The Jordan Harbinger Show - 829: Sportswashing | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

How might enjoying our favorite sports and supporting our most cherished teams and athletes make us accomplices in the world's most heinous atrocities ever committed? Award-winning journalist and podcaster Andrew Gold joins us for this Skeptical Sunday to explore the PR tactic of sportswashing, in which authoritarian regimes use sports to improve their image on the world stage. (And don't worry, David C. Smalley fans! David will return soon for future installments of Skeptical Sunday!) On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Sportswashing is a PR tactic used by countries with poor human rights records to improve their image and legitimize their atrocities through sports. Western countries and their businesses are complicit in sportswashing due to the financial incentives they receive. Despite the harm caused by sportswashing, it is difficult to stop due to the lack of accountability and the willingness of individuals and organizations to participate. Golfers have been divided over whether to participate in Saudi Arabia's LIV golf invitation series, leading to a civil war in the sport. Countries with questionable human rights records are increasingly buying sports clubs and sponsoring sports teams, making it important to be aware of where and how we consume sports. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Andrew on Twitter and Instagram, and check out On the Edge with Andrew Gold here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/829 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Remember, homosexuality was only legalized in the UK in 1967, and it was still illegal in parts of the states until 2003. Can we really go about lecturing others on their morals when we only just cleaned up our own act? I talked about the death penalty being barbaric, but that's how the UK treated one of our greatest heroes. Alan Turing, who cracked the German codes in World War II,

saved millions of lives, and was ostracized and criminalized for being gay. and he appears to have committed suicide as a direct consequence. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and this is Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of the Jordan Harbinger Show, where journalist and podcaster Andrew Gold and I break down a topic that you might never have thought about, open things up and debunk common misconceptions, topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham,

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Today on this episode of Skeptical Sunday, we are looking in to the nasty practice of sports washing. This is something that most of us had never heard of. But this is something that's starting to make headlines around the globe, particularly after the soccer World Cup was held in Qatar, a country heavily criticized for its human rights abuses. I paused after soccer because it's football in other places and whatever. Now, the concept of sports is a good thing, and washing is definitely a good thing. So what is so bad when those two terms are sandwiched together, Andrew? You make a good point.

I guess the bad thing about the concept is conspicuously absent from the world. describing it. Right. Yet the word sports washing has been washed. It's been sports wash washed. It has. And I suppose it's a little like brain washing because brains are good washing as we've established is good in moderation. But the absent concepts in brainwashing are manipulation and coercive control. Well, with sports washing, the silent ingredients are nefarious regimes and dictatorships using the popularity and tribalism of sports to clean up their public image. Yeah, sports washing may contain traces of human rights abuses, slavery, torture, and death. That's the long and short of it.

So where does the word come from and when did we even start using it? Yeah, well, the word has an interesting etymology because it appears to have been coined by Twitter users. In the early 2010s, it was a play on the term green washing. Okay, so that sounds like it could mean money laundering, just washing them greens. It does sound like that, and I thought it could be that. But green in this sense symbolizes clean energy or the environment. So greenwashing is a term used to criticize companies who perform cheap public acts of environmentalism to hide the huge levels of pollution, for example, that they are creating.

Yes, we've actually done a show on this, Spencer Roberts. That was episode 599. I must check that out. So washing in this sense is all about creating a socially acceptable and conscious image to hide the bad stuff deep down. Individual humans do this kind of thing. just think of the predator and molester Jimmy Saville, a comedian who befriended the royal family and did a huge amount of work for charity to hide the horrifying abuses he carried out on children.

Scientology is another example that uses the friendly and famous faces of Tom Cruise and John Travolta to hide its own countless abuses. As Shakespeare wrote, and thus I clothe my naked villainy and seem a saint when most I play the devil. Wow, did you just memorize that in your head? No, I went with my fiancé to Shakespeare's birthplace last week and happened to see the quote on a t-shirt in a museum right while I was researching sports washing.

So who could have known that hundreds of years after his death, Shakespeare would be scoring sports-related points against human rights abusers? It's a surprise to all of us. But it's no surprise that sports has become the go-to place for this image laundering that we call sports washing because sports is simply one of the most popular and beloved realms of our lives. Worldwide, soccer is the biggest pull in that sense, and 3.5 billion people tuned in to watch the matches at the latest World Cup,

