I’m revisiting a column from 2020 about the issues listed above, in order to keep up with recent developments. But first, paradoxically, some history.
Human rights and sports have long been intertwined in complex ways, along with their coverage by the media. The Spanish Republican government declined to participate in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics because of his anti-semitism. Martin Luther King supported a black boycott of Mexico 1968. Many African countries refused to attend the 1976 event in Canada, because New Zealand, which had just sent a rugby team to apartheid-ruled South Africa, was involved. The US led a 65-nation boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (apparently something one’s not meant to do). Over thirty African, Asian, and Caribbean states boycotted the 1986 Commonwealth Games because of British pandering to apartheid. Perhaps most famously in the world of UK colonialism, several rugby and cricket tours to and from South Africa were abandoned, from the 1970s through to the end of that regime.
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Today, many are debating Qatar as the venue for the 2022 men’s World Cup of football, due to its appalling record of human-rights abuses, not least during stadium construction for the big event. Amnesty International and others are attempting to destabilize the Finals, listing Qatari abuse of migrant workers, bans on political parties, prohibitions on gay sex; and on and on and on.
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World football has largely refused to participate in boycotts, happily playing with fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1970s and anti-democratic authoritarian governments today. There is one important exception: the 1966 World Cup in England, long-celebrated by the simple folk who hosted. This was the only time the English won—on home soil, and with Asia and Africa permitted just one competitor. All African nations boycotted in consequence. But hey, we won. Wowee.
Despite this history of denial and ignorance, football’s relationship to human rights has become a controversial topic recently with a proxy of the Saudi Arabian government taking over Newcastle United, a member of England’s Premier League. Last year, the sale was blocked, because the Saudis were pirating Premier League TV. As soon as that issue of intellectual property was resolved, in mid-2021, the next step was obvious. Except to the sheltered world of Anglo sports journalism, of course, which expressed astonishment at the ‘sudden’ sale.
The House of Saud joined a gallery of imposing world figures who own Premier League clubs. Their wealth derives from a wide array of sources, such as pornography, state-owned/problematically-privatized energy firms, publishing, papas and papas-in-law, equity conglomerates/raiders, malls, construction, gambling, video games, theater, duty-free stores, US sports, corporatized food, health care, foreign-exchange trading, and manufacturing. Mike Ashley, owner of Newcastle United from mid-2007 until October this year, is the proprietor of Sports Direct, a zero-hours contract mass-market retailer of sporting goods, and a series of brands that his chain stores sell.
Newcastle has a pitiful footballing record over the last half century, and Ashley did not make major investments during his proprietorship. So fans were delighted when the takeover with Saudi money was announced; it would be a means of buying glamorous players who might deliver real success. Unmasked white masculinity lined the streets to celebrate, as if in ironic counterpoint to freedoms that don’t exist inside the world of its beloved team’s beloved new owners.
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The BBC offered footage of dozens of white male drinkers basking in their newfound imagined importance. They represented 94% of Newcastle followers who supported the takeover, while claiming, as ever, that they would use the opportunity to ‘educate’ people about human rights. There were a few dissenting voices. But most supporters have blithely disregarded the appalling human-rights record of the Riyadh regime, just as other clubs’ followers don’t care about the political economy and violence underpinning Thai, Chinese, Russian, or Emirati investments in their teams.
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Sky Sports and its male ex-footballer cohort of ‘experts’ ignored the issues. This was called focusing ‘purely on the football side of things.’ And the Premier League could care less about human rights. That is evident from the appalling regimes represented among its ownership—delegates and beneficiaries of avowed anti-democracies and standard-bearers of brutal superpowers such as Russia and the US. A few Premier League managers breathed critiques about the Newcastle takeover, perhaps largely based on the prospect of a newly energetic rival. They did not question the horror that this incarnated.
Amnesty International has repeatedly explained, to all those with eyes to read and ears to listen, that the Saudis use sports to better their image. The proposed Newcastle story is a key instance. Torture, show trials, anti-democratic norms, zero human rights, murder—none of this appears to matter to a ‘big club’ in search of money.
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Newcastle ‘fans’ and Premier League ‘executives’ are just like Downing Street and the White House, where greedy insouciance has dominated foreign policies driven again and again by a lust for Saudi oil reserves and investment, in return for promises to restrain anti-Saudi forces, be they domestic or foreign. The laughable UK bureaucracy salivates at exports to Saudi Arabia as part of its ‘great.gov.uk’ (truly) initiative. And the House of Saud imports 6 billion pounds’ worth from Britain annually. Go team?
What should be embarrassing is treated as inspirational and instructive. At the bottom of the relevant web site, we are asked ‘Is there anything wrong with this page?’ Well, yes. Nothing about queer people, women’s rights, electoral democracy, racial exploitation of migrant labor, or environmental despoliation. There’s a list. I entered it. Will I hear back from ‘great.gov?’
The point is this: it’s not just Westminster. It’s also football. It’s the Premier League, whose prime movers are international capitalist hegemons with human-rights records that are either non-existent or maleficent, and bureaucrats who might have invented the idea of perfidious Albion. Agents and managers are frequently corrupt. Why? The sport takes care of almost a trillion dollars in gambling each year. That leads to routine match- and spot-fixing.
Professional football is in desperate need of democratic regulation to cover a raft of human-rights issues and mindless, dangerous commodification. The evidence is obvious. The likelihood of such reform? Zero. The House of Saud will go on and on because it offers cheap oil in return for cheap human rights. The Premier League will continue its lust for Mammon.
The loud fans of Newcastle are no better than a Thatcher, a Blair, or any of their Saudi-sycophant successors. They should be ashamed, as should all those represented by the Premier League, its similarly-sycophantic cohort of brain-dead journalists, and the networks, from Sky to the BBC to BeIn, that collude with this amoral environment.
The world of TV sports has spawned a monster in the Premier League. Similarly monstrous governments and capitalists celebrate and exploit its ‘success.’ A day of reckoning may come, but from where, and for whom?
Toby Miller is Stuart Hall Professor of Cultural Studies, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana—Cuajimalpa, Research Professor of the Graduate Division, University of California, Riverside, and Visiting Professor at Tulane University. Toby can be contacted at tobym69@icloud.com and his adventures scrutinized at www.tobymiller.org.
