What is 'sportswashing,' and what acts does it launder?

(NewsNation) — After Saudi Arabia was named as the host of the 2034 FIFA World Cup on Wednesday, the country’s human rights record moved almost immediately into the spotlight, raising concerns of “sportswashing” that also arose two years ago at the event in Qatar.

Saudi Arabia will seek to host all of the 2034 World Cup’s 104 games in 15 stadiums, The Associated Press reported. Saudi Arabia entered the only competitive bid for the 2034 World Cup after Australia announced last fall that it would not enter the running.

Saudi Arabia’s desire to host a World Cup has been public knowledge for years, The New York Times reported. However, the report also said that by bidding for the premier international soccer event, the nation risked placing itself under a decadelong scrutiny similar to Qatar when it was awarded its World Cup in 2010.

What is 'sportswashing'?

Sportswashing has been defined as the practice of an organization, government or country to use sports or a sporting event to improve its reputation or to promote a positive public image.

The term is relatively new but has become more common after countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia became more involved in the global sports landscape. Sports Illustrated reported that the act of sportswashing occurs when a country uses sports to present a “sanitized, friendlier version of a political regime or operation.”

The act of sportswashing dates back nearly 90 years to when Berlin hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics with Adolf Hitler in attendance. After Hitler was able to spearhead the international sporting event, he then used the goodwill generated by the Games as a way of establishing national pride throughout Germany and to consolidate power in the years leading up to World War II.

Nearly a century later, the practice continues.

"I define sportswashing as when political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while stoking nationalism and deflecting attention from chronic social problems back home,” Jules Boykoff, a professor of politics and government at Pacific University, told Yahoo Sports in 2022.

Where sportswashing comes into play

Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup on the same day in 2010 when FIFA officials announced that Russia would host the event in 2018,

In making the announcement, then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter said that Russia being awarded the 2018 would “do a lot of good for (that) part of the world,” ESPN reported. The report indicated that U.S. Justice Department officials announced that FIFA officials accepted bribes in the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.

However, the ESPN report argued that had it not been for Qatar receiving the bid for the 2022 event, the country’s issues with human rights and the treatment of migrants, along with the rights of women and the treatment of members of the LGBTQ+ community, would have gone unchecked.

Blatter later said in an interview that he regretted awarding Qatar the World Cup, calling it a mistake.

Qatar became the smallest country ever to host the World Cup and the first Middle Eastern country to do so. However, when it was awarded the bid by Blatter in 2010, it required a significant investment and the construction of several stadiums to host the event. NPR reported that to complete the massive building project, the country relied on migrant workers, who make up 90% of Qatar’s workforce.

The report indicated the treatment of migrants during the build to the World Cup was often exploitative and dangerous. The Guardian reported in 2021 that between 2010 and 2021, more than 6,500 migrant workers from five South Asian countries died of various causes. The report indicated that, on average, 12 migrant workers died each week as the nation prepared to host the World Cup.

FIFA and Qatar officials disputed those figures, claiming that only three people died in the construction of soccer stadiums and that 37 workers died from nonwork-related causes, NPR reported.

FIFA later changed its criteria to select host countries in the wake of the concerns, ESPN reported.

"Since then, social considerations and human rights are taken into account," Blatter said in 2022.

However, A University of Michigan study indicated that Qatar spent $220 billion on the World Cup, which, in turn, generated $7.5 billion in revenue for FIFA and $1.56 billion for Qatar.

After Wednesday's announcement regarding the 2034 bid, Saudi Prime Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that the event would put the world's love of soccer on center stage.

“We look forward to hosting an exceptional and unprecedented edition of the FIFA World Cup by harnessing our strengths and capabilities to bring joy to football fans around the world,” Salman said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to pushing for the 2034 World Cup, Saudi Arabia’s ties to sportswashing also have links to golf.

LIV Golf, a professional men’s golf tour, began going head-to-head with the PGA Tour in 2021. The tour is financed by the Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

Since its inception, LIV Golf has used the promise of large winner’s purses to lure players away from the PGA Tour, including some of the game’s biggest names. But the tour has not been without its controversies. That has led popular players like Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson to defend their jump to LIV.

ABC News reported that the PIF has invested more than $2 billion into the tour. The organization has also invested billions into other sports ventures as a way of diversifying its economy, the report said. But the use of sports has been a cover, opponents of the tour say, to cover up the Saudi government’s human rights violations, its reported ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the killing of an American journalist.

Despite that, the country will spend the next 10 years planning for its long-desired World Cup.

"Big governments, and big corporations included, use sports-related content and the media stories tied to sports in order to alter the information that reached their target audiences," Sarath Ganji, the director of the Autocracy and Global Sports Initiative, told "Impact." "Saudi Arabia can use the media cycle of good sports stories in the United States to push out all those negative stories.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.