Sport nothing more than a pawn in Saudis’ cynical game
Tennis and football are failing to follow the worlds of business and politics in snubbing a sinister regime
One might have thought, 50 years on from the Black Power salute, and at a time when Colin Kaepernick serves as a lightning rod for the racial tensions fomenting across Trump’s America, that we had discarded the fallacy that sport and politics exist in hermetically sealed bubbles. Alas, the wilful naivety of too many sports on this subject, not to mention their readiness to prostrate themselves at the feet of rancid regimes, can best be expressed in two words: Saudi Arabia.
The influence of the onceforbidden kingdom has this week stitched itself like a dark green thread across the sporting tapestry. Take Fifa president Gianni Infantino, frantically pursuing the folly of a Saudi-backed Club World Cup. Or the prospect of Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-khalifa, long-time president of the Asian Football Confederation, soon being usurped by a Saudi
Brutality of Khashoggi’s murder has reshaped the prism through which the Saudis are viewed
challenger after a statute change, as the country’s rulers chase one of the most powerful positions in the global game.
Such a trend is by no means confined to football. In tennis, the usually image-conscious Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have been suckered into an unseemly row over the ethics of playing an exhibition match in Jeddah next month. Over in the ever-sensitive golfing realm, the European Tour has raised eyebrows by agreeing to a 2019 tournament in King Abdullah Economic City.
With an impressively tin ear, the decision to embrace a nation still enforcing a widespread ban on female attendance at sports events was announced on International Women’s Day. Even motorsport is muscling in on the act, with Formula E due to stage its debut in Riyadh on Dec 15.
What started as a trickle of Saudi money into sport has turned into a raging torrent. The official PR spin is that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, seeks simply to project his land in a more progressive light, and to use sport as part of his 2030 plan to reduce Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil exports. The one rather glaring problem, though, is that the same figure stands accused of authorising the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul culminated in his murder and alleged dismemberment with a bone saw.
One is accustomed, in the
United Kingdom, to a tradition of genuflection towards the prince’s family, to the reality that prime ministers and senior royals are required to attend the funerals of even minor members of the House of Saud. Too many arms deals, too many dossiers of Middle Eastern intelligence are at stake for it to be otherwise. Likewise, when MBS – to use the prince’s trendy diminutive – touched down in the United States earlier this year, he commanded audiences with
everybody from Microsoft founder Bill Gates to media phenomenon Oprah Winfrey.
But the medieval brutality of Khashoggi’s murder has fundamentally reshaped the prism through which the Saudis are viewed. Idle words of censure have given way to expensive, embarrassing ostracism. Financiers can be as self-interested as they come, but Larry Fink, head of Blackrock, not to mention Jamie Dimon, head of banking giant Jpmorgan Chase, saw fit to remove themselves from a high-profile Saudi investment conference last month. Even Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel – known within sport for his ownership of the Ultimate Fighting Championship – has cut off a £310 million deal with the Saudi Arabian sovereign fund.
The one sphere yet to register this wave of international revulsion is sport. Neither Nadal nor Djokovic have signalled any intention to pull out of their extravagant payday, oblivious to how self-serving this makes them look. “Right now we just don’t have enough information,” flannels Djokovic. Actually, Novak, you do. You would know, if you showed even a modicum of curiosity, that the Saudis have acknowledged that Khashoggi was murdered, having shelved their initial version that he died in a fist-fight gone wrong. You would then realise that the grubby little desert wealth enterprise in Jeddah renders you nothing more than a pawn in a cynical game.
Some history matters here. In 1980, John Mcenroe turned down a million-dollar inducement to play Bjorn Borg in South Africa, an occasion that would have broken the sporting boycott of the apartheid government. It is not a decision, despite the huge loss of potential earnings, that he has ever had cause to regret.
“I thought to myself, there’s a reason why they’re offering it,” he reflected recently. “They’re going to take advantage of me and use that as propaganda.”
It is not just a pity, but a shame, that Nadal and Djokovic, who besides Roger Federer have made a greater bounty from their sport than any men before, have so far appeared incapable of reaching the same conclusion.
To watch sport’s pitiful posture towards Saudi Arabia is to wonder if the last few years ever happened. Does anyone still remember how Vladimir Putin’s power play at the Sochi Winter Olympics prefigured the annexation of Crimea, or how the obsessive pursuit of medals at those Games precipitated the worst state-sponsored doping racket of the 21st century?
The same warped calculus is followed by the Saudis. At a moment when they are losing face for their complicity in a heinous crime, they are turning to sport in search of useful idiots to help them soft-soap their reputational taint. The worst part is that so many, from the head of Fifa to the brightest stars in tennis, are falling for it. We look in vain for leadership. Instead, we see only a vast ethical vacuum.