Soft Power, Sportswashing, Attraction & Coercion
Part Two of the 'Football is Fucked' Series
The plan was for part two of this series to be published last week but in a cruel twist of fate - and This Reed Planet takes no responsibility, absolutely did not coerce for personal gain, nor seek to enhance our reputation through sportswashing means by encouraging the recent events - Liverpool’s captain decided to join Steven Gerrard at Al-Ettifaq, and pending the laughable and frankly ridiculous situation of two French bulldogs, Fabinho might be joining him in Saudi Arabia as well.
Now, if you haven’t already, here’s the first part of this series published a couple of weeks ago. Have a read of that first.
Forget dismembering journalists with a bonesaw; forget numerous violations of international humanitarian law - including killing 9,000 citizens in Yemen; forget being able to divorce your wife without her knowledge or consent; forget charging children for capital crimes and being sentenced as adults if they show physical signs of puberty; forget horrific and degrading treatment of migrant workers; forget corrupt trials without legal representation before being beheaded in public; forget asking for equal rights for LGBT people without being forced to have an anal exam or spend ten months in prison; no, the biggest reason you might not go and take the Saudi Arabian cash is because of your two French bulldogs are classed as dangerous in the country, for fucks sake.
And breathe…
The focus of this part is an academic study called ‘Football as Soft Power: The Political Use of Football in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, which brilliantly outlines the historical context, the key differences between each nations’ approach to sportswashing, their past intentions coupled with their plans for the future.
As mentioned in the first part of this series, football is an incredibly popular sport in the region. When did this start though?
After the British Empire captured the Suez Canal in 1882, football was introduced to the Middle East and North Africa. First restricted to Europeans, in time the educated Egyptian community was allowed to play as the game ‘introduced them to Western culture and provided lessons on morality, unity, discipline and authority’ (Raab, 2013). Football eventually became the most popular sport in the region. Nowadays it is a source of national pride, and political influence, especially given the amount of money invested in the game by three Gulf states.
Before we delve into the detailed motives of Saudi Arabia, let’s be clear this isn’t a blanket approach because all three nations have distinct and different reasons for their investment and involvement in football. Here’s an overview from the authors of the study.
It is the author’s contention that these nations are using football to elevate their standing in the world. Qatar seeks to ensure its long-term security and relevance, while diversifying away from natural gas. The UAE focuses its football-related spending on attracting foreign business and converting the nation into a business and transport hub. Saudi Arabia enters the football market seeking to modernise its image and retreat from oil-based revenues. The attention and attraction football investment can generate is priceless for these Gulf states.
Furthermore, there’s the need to outline the primary exponent of each countries’ conscious tactic to not use their ‘hard’ power, such as military force (though Saudi still do that as well in Yemen), or territorial control but the pivot to soft power, which is:
Soft power is founded on three key resources: culture, political values and foreign policies.
Culture extends to mass entertainment, including sports, film and the arts, and it is through the effective sale of culture that soft power grows. Public diplomacy is an integral part of an effective soft power strategy. Public broadcasts, international exchanges, subsidies of cultural exports and assistance programs all attempt to draw attention to the culture, values and policies of the soft power player. Nye postulated (2008, p.101) that ‘the effectiveness of public diplomacy is measured in minds changed, not money spent.’
Football is the ultimate tool. It ‘constitutes a worldwide known sport that is able to project the image of companies around the world using transnational values which are able to be shared within different communities and cultures’ (Ginesta, 2013, p.77).
Saudi Arabia
They are the hot topic in football, but who exactly is funding the huge expansion of Saudi Pro League as well as buying Newcastle United et al? The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s (PIF). And who exactly are they? Here’s some official blurb from their own website.
Established in 1971 under Royal Decree No. M/24, the Fund initially helped establish companies of foundational importance to the Saudi economy, including many "national champions."
PIF was "reborn" in March 2015, when the Kingdom’s Council of Ministers issued Resolution 270, which placed the Fund under the direction of the newly formed Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA), with the Crown Prince, HRH Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz as chairman. This major step gave PIF greater autonomy and better-defined national strategic responsibilities.
This change enabled Saudi Arabia’s economy to progress at an accelerated pace, and positioned PIF to be a key driver for Vision 2030, achieving positive, sustainable economic and social change.
Now if that last line has any validity maybe there’s a slither of hope that all this investment might be positive for the citizens of the country? And then you remember the public beheadings and bonesaws…
How far does the money go? Well here’s a brilliant mind-blowing visualisation by Simon Chadwick that illustrates the tangled web of Saudi across the globe and in sport in particular.
Do you watch the T20 World Cup? Drink at Starbucks? Play Nintendo, watch Disney or anything made by Warner Brothers? Used an Uber? Got an account on Facebook? Name your sport, there’s probably some Saudi money involved. Watched a film, probably has some Saudi cash sloshing about. It’s literally impossible to exist and not feel the ‘benefits’ of money from the region; and that’s before mentioning that if you live in the US or UK your own money is being used to build weapons that are being sent to the Saudi regime.
To read the rest of this analysis, and future parts of the series where we’ll be detailing the lack of competition across European leagues since huge investment came into the sport from Oligarchs and Nation States.