Written by Saudi Arabia has reportedly spent $1.5 billion on bolstering its reputation by investing in major sporting events. Grant Liberty from the Human Rights Organization says that the Saudi kingdom has generously bankrolled high-profile events such as chess championships, golf, tennis, and the Saudi Cup which cost $60m alone, making it the world’s richest horse-racing event with prize money of $20m. A $650 million, ten-year deal for Formula One was also struck. Saudi sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki is accused of approving investments on a momentous scale in what can only be described as “sportswashing.” This practice is reputedly the massively disproportionate investment in sporting events for the express purpose of obfuscating poor human rights records while boosting the country’s tourism industry. Saudi Arabia was also previously in the spotlight for trying to take over Newcastle United Football Club.
China, also is known to similarly pursue larger, high-cost sporting events despite their apparent ignorance of human rights issues, and Belarus, while continuing to arrest athletes for protesting the government, was successful in their bid to host the Ice Hockey World Championships.
To combat this situation, there needs to be heightened awareness of human rights transgressions and an increased commitment to due diligence when countries are awarded these lucrative deals to enforce accountability, and justice and appropriateness when allocating funds.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia launched his “Vision2030” masterplan five years ago. This strategy was designed to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil as an economic foundation and promote the area more strongly as a tourist mecca and a centre for sports excellence. This radical push comes with a culture that impacts on the freedoms of the people and has been the catalyst for strenuous action being taken on dissidents, religious clerics, and feminist activists. All this was while Saudi action in Yemen contributed to the death of 100, 000 people including a suspected 12,000 civilians through their destructive campaign of airstrikes.
Laurie Hanna, media manager at Amnesty International UK, Laurie Hanna, warns that this practice turns sports into a political tool.
“Sportswashing is when a country tries to use sport – sometimes subtly, sometimes quite blatantly – to try to rebrand itself, using the glamour and prestige of sport to try to create a new image for the country,”
Dr Michael Skey, media and communications lecturer at Loughborough University says sportswashing can be traced back to the Olympic games in Germany in 1936. These games were used by the Nazi party as a platform for Hitler’s beliefs on anti-Semitism. Russia was impacted by foreign policy initiatives in the 2018 lead-up to the FIFA World Cup, but sportswashing was effective in encouraging and supporting a different vision of Russia.
How can it be possible to develop a positive culture in sports when underhand deals and denial of basic human rights is so prevalent at the national level.