Cleaning up
When countries or corporations attempt to burnish their image by pouring money into cycling, should riders and fans speak out? Cyclist looks into the thorny issue of sportswashing
‘It’s an opportunity to create positive stories about these countries that deflect from their pretty appalling human rights records’
In 2002 a new race was added to the international cycling calendar. The Tour of Qatar seemed like a novelty – a professional race held in the desert – but it had serious ambition behind it, as well as serious money and, perhaps crucially, the endorsement of the greatest cyclist of all time.
Eddy Merckx and his business partner Dirk De Pauw worked with ASO, the Tour de France organiser, to build the Tour of Qatar into a race that attracted some of the world’s biggest teams and stars even as it remained a curiosity. It was an event with no roadside spectators. Unlike so many major bike races, it did not act as part of a marketing campaign for the country – at least not in the traditional sense.
The aim did not appear to be to attract tourists, given that the backdrop to the racing was featureless desert, pockmarked with the industrial infrastructure of an oil and gas superpower that could boast the world’s highest per capita earnings as well as being the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases.
After a few years, as more top teams came to Qatar in search of early-season racing, Merckx believed the sky was the limit. He talked up the possibility of the Tour de France starting in Qatar.
‘It may not happen tomorrow,’ he said, ‘but you can’t count it out. Nothing is impossible. Doha is only four or five hours’ flight from Nice.’
The World Championships were held there in 2016 – there were still no fans – but at the same time the Tour of Qatar fell by the wayside, citing lack of financial support. Qatar had bigger fish to fry, successfully bidding for the FIFA World Cup, which will be staged there next year.
Name of the game
In hindsight the Tour of Qatar was a precursor for the World Cup – it helped prove that the small country could stage major sporting events – and for a trend that has been accelerating in cycling in recent years, starting with races and now evident in team ownership.
Of the 18 teams in the Worldtour for 2022, five have title sponsors who are not sponsors in the conventional sense. At least one more has a secondary sponsor that fits this category too.
They are not selling anything and it can be difficult to fathom why they are investing millions in a cycling team. Or to understand why, in the case of UAE Team Emirates, they have signed Tadej Pogačar, for another six years on a salary estimated to be around €5 million a year.
According to the team’s website,
‘The team has the aim of representing an entire nation, the UAE, and promoting a healthy lifestyle linked to the use of the bicycle.’ There’s a potted history of the team’s results but, as of November 2020, nothing at all listed for 2021.
This is odd when you consider that in 2021 their biggest star did something that only two riders – Merckx and Fausto Coppi – have ever done, namely winning a Grand Tour and two Monuments in the same season.
According to critics of the UAE, Bahrain, Kazakhstan (Astana), Israel and Ineos, they represent a different kind of sponsor who is using sport as a form of PR, propaganda or as an expression of ‘soft power’. Some refer to this as ‘sportswashing’.
It’s a label that’s relatively new, added to the lexicon – according to some – by Amnesty International as recently as 2018. But the idea has been around for as long as sport has conferred prestige and power, from ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ – the 1936 Games in Berlin – to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Sportswashing is, by one definition, ‘the practice of an individual, group, corporation, or nation state using a major or prestigious international sport to improve its reputation’.
In cycling, it isn’t just nation states that stand accused of sportswashing. Ineos, the chemicals company and major producer of disposable plastic, became a lightning rod for criticism when it took over the title sponsorship of Team Sky in 2019, not least because at the previous year’s Tour de France the team wore jerseys to support Sky Ocean Rescue, a campaign to reduce the impact of plastics in the ocean.
On the involvement in sport of several Middle Eastern states, Felix Jakens of Amnesty International says, ‘It’s an opportunity to buy goodwill and create positive stories about these countries that deflect from their pretty appalling human rights records.’ (Amnesty’s website features detailed reports and assessments of each of these countries’ human rights records.)
‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ he adds. ‘A lot of these countries are very heavily oil-dependent, and they see that the writing’s on the wall for fossil fuels over the medium to long term. So there’s a bit of a diversification aspect going on as well. But that has always been combined with attempts to detoxify their brands. They can throw money at sports and get the reflected glow of goodwill that comes with highprofile sporting events.’
It has been a hot topic in football, with Saudi Arabia recently taking over one of England’s major clubs, Newcastle United. But that debate has highlighted another aspect of alleged ‘sportswashing’: that when controversial sponsors invest in sport, especially sports with the profile the size of football or the Olympic Games, they can find themselves under an intense spotlight.
But does it work?
As PR moves go, it can seem a little counterproductive, as was illustrated when Ineos took over Team Sky and environmental protesters gathered at the team’s bus before its first race as Team Ineos, the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire. The story, for a day at least, was not that Chris Froome was riding in Yorkshire, but that Ineos was involved in fracking and other controversial activities.
This is crucial to the question of whether sportswashing actually works. Jakens notes that Qatar ‘has come under an extremely large amount of scrutiny over their migrant rights record as a result of getting the World Cup.
And there have actually been some significant changes to the way migrants’ rights are looked after in the country.’
Which sounds positive, until Jakens adds, ‘In reality, as Amnesty has recently found, what that means in terms of people’s lives is actually not very much. They’re still facing pretty bad abuses.’
