3 What ‘sportwashing’ claims exist in football?
While sportswashing might be a relatively modern term, the concept is far from new. Popularised by Amnesty International in 2018, sportswashing describes the use of sports by oppressive governments to legitimise their regimes and distract from human rights abuses (Zidan, 2022). The perception of sportswashing is, understandably, negative: ‘there can be no false innocence from here, no hope against hope, fingers crossed, for something real behind the platitudes’ (Ronay, 2022).
Early examples of sportswashing include the 1934 men’s World Cup in Italy and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, both mentioned in Session 1. More recently, the concept has been debated in relation to the ownership of several football clubs including the likes of Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle United, all of which have controversial Middle Eastern owners. There is also the hosting of high-profile sporting events such as the men’s World Cups of 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar as reputational enhancers. The Qatar World Cup is explored in Session 3.
Activity 4 Can sportwashing have unintended benefits?
Read the two excerpts below where both journalists discuss football’s links with sportswashing, and then answer the question underneath.
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi takeovers of Manchester City and Newcastle have led to far greater scrutiny in Britain of those countries’ human rights records than would otherwise have been the case…Who would have considered the rights of migrant labourers in Qatar before it bid to host a World Cup?
If sport can take anything from this horror [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] it is that we now know beyond any doubt that this [i.e. authoritarian regimes’ abuses] is all for real. That those who talk…about dictatorships and human rights are speaking from a place of real consequences
How do you react to this claim of some benefits?
Discussion
Personal perception will have driven your response here. Some may feel that if sportswashing is going to occur, then shining a light on human rights issues is a vital by-product of the concept. Conversely, others may disagree and feel that sports authorities should be doing all they can to prevent sportswashing in the first place. With FIFA’s general ethos of remaining apolitical, football provides a platform to be explored by sportswashing.