1.1 billion of whom watched the final. So half the population of the whole world watched at least one game at the World Cup. Perhaps more surprising to Westerners, particularly to American, is the fact that 2.5 billion watched the cricket World Cup. That's funny, because we sometimes get the impression in the States that our sports are more important, like how we refer to baseball as the World Series, But then you hear those figures about cricket and soccer, which aren't even really that popular over here, particularly cricket. I don't know anybody that watches cricket. Sometimes I see Indian or Pakistani dudes playing it in the

park nearby. But that's pretty unusual and it's quite incredible. Those numbers are huge. Yeah, it is. And, you know, look, every country has their own exceptionalism. So there's so much around the world that we don't even realize. The cricket stats surprise me too, because even though it is big in England, I don't watch it or play it. But it just shows how densely populated the big cricket countries like India and Pakistan are. But American sports still have a huge global pull. The Super Bowl still brings in 100 million viewers worldwide, which is pretty remarkable for a competition contested between teams in just one country. But yeah, back to soccer. The Champions League contested between teams in Europe gets 380 million viewers, while some parts of boxing, cycling,

and the Olympics get even more. So think not only of the advertising opportunities for brands, but the branding opportunities for countries, notably regimes. Right. So it's like, hey, come visit us, come invest in us. We're a fun, soccer-loving nation. We're not an abusive, autocratic, authoritarian regime. So do you get the feeling that sports washing is only becoming more extreme now? Yes. As sports washing became more egregious and prominent in our hive mind, we started hearing it more and more. It was, for example, the word of the month for Britain's prospect magazine in September 2022, just before the Qatar Soccer World Cup that you mentioned earlier.

Now, Qatar is a tiny oil-rich country in the Middle East that, to be honest, relatively few people knew much about until it was announced as host of the Soccer World Cup 2022. I wonder how much good it has really done Qatar, because although the world is now talking about them, the country is now synonymous with human rights abuses, bribery, fraud and sports washing. So time will tell. Yeah, China was like, thank you, bro. Really needed a break from this image.

I could see the very thing Qatar wanted to wash has been brought to light since they became the World Cup hosts. So what are some of the abuses that Qatar has been accused of and are trying to wash away by hosting sporting events like the World Cup? Well, the country operates under a form of Sharia law, which is basically a rule book for certain Muslims. So to start with, homosexuality is not allowed. In fact, it is punishable by the death penalty, which is pretty barbaric. An official ambassador for the Qatari World Cup said homosexuality was damage in the mind. A former Qatari footballer or soccer player said it was haram, which means not permitted in Islam, and repeated that it was damage in the mind.

Meanwhile, women are second-class citizens in Qatar. They have male guardians who have to agree to let them marry, travel, work, or even make decisions about their own children. And that's not to mention the absence of workers' rights, lack of a free press, and the countless, literally countless because no one can agree on a figure, construction workers who died building the stadia graced by our favorite sports stars. Yeah, that sounds pretty awful. And it sounds like they didn't even have the soccer stadia before. So how did a country like Qatar get to host the World Cup? It makes no sense. How is that even decided? So there's a process, and the Football Association of each nation can put themselves forward and present. their case based on their infrastructure, support, fans and soccer culture. It's an expensive and complex route, but countries want to benefit from the PR boost, the influx of tourism, the

national pride and cheer, and the fact that a lot of teams are willed on to win the tournament in their own country. To be hosts of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar, a country with no real history in soccer, competed with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the United States. All nations with a richer soccer history, who also had the facilities in terms of stadia and infrastructure to host such a big tournament. So it was thought that Qatar didn't have much chance going into this. That's really saying something when you say the United States was in the mix and they have a far richer soccer history, because when I think professional soccer history in the United States, I'm coming up fairly dry. You know, we had the World Cup a million years ago. It was spread out

all over the place. It's not like, oh, we needed to have an actual baseball world series, so we had it in the United States. That would make more sense to me. Or football. So the fact that Qatar has less of a soccer history than the U.S., and they still ended up winning, makes kind of no sense. And also, I just want to pause and thank you for reminding us that the plural of stadium is stadia and not stadiums. I've only been getting that wrong for 43 years. It's one of those things where if you get it right, people would think you're a snob, but if you get it wrong, they'll write in to tell you. Definitely. The U.S. does have some history, particularly modern history of soccer now. And I think Most soccer or we'd say football fans could name quite a few American players just coming to mind right now.

Brad Friedel, Landon Donovan. Clint Dempsey is another one. But so they have, you know, they've got some history there and some players who play all around Europe and stuff. Qatar had none. But anyway, the problem is that FIFA, the organization in charge of soccer worldwide, is known to be one of the most openly corrupt and unchallengeable mafias in history. If you think that's an exaggeration, go to the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, and you'll find an entire section dedicated to FIFA. Wow. So Japan, South Korea, Australia and the States were wasting a lot of time, effort and money in their campaigns.