Here too the issue is more profound and more controversial because of the direct connection between the World Cup and human rights abuses – people have been dying in the race to construct the facilities needed for the World Cup (according to The Guardian last February 6,500 migrant workers had died in Qatar since the tournament was awarded).
Despite this, the investment, from Qatar’s point of view, might still have the desired effect of improving the country’s image.
‘It can be hard to say for definite, but in the case of Qatar there’s a general sense that they’re becoming normalised,’ says Jakens, ‘that people understand them as places that are investing in sport and are therefore quite open and outward looking.’
One question is, what should fans do if they are unhappy that a particular sponsor is involved in their sport?
‘We’ve always maintained that these deals are not the responsibility of fans,’ says Jakens. ‘It’s not their job to be the voice against them. What we have always said is, find out about these countries. If a sponsor is buying a cycling team that’s full of riders that you love, find out who they are, what’s going on in the country, and then be prepared to speak up about that situation. The positive PR only works if people don’t put forward the alternative narrative.’
As for the riders, Jakens realises ‘it’s a really difficult position they’re in. But our message would be the same: we’re not telling anybody how they should or shouldn’t make a living – that’s absolutely not Amnesty’s position. But we would just say, if Qatar or the UAE are coming to buy your team, then find out about what’s going on there.
‘Lewis Hamilton, when he goes and races in places like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, has talked about some of the issues that are occurring in those countries. So we do see examples of high-profile sportspeople speaking up. We’d encourage cyclists to do that, but at the same time, if it’s going to cause them huge problems with their employers, that’s a difficult decision.’
The rider’s view
I spoke to one rider who has ridden for both types of team – a ‘conventional’ commercial sponsor and the kind
‘A lot of these countries are very heavily oil-dependent, and they see that the writing’s on the wall for fossil fuels’
whose team, according to its critics, exists to sportswash its ‘brand’. Was there a dilemma before signing?
‘Given the kind of volatility in the cycling job market, I certainly didn’t think about that, because in the end, you kind of have to take the opportunities that are there when they are there,’ he says.
‘The reality is that cycling is this sponsorship-driven revenue model where we don’t really have much, if any, income from anything else. A cycling team is a curious thing. There’s no actual equity. If a team folds, what do you have? A bus and some bikes – essentially nothing. It’s not like having a stake in the New York Yankees or Barcelona, where it’s feasible that you could sell your stake for more money.
‘It means that in cycling the list of prospective investors or backers gets a lot smaller. It feels like a dwindling pool of people or companies that are looking to put their money into the sport.’
The rider in question believes that this explains why riders might feel they cannot afford to let their principles get in the way of a contract and a job. A common perception – fuelled by team owners, the media and fans, and clearly felt by the riders – is that the sport exists in a permanent state of crisis and anxiety about a business model that appears so flawed, and yet which has survived for more than 100 years.
Once on such a team, though, is there any difference to riding for a more ‘conventional’ sponsor? Is there any pressure to say or not say certain things?
‘I would say no, not really,’ says the rider. ‘Certainly there’s no influence on the racing side of things. Where you would perhaps see a difference is in the kind of narrative that the team tries to create, or how much they invest in social media. But as riders we don’t particularly care about social media or whatever narrative the team is trying to tell. We’re there to win races. That’s what we care about and that doesn’t change between teams.’
Does he know what the team sponsor’s objectives are? ‘I’m not totally sure, to be honest,’ replies the rider. ‘A lot of the teams – UAE, Bahrain, Astana, I suppose Israel as well – these are pretty young countries. They’re resource-rich. They have a lot of capital, but they’re very young. And it’s like, how do we kind of build a strong economy going forward, and integrate with the rest of the developed world?
‘Part of that is probably name recognition. I would say probably that’s their main goal. Bahrain had “Business friendly Bahrain” on their shorts this year, so the message, I guess, is that it’s a good place to do business with.
‘In my team, I wouldn’t say there were any cultural expectations on us, other than they just want a nice-looking team with a good image. They don’t want that sullied by riders making controversial statements or having doping cases, or any sort of negativity that would reflect on them. But that’s no different to any other team. If there’s any message, it’s just: please be respectful of the fact that they want a respectful image portrayed.’
The good owners guide
If it’s not the responsibility of riders or fans to ‘vet’ sponsors, what should be the response of the sport’s governing body? This is where it gets complicated. As Jakens says, ‘All governing bodies have responsibilities under the UN’S guiding principles on business and human rights, that their activities don’t contribute to or cause human rights violations in the countries in which they do business. That’s more specific – it’s like a worker in Qatar dying while building a stadium for the World Cup.’
It’s difficult to make the argument that a cycling team’s activities ‘contribute to or cause human rights violations’.
‘With football,’ says Jakens, ‘we’ve called for the Premier League’s owners’ and directors’ test to include consideration of the human rights record of states or the sovereign wealth funds looking to purchase a club. And there’s no reason why other governing bodies couldn’t be applying similar standards in their ownership criteria.’
Richard Moore is a cycling journalist and author, former racer and co-founder of The Cycling Podcast
‘As riders we don’t particularly care about social media or whatever narrative the team is trying to tell. We’re there to win races’