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IMPACT
Environmental Sportswashing in Football Massively wealthy individuals or corporations taking over beloved football clubs is nothing new. Juventus have been owned for years by the family behind Fiat, Blackburn’s success in the 1990s was fueled by Jack Walker, and, most notoriously of all, you have Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea in 2003. The difference between these and the takeovers this past decade or so by entities such as Abu Dhabi United Group at Manchester City, is that the dual purpose at play is more complicated.
“Associating their wealth with football and other sports helps people to forget that the money that is footingthese bills is primarily coming from the sale of oil and driving climate change”
The old model of a relatively local wealthy benefactor coming in and changing a side’s fortunes for emotional reasons was to a degree finished by the time of the Chelsea takeover. Then it became a situation where the mega wealthy could bask in the reflected glory from long-suffering clubs. Both of these had the secondary purpose of individual or familial reputation benefit. However, now you have the situation whereby certain clubs are being taken over effectively by nations as an extension of their PR enterprises. Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City being the most notorious of these. These cases create a situation where not only are you able to create associations in the global public’s heads with your country and the aesthetically pleasing styles of football these teams play, you are able to acquire a set of fans who will defend you from criticism simply based on their allegiances. Whilst the intent may be more with regards to creating positive associations and acquiring defenders in terms
of human rights issues, such as Qatar’s PSG acquisition distracting from human rights abuses in building their stadiums for the next world cup, this also serves them from an environmental front. Associating their wealth with football and other sports helps people to forget that the money that is footing these bills is primarily coming from the sale of oil and driving climate change. The effectiveness of this has then seen it spread beyond football and beyond investment arms of nations. Saudi Arabia has distracted from many similar issues both social and oil-based through pushing investment in putting on combat sports events as well as horse racing, with constant rumours of a football takeover somewhere. Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos have funded an America’s Cup team, taken over cycling’s
“Using football teams and other sporting enterprises to distract from how you have made your money is a trick as old as the sport itself”
Team Sky and OGC Nice in France’s Ligue 1, and, most notably, were behind Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-2 hour marathon. This all has the fortuitous coincidence of people knowing this fairly nondescript sounding company for these sporting achievements instead of the closure of their plant in Middlesbrough due to air pollution issues as well as their pursuit of fracking.
Graphic & Page Design by Natasha Phang-Lee
Impact looks at the use of team ownership to mask where the money comes from.
Using football teams and other sporting enterprises to distract from how you have made your money is a trick as old as the sport itself. The difference here is that it is not just about this distraction, but about the future of our planet on a fundamental level.
Callum McPhail