Qatar was announced the winner at the same time Russia were made hosts of the 2018 World Cup that had been contested by England, Portugal and Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. David Beckham and Prince William even ran the campaign for England, but got just two. two votes out of 22, while Russia ran away with it. So after a decade-long investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice announced for the first time, just in December 2020, that they had evidence that representatives of Qatar and Russia bribed FIFA officials. I should add that back in 2015, more than two dozen FIFA executives were arrested and charged with bribery and fraud on a huge scale. So this is a real, scary mob. It makes sense now. Like, how did Russia win against all these? Well, they paid off the people who do the votes. Got it. So Russia actually has some history in soccer, and it's not completely ridiculous. I can't see why it would be the likes of England and Spain so resoundingly, but it's not that left field. The Qatar vote, though, seems objectively crazy. I mean, it's really so obvious. To play devil's advocate, are there any reasons they could have won fairly, any reasons that the world of soccer might benefit from having a tournament held in the middle of a

again, super hot, 100 plus degree Fahrenheit desert. Okay, so I racked my brains for this one, and I thought, okay, let's hypothetically be really fair, fairer perhaps than necessary. Qatar was the first Arab state to bring the World Cup to that area. Sports is supposed to be a great equalizer in the sense that it can make very poor people with the right abilities very rich, and that the game is supposed to belong to everyone, just as it was fantastic to see South Korea and Japan or South Africa in previous World Cup, hosts host those tournaments and showcase their traditions to the world, soccer fans from the

Middle East also deserve a piece of that and to see their sports idols up close. Okay. So, once they got the tournament, did Qatar try to change its customs to go with the new image that they wanted to give to the world? Because I know they kind of sold it as, look, we want to become part of the international scene here. We want to open up. This is going to be an international event with international rules and an international feel.

Well, they said they would. For example, there were murmurings about them relaxing their strict. rules against public affection, alcohol consumption. But that changed quite suddenly just days before the tournament started. An added complication in all of this is the internal politics because there appears to be a culture clash within Qatar between the progressive and conservative factions of their royal family. Then there's a culture clash with the world. Oh yeah. Which brings up all sorts of philosophical questions. To what extent is the West justified in telling other cultures to fall in line with our own values. And to what extent would that just be a modern version of

Orientalism or colonialism? Who are we to believe that our laws believes and practices are more inherently good than those elsewhere? For example, a lot was made of the fact that alcohol wasn't allowed. In Western culture, we like to drink at our games. But if another culture wanted to come to our countries and snort cocaine in the stadia, that might sound like a lot of fun to some listeners, but our authorities wouldn't permit it. For the most part, the same goes from marijuana. The authorities wouldn't permit it probably in public, but they would be joining them in the bathroom. Continue. Well, that is true, but even so, wouldn't be officially allowed. So I don't see the ban on alcohol consumption as such a big deal. The problem was they said yes to

Budweiser as official sponsors and then withdrew permission at the last minute. So Budweiser had untold quantities of beer, which they say they gave to the World Cup winner, Argentina. The hell is Argentina, the sports team, going to do with all that beer? Also, it's Budweiser. But giving someone a million servings of Budweiser is like telling someone they've won a dog that isn't housebroken and bites everybody who gets near it. It's just more trouble than it's worth. Oh, and also you have to bring it home from guitar, right around the corner. Yeah. I don't know how that's going. I guess I don't know how Budweiser got it to them. But that's why I find that all a bit difficult to believe, but it's a whole marketing thing, you know. Anyway, things get much

darker when we talk about women's rights and homophobia. By Western standards or any right-thinking person's standards, the ban on homosexuality is cruel and abhorrent. But what some commentators from the Middle East have been saying is, remember, homosexuality was only legalized in the UK in 1967, and it was still illegal in parts of the states until 2003. Can we really go about lecturing others on their morals when we only just cleaned up our own act? I talked about the death penalty being barbaric, but that's how the UK treated one of our greatest heroes. Alan Turing, who cracked the German codes in World War II, saved millions of lives and was ostracized and criminalized for being gay. And he appears to have committed suicide as a direct

consequence. You know where you can put some of your money that won't support a genocidal regime? The fine products and services that support this show. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level.

Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales. with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel,

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All the deals and discount codes are all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where it's at. You can also search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well or the AI chatbot. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Okay, I understand a little bit of that argument, but some parts of this being illegal until 1967, that was 60 years ago, and some parts being illegal in the United States until 2003, okay, but was it enforced?

And also, was it enforced with the death penalty? And also, are those places backwards? and even the people there were like, hey, it's probably about time. We changed the laws around this. And that was 20 years ago. It's far different than, yes, we're currently still enforcing this because this is what we believe.

And also it's illegal to the point of we might kill you if you do it. It's like, yeah, you're still wrong. You're still super, super wrong. And you're still doing it now. It doesn't make guitar an ideal place to host the most popular sports competition in the world. The fact that my wife or any gay people I know literally wouldn't be able to attend

put something of a damper on it. And I know that sounded odd, but I'm not saying my wife is gay. That was two separate points about women and gay people not being welcome at the games in Qatar. Correct. And it doesn't change the fact that Qatar simply didn't have the facilities or infrastructure, which really should be a key part of winning bid to host the World Cup. And they rushed to build state of the art stadia, killed countless construction workers in the process.

