PUBLIC RELATIONS
Monday 27th April 2020
Middle East money, football, and reputational building
Wishing to remain anonymous, a lapsed Manchester City fan and communications professional based in the Middle East gives his view on the implications of state-backed take overs of Premier League football clubs.
There’s one story dominating on Tyneside right now. All the talk is of change, of new ownership, and hope. Many in the North East live and breathe black and white, the colors of Newcastle United. And they’re thrilled that the era of Mike Ashley, the current owner of the club, may be coming to an end.
The new owner will most likely be Saudi Arabia. But given the Kingdom’s record on issues relating to human rights (it’s only 18 months since Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the country’s consulate in Istanbul), is the decision to acquire one of the largest and best-known Premier League clubs about wanting to achieve sporting success, or more about sportswashing tarnished reputations?
IS FOOTBALL COMING SECOND TO SOFT POWER?
We don’t have to look far for a precedent. Twelve years back, one half of Manchester celebrated as new owners promised to bring back the good times. Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has turned Manchester City into the dominant team of the English Premier League, with a pedigree that few can match. Following the takeover, Manchester City have won eleven major trophies. They’ve garnered media headlines around the world – their double-winning 2017-2018 season was transformed into an in-production fly-on-the-wall documentary by Amazon Prime – and they’ve arguably become a bigger club than their next-door neighbors.
At the time of the takeover, the ambition of Manchester City’s new owners was ridiculed by United’s then-manager Sir Alex Ferguson as the talk of “noisy neighbours”. Given the estimated personal wealth of Sheikh Mansour, reckoned to be US$20 billion, Manchester City have been able to spend £200m a year on transfers and wages, incurring several seasons of heavy losses.
Manchester City isn’t the first club to have an ultrawealthy foreign owner, and it won’t be the last. The difference between City and others like Chelsea, Arsenal and even Manchester United is that City’s owners aren’t business people, they’re state actors. It’s impossible to separate Sheikh Mansour from Abu Dhabi, as football academic and historian David Goldblatt told the Independent last year.
“As we know with ruling families in places like Abu Dhabi, and the United Arab Emirates of which it forms the biggest part, there is no dividing line between the public and the private. They are the state.”
To anyone who knows Abu Dhabi, this acquisition of a football club made perfect sense. The Emirate’s plans were laid out in The Club, a book authored by WSJ journalists Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg on the growth of the Premier League as a global sports business.
“The vision was to paint a picture of a globally relevant, dynamic, welcoming nation built on the traditional values of the Gulf,” Robinson and Clegg write about the takeover of Manchester City. “Laid out in a couple of documents with sexy names – Policy Agenda 2007-08 and The Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 – Abu Dhabi’s soft-power offensive relied on three crucial tools. The first was the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. Then there was Abu Dhabi’s very own international airline, Etihad Airways. Finally, Abu Dhabi sought to make its presence felt in international sport.”
In essence, Manchester City was to become Abu Dhabi’s proxy brand. This was reflected in the decision to appoint Khaldoun Al-Mubarak, Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority of the Government of Abu Dhabi and CEO of Mubadala, as the Club’s Chairman.
'WE ARE YOUR PROXY BRAND'
Manchester City’s owners have done a remarkable job of combining the Emirate’s brand with that of the club itself. In theory, City’s sponsors are all Abu Dhabi-based entities. And the club hasn’t suffered much blowback for Abu Dhabi’s human rights record, or for the country’s regional interventions in the Yemeni and Libyan wars. And yet, it’s the financial connection between the Abu Dhabi government and the football club which has had the greatest impact on its reputation.
An investigation by Der Spiegel sparked by a series of leaked emails and documents found that City were being funded by the Government of Abu Dhabi. UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body concluded that Manchester City had falsely inflated sponsorship revenues when the management made submissions for the Financial Fair Play compliance process.
The emails and documents allegedly showed that that Sheikh Mansour was himself funding the £67.5m annual sponsorship of the City shirt, stadium and academy by his country’s airline, Etihad. Only £8m of that sponsorship in 2015-16 came directly by Etihad; the rest was coming from Mansour’s own company vehicle for the ownership of City, the Abu Dhabi United Group.
Punishment for this has been severe – in February Manchester City were banned from European club competitions for two seasons by UEFA. The club has pushed back hard on UEFA’s decision, responding that in essence the process was a cover up.
