Could Manchester City’s UEFA ban be a watershed moment for ‘sportswashing’

The prospect of a Champions League ban for Man City could be a moment of reckoning in terms of how soccer clubs are used as a PR vehicle for entire states.

Of all the terms to have entered the soccer lexicon over the past decade or so ‘sportswashing’ has surely had the greatest influence. By crude definition, which entered the Oxford Dictionary in 2018, it is “the hosting of a sporting event as a means for a country to improve its reputation, particularly if it has a poor record on human rights.”

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing were widely seen as an exercise in ‘sportswashing,’ as was Azerbaijan’s hosting of the inaugural European Games in 2015. It’s not an especially new concept. Most recently, though, no sport has been so thoroughly awash as soccer. The practice has changed the sport at the elite level.

Of course, soccer clubs have long been seen as more than just sporting entities, but many are now being used as PR arms for entire states. Manchester City are owned by Abu Dhabi, with Paris Saint-Germain controlled by Qatar, which also has sponsorship agreements with Bayern Munich and Roma. Qatar also has a so-called ‘foundation project’ with Real Madrid, who are sponsored by Emirates airline, owned by the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund.

The Champions League is plastered with the branding of Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas firm. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which has already dipped its toe into the world of elite level boxing and tennis, is believed to be on the lookout for a European club of their own, with Newcastle United and Manchester United recently reported to be on the Gulf state’s radar.

Soccer is no longer just soccer and it’s for this reason that last week’s ruling banning Man City from the Champions League for two seasons could reshape the sport for the next generation.

The root of UEFA’s case against City is a claim that the ownership poured more money into the club while “overstating its sponsorship revenue,” making it look as if the books were balanced to comply with break-even aspects of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

If UEFA’s punishment sticks, if the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) agree that City masked the true source of sponsorship money and violated FFP regulations, it could make ‘sportswashing’ a thing of the past, or at the least put it under more scrutiny.

Clubs like City and PSG argue that FFP was only ever designed to maintain the status quo, to prevent anyone from crashing the party at the top of the European game. There is some credence to that argument. If FFP was truly implemented to ensure better financial practice across the sport why are clubs, like Bury and Palermo, are still going to the wall?

Only through Abu Dhabi and Qatari investment have Man City and PSG been able to accelerate their growth over the past decade. What chance would City have stood of catching Manchester United, for instance, as the dominant force on their own patch without significant investment in all areas of the club?

UEFA highlight that this is besides the point, that FFP rules were made clear and that City broke them, and worse still attempted to cover their tracks. How the rest of this saga plays out thorough CAS and the appeals courts will go a long way to determining whether or not soccer clubs can be used by states and sovereign wealth funds as part of a wider public relations effort.

It seems that a moment of reckoning is approaching, particularly with this week’s news that Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the PSG chairman who just so happens to be on UEFA’s executive committee, has been charged by Swiss prosecutors following an investigation into the awarding of broadcast rights for FIFA tournament. Al-Khelaifi is also chairman of BeIN Sports, an official Champions League media partner. His demise would be symbolic in almost every possible way.

Man City still maintain their innocence, calling the process that led to UEFA’s ruling “prejudiced.”

It’s possible that CAS will side with the Premier League champions and the ‘sportswashing’ of elite-level soccer will continue without breaking a stride.

But real questions are, for the first time, being asked of those who open themselves up to such practices. This might be the start of soccer’s great untangling.