They also realized halfway through that it would be too hot in summer. Somehow nobody had talked about this before when they won the bid. So they had to move the World Cup, and this was unprecedented, for the first time to November, cutting the domestic seasons like the Spanish La Liga or the English Premier League around the world in half and causing chaos, risking injury to overworked players who had no break and muting the excitement around the tournament.

And they had to build stadia with air conditioning, which was awful for the environment. So I personally can't see how those in charge of soccer could have voted for Qatar without some other incentive. In answer to your question, no, it doesn't add up and it should never have been played there. But here's the problem and here's why sports washing is so effective. I decided not to go to watch any of the games, despite being an avid soccer fan, because as you said, I'm not going to go to a country that would treat my girlfriend like a second-class citizen that would literally kill somebody based on their sexuality. But I still watched the games on TV and billions of us did.

and the Qatar World Cup was a success. The games were electric, the sober fans behaved far better than in previous tournaments in Russia or England marred by drunk hooligans. And while Qatar might now be associated with sportswashing and a cute turban mascot that they had, it's also known to investors as a major player who put together the world's biggest competition in just a few years. Their team didn't even have any players

when the results were announced in 2010. Twelve years later, they were able to field a team, that lost their games, but did okay, in which, by the way, has raised other concerns about child trafficking as they went to various countries to take talented kids in the hope they'd turn out to be good players. But months on from the games, it was a success in the eyes of Qatar and its future investors. They took children from other countries in the hope that they'd turn out to be good players and they brought them to Qatar to play soccer in the World Cup. Really? That's insane.

They went around to mostly African countries and scouted young players, you know, so eight to 12 years old, that kind of thing. Whoa. You know, they knew the tournament would be in 12 years. So they had to get kids who were the right kind of age. And loads went there. And some of them, a very, very small percentage actually made the team in the end. But the vast majority, no one knows what's really become of them. I assume they were, hopefully they were returned home, safe and sound.

That's really, really crazy. Wow. So that, my friend, is Sportswashing 101. I presume Qatar is not the only nation to garner influence through sports. I know we're picking on Qatar here. Yeah, yeah, far from it. It's actually fascinating how something as simple as a bunch of athletes kicking or throwing a ball around can have real effects on the world stage.

Russia's long-reaning president Vladimir Putin has always been acutely aware of the power of sports. Russia hosted the 2014 Olympics as a show of strength to the world, but was later found to have doped more than 100 of its athletes. Okay, but here's what I'm wondering. To put in this much time and energy, it costs hundreds of millions to put on global sports events. Is there any evidence that sports washing works long term outside of the Qatar example? Are these countries more profitable afterwards? Are they happier people? Are they more successful in other ways? I think it's just too abstract to really be measured, but it can certainly emboldened tyrants. That's one thing we know. As the Sochi-Russia Olympics came to a close in February 2014,

Russian troops were already capturing Crimea. Oh, wow. The Berlin Games in 1936 were an international advertisement for Hitler's Germany. Like Putin, after newsbrook of Russia's doping scandal, Hitler was left red-faced when African-American Jesse Owens won four gold medals and embarrassed the Fuhrer. But still just three years later, he invaded Poland and started World War II. Going back to that soccer-owning mafia, FIFA,

we may talk about Qatar and Russia as the bad guys, but FIFA have a long history of allowing and even encouraging sports washing. They allowed the World Cup to take place in Argentina in 1978, basically to enable dictator Jorge Riella to hide the horrors of his cruel regime from the world and from the country's own people. He didn't even like soccer, but he knew the Argentine people really did. So while the country was under martial law and curfew with inflation rates at 300% and while random citizens were picked up and thrown into the ocean from helicopters,

while your neighbours, family members and friends were disappearing at an alarming rate never to be seen again, the country hosted a soccer tournament for the world. We talk of sports washing. The military junta actually hired an American PR firm to clean up their image during the up. And it did work because they managed to convince many of their own people that the clamors for boycott from around the world were anti-Argentine. It was an anti-Argentine sentiment, and that fostered support for the dictatorship. Oh, this is insane. That's right. Henry Kissinger turns up, praises the government. So that's actually pretty consistent, given his history of welcoming

and normalizing war crimes. After backing a massacre committing Pakistani government, installing the deadly Pinochet regime in Chile and then supporting an Indonesian despot. It's amazing he had time to stop by for a bit of military junta soccer. Yeah, dictator Vidella entered the opening ceremony backed by a military band for the world to venerate. In a naval base, less than one mile from the ceremony,

thousands were being tortured and murdered. Argentina won the tournament, of course. In one game with Peru, they had to win by several goals in order to progress, and they did so. And it's one of the most commented on games in soccer history because the Peru players were kept up all night. Their bus got lost several times on the way to the game. And Vidella even entered the Peru changing rooms before the game, telling them they had to cooperate,

which really means lose to Argentina. They were also offered huge bribes. What? That's insane. So he rolls in and goes, by the way, I know you were kept up all night and you got lost and they're all pissed off and tired. and he's like, you are going to each get, you know, whatever, $500,000, but you're going to lose this game. Otherwise, you might not go home.