“Simply put, this is a case initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA. With this prejudicial process now over, the club will pursue an impartial judgment as quickly as possible and will therefore, in the first instance, commence proceedings with the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the earliest opportunity,” City wrote in a statement to the media.
All the effort that City’s owners have taken to cultivate a positive media image has been undone during the course of the investigation. The links between the club, the country and its attempts to brand-build through sport have been laid bare, for all to see.
One of the anecdotes that Robinson and Clegg discovered when researching their book was of a meeting back in August 2008 between City intermediary Amanda Staveley (you may recall her name coming up with the Newcastle deal), Sheikh Mansour advisor Ali Jassim and then-City CEO Garry Cook. Cook said to them: “If you’re developing your nation and you’re looking to be on a global stage, we are your proxy brand for the nation.”
FINANCIAL RISK
For all the negative media headlines, the Amnesty reports and the human rights criticisms, there’s little to show that City’s fans care about who owns their club, as long as they keep winning titles. And will Newcastle’s when the Saudi government effectively take over the club? They may not, but how about the English Premier League itself?
They may well do, given that Saudi Arabia’s takeover of Newcastle may impact the money paid into the Premier League’s own coffers. Qatar, which has been in a dispute with Saudi Arabia and the UAE since the summer of 2017, owns broadcast rights for Premier League matches in the region thanks to its broadcaster beIN Sports.
Qatar’s broadcaster has warned the Premier League against letting Saudi Arabia purchase Newcastle United given that the country has been allowing Riyadh-based satellite broadcaster Arabsat to pirate a host of sports through a channel named beoutQ, including football.
Yousef Al-Obaidly, the beIN Media Group CEO wrote to the “danger of allowing the acquisition... given [Saudi’s] past and continuing illegal actions and their direct impact upon the commercial interests of the Premier League.”
Al-Obaidly added, in the letter to the league’s chief executive Richard Masters, that as a “huge investor in the Premier League, we urge you to consider carefully all the implications” of approving the takeover of Newcastle. Al-Obaidly also wrote to the teams, voicing the same
Given the recent headlines around the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the jailing of Saudi women’s activists, and the country’s involvement in the Yemeni war, it’s no surprise that the Kingdom has been and will continue to be accused of using major events to sportswash its reputation.
“So long as these questions remain unaddressed, the Premier League is putting itself at risk of becoming a patsy of those who want to use the glamour and prestige of Premier League football to cover up actions that are deeply immoral, in breach of international law and at odds with the values of the Premier League and the global footballing community,” Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen wrote earlier in April to Premier League chief executive Richard Masters.
Given the Premier League’s never-ending need for funding, it may have to choose between Emirati, Qatari and Saudi money.
Sadly, the question of how football and its reputation have been impacted by nation branding doesn’t seem to have ever been asked. Maybe that needs to change?
Photo by Phu Cuong Pham on Unsplash
There’s one story dominating on Tyneside right now. All the talk is of change, of new ownership, and hope. Many in the North East live and breathe black and white, the colors of Newcastle United. And they’re thrilled that the era of Mike Ashley, the current owner of the club, may be coming to an end.
The new owner will most likely be Saudi Arabia. But given the Kingdom’s record on issues relating to human rights (it’s only 18 months since Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the country’s consulate in Istanbul), is the decision to acquire one of the largest and best-known Premier League clubs about wanting to achieve sporting success, or more about sportswashing tarnished reputations?
IS FOOTBALL COMING SECOND TO SOFT POWER?
We don’t have to look far for a precedent. Twelve years back, one half of Manchester celebrated as new owners promised to bring back the good times. Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has turned Manchester City into the dominant team of the English Premier League, with a pedigree that few can match. Following the takeover, Manchester City have won eleven major trophies. They’ve garnered media headlines around the world – their double-winning 2017-2018 season was transformed into an in-production fly-on-the-wall documentary by Amazon Prime – and they’ve arguably become a bigger club than their next-door neighbors.
At the time of the takeover, the ambition of Manchester City’s new owners was ridiculed by United’s then-manager Sir Alex Ferguson as the talk of “noisy neighbours”. Given the estimated personal wealth of Sheikh Mansour, reckoned to be US$20 billion, Manchester City have been able to spend £200m a year on transfers and wages, incurring several seasons of heavy losses.
