in English football, in which numerous takeovers have been either halted or prevented from happening for different reasons, such as improper financing making it unclear where the money has come from, and the history of the owners’ other business ventures. Notable cases include Bury, Bolton Wanderers and Crawley Town, where poor vetting led to the clubs on the brink of liquidation. Sadly, this happened to Bury, who were expelled from the English Football League in 2019.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International put pressure on the FA to prevent the Newcastle takeover from happening and went as far as to be discussed in Westminster. According to a Guardian investigative piece, it was revealed that “Boris Johnson’s government worked for months to encourage the Premier League to approve the controversial Saudi Arabia-backed takeover of Newcastle United”. It is likely that if the proper test was applied, the takeover would have not gone through.
The external pressure was most likely due to Westminster desiring to keep the relationship between the Saudi Government at a diplomatic level, and preventing this takeover would sour relations. As well as this, the relationship between the PIF and Premier League financing runs much deeper than Newcastle United.
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has backing of venture capital fund, Clearlake Capital, which is indirectly financed by PIF. There are strict FA rules regarding to ownership of more than one club, but this is easily bypassed by the fronts of clubs such as Chelsea. They are currently in talks with Riyadh Air, also owned by PIF, as a main shirt sponsor for the upcoming 2023/24 season.
Newcastle could also have made the argument of numerous sponsorship deals in the Premier League when it comes to Sela. Tottenham Hotspur are in a multiyear, £45 million-pound-a-season deal with Hong Kong insurance firm AIA, who were criticised for backing the Hong Kong riots. Arsenal is sponsored by United Arab Emirates owned Emirates Airlines, whom they have also given stadium naming rights to, and have a multi-year sleeve sponsorship deal with, Visit Rwanda, both who have a poor track record in the area of human rights.
However, Newcastle fans can deny as much as they want that their club has been made another asset to wash the image and reality of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, but any success this club will have under this ownership will always have an asterisk next to their name as a result.
The reality is that although Newcastle may be in the spotlight for sportswashing, and rightly so, almost every Premier League club has a sponsor in which it will be deemed unethical or a country attempting to sportswash. As the game continues to grow more globally, the desire for success will also grow, in which executives of clubs will deem it to be whatever it takes to earn shiny silverware.