Yeah, exactly. So it was like the money was an additional incentive. It's not clear where the money came from. Several Peruvian players have spoken about it, while others have denied that they were offered bribes. So this is a really contentious issue. With them being kept up all night, basically, normally there are police to prevent local fans from keeping people up.

And the police mysteriously weren't there. that evening so the Argentine fans could all go and sort of keep all the Peruvian players up. But the consensus is that they were bright, the players and also threatened. So it's absolutely crazy. And even today, I mean, Argentina still talks about, I think it's now three World Cups because they just won the recent one. And they include that one, you know, and I understand why they do. But it's also a bit of looking the other way.

I suppose it's sports watching that's still in action 50 years later. Yeah, that's crazy. That to me is, it's a little wild. Also, though, I can understand the temptation to do so. It's like, hey, we don't have a whole lot to brag about from the 70s because we had this terrible regime that murdered a bunch of people. So if we talk about how we won the World Cup, maybe we don't mention the part where the players were threatened and it was just part of the least concerning bit of corruption

and shady stuff that was going on with the government at that time. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's the football fans. And then the non-football fans, not that there are that many in Argentina, you know, often talk about that regime just because, I mean, I used to live there and it was just such a horrible moment for all of them as so many people lost children, parents and just never to be seen again. Oh, man. The helicopter ride over the ocean thing, not a joke by the way, right? He would take students who said, hey, the government is bad. We should have something better and they would

throw them out of a helicopter into the ocean while they were alive. It's terrible. It was, as you say, mostly that kind of thing. There's just been a big film out in Argentina about it. And you can really go through each step as they got worse and worse, the military dictatorship. But it wasn't even just people who had criticized them. It was people who belonged to groups and teams whose names sounded similar to ones that opposed them. So there were all sorts of, I can't think of right now what they were, but there were all sorts of mistakes where people were taken because they belonged to like the dog supporter group and it sounded like the dictator hating group or something like that. You know, they would just take whoever. Oh my gosh. It was absolutely mad.

That sounds like North Korea type stuff. Like you folded the newspaper with the Peter's face on it. You're like, but I can't see. I'm blind. I have cataracts. Oh, well, we still have to kill you. Yeah, exactly that. And one of the worst moments during that World Cup sports washing thing, the guards at the nearby naval base, where people were being tortured, took some of the prisoners out to witness the euphoria on the streets after Argentina had won the World Cup. And it was as if to show them that this was Argentina, the one with them locked up, and it was happier without them. And it's been reported that the prisoners, their first time outside in the light for years stood pale and shaking while their compatriots

cheered around them, ignorant of who they were, of course, and then they were put back in their cars and taken back to the torture chambers. Many of them never to get out again. Horrible. Again, this is in what the 70s and early 80s in Argentina? Yeah, the dirty war, they call it. Ooh, that's awful. Yeah, awful. But I would just like to add in the name of fairness and self-awareness that it's not only far-flung nations who engage in sports washing, because Western countries do the same thing. Most notably, my own country of England, the greatest moment in English soccer history was winning the World Cup in 1966,

which when I was a kid didn't seem that long ago, but now seems almost as close to the 1800s as it is to present day. But there is a blip on that record because all of the African teams boycotted that tournament to protest the fact. They had not really been given any allocations to qualify for it, And this was further complicated by FIFA's decision to allow apartheid South Africa to potentially join. They didn't qualify. But had they played, that would have been major sports washing by England and FIFA.

At the same time, I imagine that hosting events, it doesn't always lead to war or emboldened dictators, right? Well, as I was saying, the positive effect is often difficult to measure. When London hosted the Olympics, I can tell you from experience that there was a huge swell in public feeling, nationalism, pride and general happiness. But I think a lot of people wonder now about the legacy of hosting that competition. Did we really go on to invest in young athletes and infrastructure? Were stadia and other buildings reused or just abandoned? The same goes for Brazil after the 2014 World Cup and Greece after the 2004 Athens Games,

where many locals are skeptical about the positives of having hosted those huge competitions. But hosting a tournament is a long and unpredictable strategy in sports washing. Now, nations are buying and investing in teams. It's a far more permanent and wide-reaching tactic. It's not always direct. Think of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who bought Chelsea a soccer team in London and invested so much money into them that he effectively changed the financial landscape of soccer around the world. He was known to be friendly with Putin and had to step down as owner after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, Manchester City, another team, is owned by Sheikh Mansour of the United Arab Emirates. Paris San Jaman, obviously Paris's big team, is owned by Qatar, and a Saudi Arabia-led consortium just bought Newcastle United, a team in the north of England.

