As countries with questionable human rights records buy overseas teams and vie to host global tournaments, Matt McDowell speaks to Matt Elton about the rise of ‘sportswashing’ – and whether sport and power have always gone hand in hand
Matt Elton: The term ‘sportswashing’ has been in the headlines a lot recently. What does it mean?
Matt McDowell: The aims of sportswashing are similar to those of propaganda, public relations and soft power – to launder the reputations of nations, institutions or organisations deemed to have liabilities in terms of human rights, free speech, lack of electoral processes and so on.
Certain nations tend to be accused by western commentators of sportswashing, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar, which famously hosted the 2022 Fifa men’s World Cup, has been heavily criticised for its labour rights, LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer] rights, and treatment of migrant workers. It’s also bought teams in other countries, such as the French football club Paris Saint-Germain in 2011.
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What Saudi Arabia is doing is a bit more ambitious. It bought Newcastle United Football Club in 2021, and last year started a golf league, LIV Golf, to rival the long-established PGA Tour; a merger between the two has since been announced. So its international influence is huge.
The fact that specific nations tend to be accused of sportswashing by the west means that we should be cautious about our use of the term. In the west’s rush to judgment of such nations, it’s possible to overlook the fact that they may genuinely be aiming to develop domestic sport in an effort to improve public health outcomes – reducing levels of obesity, for instance.
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When were the first accusations of sportswashing levelled?
The idea is quite new – the term ‘sportswashing’ first emerged in the news media in 2015, and it’s still much debated in academic circles. But politics has been linked with sport since the games of ancient Greece, when city states put money into hosting contests and helping their athletes win. Much like the modern games, the ancient Greek Olympics were about political positioning as much as sport. So the idea that sport and politics – and, indeed, governments – have a close or even symbiotic relationship isn’t new.
When did sport first become connected to image management in the UK?
Modern sports culture developed from the mid-19th century with the foundation of association football, which was a game of the working class in terms of both supporters and players. So in places such as the west of Scotland or Lancashire, local industrialists – cotton mill or textile works owners, for example – might become patrons of local clubs, buying them grounds and kits as a way to align themselves with important employees.
By the 1870s and 80s, though, professionalism in men’s football became a problem. Industrialists such as Arnold Hills – founder of what would become West Ham United – and Alexander Wylie of Renton Football Club in west Scotland wanted nothing to do with professional sport. They were believers in sport as a form of self-help and an aid for class mobility. When employees wanted to get paid to play, the dynamic changed. In the end, it was largely unsuccessful as a tool of social control.
I’d like to explore what we can consider ‘sportswashing’ via a couple of historical examples. For instance, could the label be applied to the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin under Nazi rule?
I don’t think so – at least, not in the way we’re using the term now. That’s because when, for instance, Saudi Arabia completed its takeover of Newcastle United FC, the nation itself wasn’t referenced in the official team announcement, and the team’s games aren’t happening in Saudi Arabia. That obviously wasn’t the case with the 1936 Olympic Games, in which the Third Reich was visibly present in all aspects. So the influence of sportswashing is more insidious: you don’t necessarily think of Saudi Arabia when you see Newcastle United or when you think of golf, for instance.
Some historians have stressed the way in which Britain at the height of its imperial power used cricket to influence how it was regarded in parts of its empire. Can we consider that sportswashing?
Again, I would say not. It was reputation laundering, to some extent: the myth of the British empire – which exists to this day – is that sports such as cricket taught fairness and they taught about British democracy. But there is one major difference from sportswashing. Saudi Arabia, to stay with that example, has no occupying armies in the UK. But from the mid-19th century, the British army built cricket pitches at each of their garrisons, meaning the army had a great deal of control over the sport itself.
You could argue that colonisation in India was driven by private interests – by the British East India Company – but the army is the institution of the state.
Have certain sports been more prone to sportswashing than others?
There will always be a tendency to look at the big events and most popular sports – Olympic Games, the top tiers of association football or county cricket, top-level athletics and so on. But consider surfing. In the 1960s and 1970s, Indonesia and South Africa saw Australian and American surfers coming to their amazing beaches. At that time, Indonesia was ruled by the brutal dictator Suharto, and South Africa’s apartheid regime mandated segregation – so white, black and what were referred to as ‘coloured people’ could not be on the same beach together. The two nations invited surfers to visit and write glowing articles about how great the surfing was. This was definitely reputation laundering, and would probably fit the definition of sportswashing. And it cost these regimes very little: they paid for the travel and lodging, but hosting is hardly a big thing.
In the 1970s, Rhodesia [the territory that’s now Zimbabwe] invited sportspeople and teams from Scotland. Rhodesia was ruled by a white-supremacist government led by Ian Smith, which was absolutely thrilled to host sportspeople. Football clubs such as Clyde and Kilmarnock came, but there was also a focus on sea angling and hockey – another reminder that lots of examples of sports washing came from less high-status sports.
Why is it sport that has been used to further these kinds of political aims, rather than any other arena of society?
I’d argue it’s because sport is not viewed as political, but as leisure. And it is leisure: it’s a break from everyday life.
But, as is the case with any other area of society, it’s obviously political too. I’d say that it’s that association with pleasure, rather than politics, that make sport a soft target for being used to purchase political influence.
How have sportspeople and athletes reacted to such tactics?
It depends on where you look. Figures such as [US footballer] Megan Rapinoe and [Manchester United and England player] Marcus Rashford – athletes who are political and take a stand – have in many cases become hugely beloved figures.
There are two factors preventing wider dissent, however. One is that sport, generally speaking, has a close relationship with capitalism in general – particularly in the United States, in which there is no history of people’s sport. The major professional sporting clubs in baseball, American football and basketball all began as capitalist enterprises. They were designed to make money. And even relationships with individual athletes tend to be predicated on the idea that you can make money through sport. Becoming rich and building a personal brand are, after all, very much a part of the American dream.
The other problem is that sport, by and large, is very conservative, authoritarian and hierarchical, especially in terms of its governing institutions. Some teams in nations such as Italy or Israel do have radical histories but, on a bigger level, organisations such as football associations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Athletics [formerly IAAF] have long been deeply authoritarian.
The IOC was the brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat who saw the modern Olympics not only as a means to prevent modern European empires from clashing on the battlefield, but also, arguably, as a means of excluding professionals – typically working-class men – from sport. And the IAAF president of the interwar years, Sigfrid Edström, also targeted professional sportspeople as well as limiting competitive opportunities for female athletes.
What does exploring this topic tell us about the relationships between sport and power, now and in the past?
Any time you’re exploring the relationship between sport and politics, it can tell you a lot about what’s really going on in society – in 2023 or in ancient Greece. People love sport more than they love opera. Nobody would question the cultural value of opera, but studying the politics of sport, I think, tells us a great deal more about what’s really going on in all levels of society.
This article first appeared in the October 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine