The Price of Respectability
How much does international respectability cost? Ask Saudi Arabia: about $6 billion. That's what the kingdom has invested in sports over five years. Newcastle United, the Saudi Pro League, LIV Golf, Formula 1, boxing, esports. The list grows every month.
And with every new check, a new question gets buried.
How It Works
Sportswashing is simple: buy enough spectacle so cameras turn toward your stadiums rather than your prisons. Cristiano Ronaldo in Riyadh generates more positive images in one week than the most brilliant PR campaign does in a year.
The stroke of genius? You don't even need to censor critics. Entertainment does the work by itself. Nobody thinks about human rights when the team scores.
The Willing Accomplices
Sports federations aren't victims. They're partners. FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar knowing that thousands of migrant workers would build stadiums in conditions any Western labor inspection would condemn.
The IOC chose Beijing for 2022 while Uyghurs were locked in camps. The justification? "Sport is above politics." It's the most dishonest phrase in the sports vocabulary.
Athletes and the Golden Silence
You can't ask a 25-year-old athlete to turn down $200 million on principle. It's unrealistic and hypocritical. But you can -- you must -- name the system that makes such an offer possible.
Athletes aren't the problem. The problem is sports institutions that normalize authoritarian money to the point where refusing it becomes an act of rebellion.
What Sport Should Be
Sport has an irreducible beauty: human effort pushed to its limit. A sprinter surpassing themselves, a gymnast defying gravity, a team transcending itself. That, nobody can buy.
But the sports industry has wrapped this beauty in so many layers of money, corruption, and propaganda that you have to dig to find it. Real sport still exists -- in amateur clubs, in municipal stadiums, in competitions nobody televises.
The ultimate irony: the most authentic sport is the least visible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is sportswashing?
Sportswashing is a strategy used by authoritarian regimes to improve their international image by investing heavily in sports. This involves hosting major sporting events or acquiring sports teams to divert attention from human rights abuses and other negative aspects of their governance.
Q: How much has Saudi Arabia invested in sports?
Saudi Arabia has invested approximately $6 billion in sports over the past five years. This investment spans various sports, including football, golf, and esports, as the kingdom seeks to enhance its global reputation.
Q: Why do sports federations participate in sportswashing?
Sports federations often participate in sportswashing by awarding major events to countries with poor human rights records, believing that "sport is above politics." This complicity allows authoritarian regimes to use sports as a tool for image enhancement while ignoring the underlying issues.