Want to know how successful sportswashing is? Just look at the Manchester City fans who cheerlead for Abu Dhabi Few cities have such a proud tradition of fighting injustice as Manchester – but the forces of tribalism have been manipulated

“AD/UAE vulnerabilities put in play: gay, wealth, women, Israel”. So read an email sent by Simon Pearce, a Manchester City director, on May 5 2013. Pearce was discussing whether New York City Football Club – a member of the City Football Group, the umbrella group who own Man City and other teams – would be able to move into their preferred venue, in Queens, or should find somewhere else instead.

It seemed like a parochial concern. Only, with modern sport, it is seldom that simple. Pearce’s email to Martin Edelman and Ferran Soriano, senior figures at CFG (Soriano is Man City’s chief executive) showed how CFG feared the debate about New York City’s ground would trigger discussions about decidedly awkward terrain for Man City’s owners. Like Abu Dhabi’s criminalisation of homosexuality, obscene wealth and inequality, and curbs on women’s rights.

It was a matter for much more than just those involved in CFG. Pearce, who is also Abu Dhabi’s head of strategic communications, forwarded the email with those vulnerabilities to Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the United States.

The email exchange was a snapshot of how intertwined City Football Group and Abu Dhabi are – which should be no surprise, given that Sheikh Mansour, the owner of Man City and CFG, is the deputy prime minister of the UAE.

Lessons from history

Sportswashing is one of the trendiest words of 2018, even mentioned by the Oxford Dictionary recently. Simply put, sportswashing is “egregious human rights abusers using sports to scrub their awful human rights abuses,” says Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch.

It is nothing new. It happened in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, the Football World Cup in Argentina’s junta regime in 1978, and with apartheid South Africa’s relentless attempts to cajole sports teams to tour, thereby preserving a pretence of normalcy. And it has continued with China, Russia and Qatar hosting recent or imminent Olympic Games or Football World Cups. All these regimes are just borrowing from the original masters: Ancient Rome used ‘bread and circuses’ to distract the masses.

But the sportswashing we see now represents “a completely different game,” says Simon Chadwick from the University of Salford. Before, sports were used to give murderous regimes the impression of strength and prestige. Now, regimes use clubs as vehicles to promote their states, which is why New York City’s home ground was deemed a matter of concern for the UAE’s ambassador in the US.

Regimes also use clubs to shield identity. In Pearce’s notorious email from 2013, he notes one problem with CFG doubling down on moving into Queens, which might help explain why New York City eventually opted for a different site: “ownership group already identified by media, politicians, community as AD not City Football Group”. This suggests that one objective of CFG was to stop ownership of the teams being so strongly identified with Abu Dhabi – and Man City’s ultimate owner, Sheikh Mansour. Being owned by CFG would make the band of clubs around the world benefitting from Mansour’s investment less obviously associated with Abu Dhabi. And this, in turn, could make awkward investigations of those vulnerabilities less likely.

Reputation laundering

The attempts not to associate Abu Dhabi too strongly with Man City raises the question of what Mansour and his associates in Abu Dhabi are getting from Man City and the rest of CFG. Is the answer plenty? Involvement in Man City allows Abu Dhabi to reputation launder, explains Nick McGeehan, an independent human rights researcher working on the Gulf states. The aim is to create a new image – with Abu Dhabi most associated with one of the world’s best football clubs, not its torture record. “They seem to have been able to turn the association on and off as and when it suits them,” McGeehan observes.

CFG’s worth to Abu Dhabi runs much deeper. “It opens up other commercial investment opportunities,” says McGeehan. “Owning a football clubs allows them to develop close political and economic links with very important people.” It is no coincidence that Abu Dhabi’s investment in Man City, like the Qatari investment in Paris St-Germain, has come as Gulf economies try to diversify away from dwindling oil and gas reserves. Abu Dhabi’s investment has also strengthened ties with China – CMC, a Chinese consortium, bought a 13 per cent stake in CFG in 2015.

For their millions, Abu Dhabi have also got thousands of unpaid cheerleaders. Few UK cities have such a proud tradition of opposing injustice as Manchester, as the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre is a reminder of. Yet Man City fans have spent far more time haranguing UEFA – booing their anthem on Champions League nights for UEFA’s temerity to impose mild sanctions for the club flagrantly contravening Financial Fair Play rules – than attacking the human rights abuses perpetrated by the state in which the owners of their club reside. The forces of tribalism have been manipulated to buttress a regime antithetical to basic standards of human rights.

This is what successful sportswashing looks like. “When sport washing works well, it positively impacts upon peoples’ cognition and behaviour,” says Simon Chadwick from the University of Salford. “We start thinking differently, our attitudes develop favourably, and then we begin behaving more positively towards the alleged sport washer.”

Does sportswashing always work?

In the last 12 months, there has been a distinct shift; the cost-benefit analysis of Abu Dhabi’s involvement in football has become less favourable. McGeehan wrote an influential piece last year – an antidote to the sanitised version of Man City presented in the Amazon documentary – which has been followed by Der Spiegel’s new round of revelations about Man City and how they have allegedly contravened FFP far more than was already known. The Matthew Hedges case has also led to new scrutiny of Abu Dhabi and the UAE.

And so the UAE’s regime has become an ever-growing part of the wider discourse surrounding CFG. This, in turn, suggests that sportswashing doesn’t always have to work – even if McGeehan is adamant that, notwithstanding the recent turn for the past, the Man City project has still brought more benefits than trouble for Abu Dhabi.

On one level preventing sport being used this way is impossible, so complicated are the financial networks which link capital from the worst regimes to the rest of the world. And yet sportswashing can be, if not eradicated, than at least curbed.

“The game as a whole and clubs need to be better protected – that means government regulations and genuine fit and proper tests,” says McGeehan. Together with these reforms, fans’ groups – including the Football Supporters’ Federation – could demand proper safeguards of where owners’ money comes from, and perhaps organise boycotts of visits to teams funded by trampling over human rights.

Abu Dhabi’s “vulnerabilities” are many and profound, just as Pearce’s email noted. It is not inevitable that they, and other regimes, can continue to derive such benefits from sport. But without meaningful change – from the game’s authorities, governments, the media and, most of all, fans themselves – owning the best football clubs in the world will remain the bread and circuses of our time.