When they bought Newcastle, many fans and journalists were polled, as they saw it as a way to put a sporting face on the atrocities carried out by the Saudis, such as the recent torture and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But just like I continued to watch the games at the Qatar World Cup, Newcastle fans aware that their decades-long underperforming team would soon be one of the world's best embrace the change. Even wearing tea towels, what did you call tea towels, Jordan? I think a tea towel is a dish towel in the United States. Dish towel on their heads in the stadium to represent Arabic headdresses.

Oh my God. All right, folks, I can't get you 8 million gallons of free Budweiser, but I can get you a great deal on some of the products, services that support this show. We'll be right back. Once again, all deals and discount codes are over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Wow. Okay. I'm not sure who should be more offended. Human rights activists appalled by the Saudi sports washing or Saudi Arabians appalled by the dish towels towels that fans are wearing on their heads. But also like soccer fans, not necessarily known for

tact and decorum, generally speaking. So it's kind of of the least troubling thing that happens at most soccer games. Of course, yeah. And while there are, I am sure, some Newcastle fans who stand in opposition to the sports washing, most I imagine are just excited about where their team might go. They didn't even mind the Saudi consortium changing the colors of one of their kits to green and white to represent the Saudi colors. Wow. So they're not even subtle about the sports washing. It's not like he owns it through some Shell Corporation and nobody's supposed to know. It's just like, nope, we're changing the colors to the Saudi colors and this guy's going to be on the sidelines at every game in full regalia and publicizing it everywhere.

Well, that's the point, though, right? That's the sports washing. That's the point, as everybody knows. Yeah, exactly. Why would they hide it? I mean, nobody cares enough to do anything. Think of that Qatar World Cup. Fans, players and coaches made a few noises when it was first announced and then did so again in the months leading up to the tournament. But if the football associations of just a few countries, say the US, England, Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, stood firm and refused to play in Qatar from the beginning. FIFA would have been forced to change it. The associations of the countries had 10 years to do something.

All they managed was a few zero-cost virtue statements. For example, the England team got these armbands saying one love. Yeah, that's so vague. I saw that. I'm like, what does one love mean? It literally means nothing. A dictatorship might take that to mean that the one love is a man and a woman, or could actually support homophobia?

I mean, did this do anything at all? No, the players backed down and didn't wear them. FIFA threatened to give players wearing the armband a yellow card, which isn't the worst thing in soccer. You can still play, but you are at a bit of a disadvantage, and the World Cup's a big thing that doesn't come around that often. You don't want to play the whole game with a yellow card, and the England team and other teams backed down and didn't wear them.

And that's the thing. Real activism is hard. Real activism, the kind that changes things and doesn't just serve the activist's ego, is rarely zero cost. Perhaps the best example of this in the history of sports was when suffragette, Emily Wilding Davison, ran in front of a racehorse owned by the king. The racehorse was a form of sportswashing itself as the king basked in the triumph and glory of his majestic creature. Emily Wilding Davison died from her injuries, and I'm not suggesting that activists go so far as to risk their lives, but there's got to be a middle ground between literally dying for a cause and giving up on a cause because you would have gotten a yellow card.

Suffragette, so she wanted women to have the right to vote. She got trampled by a racehorse. Wow. If your activism only stretches as far as the first threat of a yellow card, just saying maybe you don't deserve the plot it, I agree, you have to risk something. Most of us aren't even willing to risk a loss of capital, cash, a shot at a cup, even a friggin' yellow card, and despotic regimes, they know this. so they realize there's going to be basically zero accountability for their actions.

And that just encourages more of this behavior and helps make sports washing work, which is really frustrating. But has any good ever come from sports washing generally? Well, that's an interesting question, particularly regarding the dynamic of the Gulf states right now. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have had a bit of a tumultuous relationship over the years. But it appears the World Cup in Qatar has brought them together, as was emphasized by the images of an embrace between former sworn enemies, crown prince Mohammed bin Salaman of Saudi Arabia,

and Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Tani. Whether that's good for the West or the rest of the world, however, remains to be seen. One thing that does seem clear is that it won't be easy to stop sports washing. The biggest fight to stop it that I've seen has come in the world of golf. Saudi Arabia set up their L-I-V golf invitation series and they've been trying to entice the best and most famous golfers in the world to come and play. The golfers have been receiving huge sums of money just to perform, let alone win. And that far outstrips what they can earn on the traditional PGA tour. But this has started something of a civil war,

