The buying of global influence by investing in high-profile sporting events – Counting the Cost of  ‘sportswashing’. 

By Allan Wolman

FIFA’s recent announcement crowning Saudi Arabia as the host for the 2034 Men’s World Cup hardly came as a shock. After all, the Middle East, being the ‘centre of the universe’, is the obvious choice for the world’s greatest sporting spectacle. And with FIFA’s impeccable reputation for transparency and integrity, who could possibly raise an eyebrow?

As for the 2026 World Cup, it will generously be shared across Canada, the United States, and Mexico – a mere three countries. But FIFA wasn’t done pushing boundaries: the 2030 tournament will leap even further, spanning not just three nations but two entire continents – Spain and Portugal in Europe, and Morocco in Africa. Truly, no effort is too great for the sake of “the beautiful game.”

Sports – the acknowledged global unifier – provides the ideal platform for “sportswashing” whereby nations endeavour to enhance their international image while masking human rights violations. Exemplifying this trend, who would accuse Saudi Arabia and Qatar of exploiting their vast oil wealth to utilize high-profile sports to ‘buy’ global influence.

Qatar’s 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup attracted much criticism for its shocking human rights record, that included mistreatment of migrant workers, LGBTQ+ restrictions, and suppressed dissent. Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is equally contentious. On 4th April 2022, 81 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in a single day by decapitation with a sword. According to Human Rights Watch, the majority of these individuals were tortured to obtain confessions. Women’s rights have seen some reforms, such as the lifting of the driving ban, but gender equality remains far from realized. LGBTQ+ individuals face severe persecution, and political dissidents are routinely jailed or silenced. Would it surprise anyone if Qatar or Saudi Arabia were to win a bid to host the Olympic Games in the not-too-distant future.

Clearly not!

Hosting global sports events serves as a strategy for these nations to project modernity and openness and divert attention from domestic controversies by associating with celebrated events.

Saudi Arabia has heavily invested in:

• Formula 1
• boxing,
• tennis  
• golf through its Public Investment Fund (PIF)

Qatar owns:

– Paris Saint-Germain (PSG)

– sponsors major events like the IAAF World Athletics Championships.

COUNTING THE COST

Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s successful stratagem of ‘sportswashing’ follows their proven paths of massively manoeuvring into Western academia embedding their agendas and narratives into impressionable young minds. Universities in the U.S., U.K., and Europe have eagerly accepted billions in funding, conveniently labelled as “partnerships” to promote research and mutual understanding. The results of these “partnerships” have been all to evident since the October 7 Hamas massacre with student protests at campuses across the US and Europe. A 2022 published reports has revealed that the “generous” infusion from Qatar of significant financial donations amounting to billions of dollars has strengthened antisemitism in higher education institutions in the US, compromised academic ethics and contributed to the erosion of democratic and liberal norms. The report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) that identifies Qatar as the most significant foreign donor to American universities, revealed that from 2001 to 2021, US higher education institutions received US$13 billion in funding from foreign sources, with Qatar contributing donations totaling $4.7 billion to universities in the United States.

The group most negatively affected by Qatar “educating” America are Jewish students whose personal security and safety has been compromised.

Sports-washing, unsurprisingly, raises some thorny ethical dilemmas. By cosying up to these regimes, international organizations, universities, and cultural institutions risk not just normalizing human rights violations but becoming complicit in them. One might think transparency, accountability, and principled decision-making would take precedence, but hey, money talks.

About the writer:

Allan Wolman in 1967 joined 1200 young South Africans to volunteer to work on agricultural settlements in Israel during the Six Day War. After spending a year in Israel, he returned to South Africa where he met and married Jocelyn Lipschitz and would run  one of the oldest travel agencies in Johannesburg – Rosebank Travel. He would also literally ‘run’ three times in the “Comrades”, one of the most grueling marathons in the world as well as participate in the “Argus” (Cape Town’s famed international annual cycling race) an impressive eight times. Allan and Jocelyn immigrated to Israel in 2019.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).