When people used to talk about the best spinners in sport, their minds would go to the likes of Australian phenomenon Shane Warne. Nowadays, the masters of spin aren’t just the sportspeople themselves, but the companies trying to clean up their image by buying up sports teams. But when did Premier League teams become the latest billionaire must-have, and why is it now becoming such a popular tactic? To answer this question, we need to understand the concept of sportswashing.
Greenwashing to sportswashing
Sportswashing is just the latest form of greenwashing, a set of PR tactics to make companies (and increasingly countries) appear environmentally friendly without doing the hard work of reducing their environmental impact.
There are many types of greenwashing, but a classic example is when a company sets up a partnership with a cultural institution, for example, BP have been financial backers of the British Museum since 1996. But increasingly, the public has caught on to these companies’ blatant efforts to clean up their image. Now that traditional greenwashing tactics are being exposed, their value has declined and companies have turned to sports to improve their brand image instead.
Sportswashing definition
Sportswashing is the act of sponsoring a sports team or event in order to distract from bad practices elsewhere. This tactic is often used by companies and governments with poor environmental or human rights records, exploiting people's love of sport to 'wash' their image clean.
With the near-universal popularity of British sporting institutions such as the Premier League, it is no wonder that they have been chosen as the latest target of corporate greenwashing. In fact, sportswashing may even prove to be more useful to these companies than greenwashing cultural institutions. The British Museum and Royal Opera House may have influential elites as guests, but the sheer scale of football’s popularity makes it a very attractive target.
Fossil fuel companies are some of the biggest sportswashers, but this isn’t just an environmental issue. Companies and regimes responsible for abhorrent human rights abuses also use sportswashing to try to muddy the reputational waters.
So we know why companies sportswash, but how do they actually do it? Sportswashing involves climate-wrecking bodies buying sports clubs, sponsoring sports clubs and hosting major sports tournaments. They do this to boost their popularity and detract from their problematic actions, by piggybacking off the mass appeal of sports clubs and competitions. Of course, we all think we’re immune to marketing, but a lot of this stuff works subconsciously. You may have a healthy level of distrust for oil companies, but your perception of each brand’s personality is shaped by marketing as well as by factual knowledge.
Sportswashing examples
Manchester United takeover
Manchester United are facing takeover bids from oil and chemicals giant INEOS and the CEO of Qatar Islamic Bank.
British Cycling and Shell
British Cycling have entered into a long-term partnership with the oil company Shell, which they claim will help the sport 'take important steps to net zero'.
World Cup and Grand Prix hosting
The men’s football World Cup was hosted by Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. And the 2021 Formula 1 season saw the introduction of the Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sportswashing in the Premier League
The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, with 3.2 billion viewers in the 2019/2020 season. It’s no wonder that it’s such a major global target for sportswashing. This means the UK has ended up particularly impacted by this, with massive multinational companies and foreign states swooping in and buying clubs across the country.
The UAE have owned Manchester City since 2008, but this trend is starting to develop even more quickly. Last year, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund bought an 80% stake in Newcastle United.
The race to buy Manchester United
Now, the latest example is the ongoing race to buy Manchester United.
One of the frontrunners is former Qatari Prime Minister turned banker, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani. This comes a year after Qatar hosted the men’s football World Cup, which was marred by human rights abuses. Sheikh Jassim is Chairman of the Qatar Islamic Bank, which is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s national sovereign investment authority.
The other bidder is INEOS, a giant multinational plastics and petrochemical company, that is playing up the Mancunian roots of its founder Jim Ratcliffe, to pretend that this is a local bid for a local club. This isn’t just a one-off; increasingly, this feels like a sectoral takeover, as oil and gas linked ventures try desperately to attach themselves to popular brands and share in their positive PR.
It’s not just clubs either, most major football competitions have sportswashing partnerships. From 2012 to 2022, Russian state-owned Gazprom sponsored the UEFA Champions League. As of the 2022-2023 season, the Premier League has also created a goalkeeping award called the ‘Castrol Save of the Month’.
Why is sportswashing a problem?
These companies view football clubs and their fans as pawns in their public relations campaigns. They make out like they care about the club’s history and fanbase but it’s just the latest way of washing their hands of the dirty oil that coats them. It’s tempting to think that the investment in a football club is going to help, but with no loyalty, they could just as easily sell the club at the drop of a hat, if it is no longer useful to them.
This is the issue with companies like INEOS playing up local connections, but they aren’t fooling anyone. Football clubs are important community institutions and when large multinationals buy them up, it does a disservice to the club and the fans.
You don’t have to look any further than Newcastle United’s infamous third kit to see how little this new generation of owners care about the clubs they buy. The new kit bears an uncanny resemblance to Saudi Arabia’s national team kit, despite the fact that Newcastle have never worn those colours in their 130 year history. It really shows just how brazen sportswashing has become.
Worse still, the biggest problem about this practice is that it allows dirty oil and gas companies to dodge blame for their environmental damage and it allows problematic regimes to distance themselves from human rights abuses. ‘Let’s not politicise sport’ echoes vapidly around the TV studios.
It is no coincidence that the countries that are involved in this practice the most are often petrostates. In 2018, the year that Russia hosted the men’s football World Cup, 63.1% of Russia’s exports were related to fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Qatar’s most recent figures from 2020 show that 81.8% of exports came from oil and gas. These countries may well be more interested in hiding their human rights issues than their fossil fuel use, but there is no doubt that the money they use to finance these lavish hosting bids comes from the dirty oil and gas money that backs up these petrostates.
Turning communities into customer bases
For years, PR teams have been plastering company logos onto kits in a desperate attempt to latch onto the values of health, dedication, talent and achievement that are associated with elite sport. But this latest trend is even more brazen. Companies and petrostates are increasingly buying clubs outright, which they see as ready-made marketing opportunities. Supporters are seen as customer bases, rather than communities.
These giant corporations have dollar signs flashing in their eyes when they think of huge, international fan bases who make unconditional loyalty a point of pride. But a complete lack of emotional connection to the game shows how out of touch they are and how misguided their strategies may be. What is it that football fans are loyal to? Not players, not managers, and certainly not owners. Loyalty to the club doesn’t mean loyalty to the corporate structure; it’s loyalty to the badge, the history and fellow fans. A new owner is just a paying guest, and when the money runs out, so will the welcome.