where the PGA has said that any golfers who play in the Saudi competition are not welcome in their tournaments, and golfers are picking size and calling each other out. Now, I have sympathy with the golfers, because they are individuals. They're not all stinking rich. They can only play sports for a limited time in their lives, and they're being offered life-changing money just to go and play. Golfers who play in Saudi Arabia are being asked by journalists in press conferences if they considered the families of victims of 9-11, and things like that. And it's hard because these are individuals, not companies,

and while they say they do sympathize with the victims of 9-11, they also are probably thinking primarily of themselves and their families. Tiger Woods stood firm against Saudi Arabia, but most golfers don't have his wealth and fame. So it's easier for Woods to say no. Yeah, turning down a couple million dollars is a lot easier when you already have a billion dollars. Yeah, when you're Tiger Woods, and that's that thing about zero cost, you know, for Tiger Woods turning down Saudi Arabia, maybe it's like a 1% cost.

For someone else, that might be like 90%. And then your activism is like, you know, what do you do with that? When you go home and you don't have any money, you're like, oh, at least I didn't go to Saudi Arabia. You know, it's hard. Humans are difficult. Humans are complicated. Ultimately, this extends beyond golf, beyond the Olympics and beyond soccer. This year, 2023, the FIBA Basketball World Cup is being held partly in the Philippines, led by the Marcos family dictatorship, who kill and torture anyone

who seems to oppose them. Big tennis tournaments have frequented the likes of Qatar, China, Russia and apartheid South Africa. National rugby teams were welcomed to the communist regime of Romania, the apartheid state of South Africa and military junta Argentina, and other rugby teams welcomed Fiji's national side during their military dictatorship. The racing Grand Prix and professional cycling have been just about everywhere, as has boxing. And even the WWE, that's wrestling, has gone to North Korea. Wow. Muhammad Ali went on that tour, and WWE twice visited Saudi Arabia. North Korea, professional wrestling in North Korea. I actually I've never heard about that at all.

And I can only imagine how bizarre that was. And for those that don't know, I'm a bit of a North Korean nerd. I've been there a bunch of times. Producer Gabriel Mizrahi and I did a couple of episodes where we talked about our time in North Korea. So definitely search the website for those. I think one of the episodes is 435. And there's just not a whole lot there. Right.

So getting the right food, being in the right hotel, having a bunch of wrestlers go there and then having a bunch of North Korean fans watch this. I mean, they already think America's weird. I can't even imagine what they thought. of America when they're watching wrestling. And that is just so freaking weird. That's weird on top of weird. There's like a specific type of American sports or, I don't even know what I'd call it,

that North Korea do seem to like, because there's that basketball player, isn't there, who's also quite friendly. Do you know how I mean that? Dennis Rodman. Yeah, they like kitsy, weird-ass stuff, which is maybe not totally surprising, but also just kind of, it's extra weird. Increasingly, countries with questionable human rights records are buying up billion dollar sports club like properties in a game of monopoly. In fact, I should say there's a lot of

news at the moment because firstly, Manchester United seemed to be being approached by Qatari investors. Qatar is also trying to get a cut of Tottenham. Tottenham. Tottenham for you Americans, us Americans. Tottenham. Yeah. As Americans sometimes say that, that's my club. So whenever I'm telling Americans, I have to say Tottenham or Spurs or something like that. They're looking to do that. Oh, and also, I should mention actually, you know, I was researching this. And did you hear, Jordan, about the whole controversy of Manchester City this week? I did not because me following the news is not really a thing, and me following the sports news is certainly not a thing.

And me following the sports news when it comes to soccer is absolutely not a thing. No. Right. So it's one of the biggest news stories to come out of the Premier League, which is the top division of English soccer. And basically what it is, there's something called like financial fair play. And it means that you're only allowed to spend a certain like ratio of the amount you earn, as in like income from selling merchandise, from winning tournaments and stuff like that.

And it has emerged that Manchester City over the past 10 years have allegedly inflated their earnings by doing all sorts of dodgy dealing. So this is Manchester City owned by United Emirates, Sheikh Mansour. And yeah, for 10 years, they've been inflating. So they would pretend they were paid more than they were for certain sponsorship deals and all sorts of things. This is all alleged at the moment. And it's a huge story because it would mean that They've basically won everything the last 10 years. They've won almost every league, every cup. They've been the best team in the world for years now.

And if proven true, these allegations, and it feels like the Premier League would not have announced them if they didn't think they had a very good chance of proving them true, Manchester City might be expelled from the legal together or perhaps relegated and they might lose all of their trophies over the last 10 years. Wow. So that's a huge deal. That's not like a fine or... That's a huge deal.

Oh, yeah. Nothing. No, because you can't. find them. Right. Because a fine means, it just means nothing to them. Yeah. So this is it. I mean, we've seen some things with like match fixing and stuff like that in the Italian League where the team Juventus, one of the biggest teams there, they were relegated to the division below. But what's happening with Manc City could be even more than that. And there's a big sort of war going on where the other 19 clubs in the league are all getting very upset about Manchester City because they're saying,

well, this is not a level playing field. So yet again, in this case, the United Arab Emirates, the sports watching is being mixed up with sort of this sense of cheating and injustice and that kind of thing. So again, it remains to be seen. I think that they are probably right in knowing that even the cheating and all that stuff, it's still going to be good for them. They can still sponsor all their airlines and things like that and do well. So they sponsor the team shirts as well, a lot of the sports washing nations and stuff. The names drape the titles of airlines, and they provoke civil wars between golf players. And for us to stop it is both the easiest and hardest thing in the world.

Yeah, but well, don't stop listening to this podcast. No, stop watching sports games run by dictators, but keep on listening to Skeptic Sunday on the Jordan Harbinger show for both sides of the story with a healthy side of skepticism. Also, if you want to know more about the crimes of FIFA in particular, as there is a lot more on their atrocious record, check out episode 191 of my podcast on The Edge with Andrew Gold, where my guest is a FIFA expert.

Thank you so much, man, and thank you all for listening. I do hope you'll think twice before going to North Korea to watch a wrestling match, although it would be so tempting. And please avoid all soccer games within a mile of any torture chambers. I joke, but it's really, that stuff is really, really sad and cruel. And especially like, oh, they're going to threaten you with a yellow card. Well, now I got to watch it. It's crazy to me that you almost have no leverage.

Because FIFA, everybody knows they're corrupt. And yet, they're kind of like, yeah, and what are you going to do about it? And the answer is nothing because you still want to watch the world. Cup. Yeah. And there seems to be no hope in cleaning it up because there's no incentive to really clean it up. That just, the incentive is keep the money flowing.

You know, what's sad for me, like, because football is like, it's my passion, really. And it's the most important of all the unimportant things, right? So to see that happen to the game and to have been happening for so many decades. And there's no one you go to, like, to clean that up. What can the fans do? And there's just nothing. No. All the countries would have to get together and be like, hey, we need to stop being corrupt

and dealing with these corrupt bastards. which is not likely because the point is countries like Russia, Qatar, whatever, are going to be corrupt and bribe the FIFA officials. Like, that's the point. So if you have one country that's going to do that, it's a prisoner's dilemma. Yeah. They can just do that. And if everybody else says, hey, we're not going to do that. Fine. We'll just hold it in shitholes constantly, right? We will hold the next one in North Korea because they're the ones who are going to pay us to do it. The end, you're right. It seems pretty hopeless, at least as far as FIFA's concerned. With the rest of it, I mean, what do we do? Do we just pay attention to,

countries and events. I know, like, for example, the Beijing Olympics, a lot of people said, I'm not going to watch the Olympics. And I was one of those people. That was a little easier to just not watch the Olympics because I didn't want to support the Chinese Communist Party in a commercial endeavor. And I didn't want to go. I was thinking about going. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. And I mean, really, what do you do? Just withhold your ticket sales. Don't go? There are times, I guess, in society where, you know, it's a little bit like voting, for example where like everyone has to do it or it's stupid or recycling like you know everyone has to do it including huge companies and things like that so it is frustrating because you can turn your back to it

you'll hear it in your next door neighbor's room particularly the soccer particularly if you're somewhere like Argentina and there are a lot of countries and I don't mean it's in a patronizing sense but this wasn't really a big story I know a lot about Argentina just because I've got family there and stuff but this wasn't it was mentioned of course it was quite often but it wasn't a huge story there was more focused on the football because they've got other things to worry about you know so I don't think it was such a huge story around the world I don't think people are

that bothered about the sports washing outside of some of the Western countries Germany did some protesting stuff but then they were made fun of because they lost every game and it was sort of like people were saying focus on the football you know rather than making that statement Holland tried to say something or other

hopefully if I can be optimistic here the nations will have learned their lesson because they all got a bit of bad press. And I think they all found themselves in a position 10 to 12 years after the announcement that it was going to be in Qatar where they were like, oh, we should have all done something a bit earlier. And hopefully, but look, money talks. And who knows how far that goes. It took 10 years to prove any connection between Russia, Qatar and money with FIFA. So who knows how far that actually extends to the US, to England and to other countries. We just don't know.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thanks again for listening. Any topic idea. Always welcome. Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com is how you can reach me. And if we got anything that's way, way off, definitely let me know that too. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Andrew Gold on his podcast, On the Edge with Andrew Gold, anywhere you get your podcasts. This show has created an association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millio Campo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

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