Manchester City isn’t the first club to have an ultrawealthy foreign owner, and it won’t be the last. The difference between City and others like Chelsea, Arsenal and even Manchester United is that City’s owners aren’t business people, they’re state actors. It’s impossible to separate Sheikh Mansour from Abu Dhabi, as football academic and historian David Goldblatt told the Independent last year.
“As we know with ruling families in places like Abu Dhabi, and the United Arab Emirates of which it forms the biggest part, there is no dividing line between the public and the private. They are the state.”
To anyone who knows Abu Dhabi, this acquisition of a football club made perfect sense. The Emirate’s plans were laid out in The Club, a book authored by WSJ journalists Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg on the growth of the Premier League as a global sports business.
“The vision was to paint a picture of a globally relevant, dynamic, welcoming nation built on the traditional values of the Gulf,” Robinson and Clegg write about the takeover of Manchester City. “Laid out in a couple of documents with sexy names – Policy Agenda 2007-08 and The Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 – Abu Dhabi’s soft-power offensive relied on three crucial tools. The first was the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. Then there was Abu Dhabi’s very own international airline, Etihad Airways. Finally, Abu Dhabi sought to make its presence felt in international sport.”
In essence, Manchester City was to become Abu Dhabi’s proxy brand. This was reflected in the decision to appoint Khaldoun Al-Mubarak, Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority of the Government of Abu Dhabi and CEO of Mubadala, as the Club’s Chairman.
'WE ARE YOUR PROXY BRAND'
Manchester City’s owners have done a remarkable job of combining the Emirate’s brand with that of the club itself. In theory, City’s sponsors are all Abu Dhabi-based entities. And the club hasn’t suffered much blowback for Abu Dhabi’s human rights record, or for the country’s regional interventions in the Yemeni and Libyan wars. And yet, it’s the financial connection between the Abu Dhabi government and the football club which has had the greatest impact on its reputation.
An investigation by Der Spiegel sparked by a series of leaked emails and documents found that City were being funded by the Government of Abu Dhabi. UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body concluded that Manchester City had falsely inflated sponsorship revenues when the management made submissions for the Financial Fair Play compliance process.
The emails and documents allegedly showed that that Sheikh Mansour was himself funding the £67.5m annual sponsorship of the City shirt, stadium and academy by his country’s airline, Etihad. Only £8m of that sponsorship in 2015-16 came directly by Etihad; the rest was coming from Mansour’s own company vehicle for the ownership of City, the Abu Dhabi United Group.
Punishment for this has been severe – in February Manchester City were banned from European club competitions for two seasons by UEFA. The club has pushed back hard on UEFA’s decision, responding that in essence the process was a cover up.
“Simply put, this is a case initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA. With this prejudicial process now over, the club will pursue an impartial judgment as quickly as possible and will therefore, in the first instance, commence proceedings with the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the earliest opportunity,” City wrote in a statement to the media.
All the effort that City’s owners have taken to cultivate a positive media image has been undone during the course of the investigation. The links between the club, the country and its attempts to brand-build through sport have been laid bare, for all to see.
One of the anecdotes that Robinson and Clegg discovered when researching their book was of a meeting back in August 2008 between City intermediary Amanda Staveley (you may recall her name coming up with the Newcastle deal), Sheikh Mansour advisor Ali Jassim and then-City CEO Garry Cook. Cook said to them: “If you’re developing your nation and you’re looking to be on a global stage, we are your proxy brand for the nation.”
FINANCIAL RISK
For all the negative media headlines, the Amnesty reports and the human rights criticisms, there’s little to show that City’s fans care about who owns their club, as long as they keep winning titles. And will Newcastle’s when the Saudi government effectively take over the club? They may not, but how about the English Premier League itself?
They may well do, given that Saudi Arabia’s takeover of Newcastle may impact the money paid into the Premier League’s own coffers. Qatar, which has been in a dispute with Saudi Arabia and the UAE since the summer of 2017, owns broadcast rights for Premier League matches in the region thanks to its broadcaster beIN Sports.
Qatar’s broadcaster has warned the Premier League against letting Saudi Arabia purchase Newcastle United given that the country has been allowing Riyadh-based satellite broadcaster Arabsat to pirate a host of sports through a channel named beoutQ, including football.
Yousef Al-Obaidly, the beIN Media Group CEO wrote to the “danger of allowing the acquisition... given [Saudi’s] past and continuing illegal actions and their direct impact upon the commercial interests of the Premier League.”
Al-Obaidly added, in the letter to the league’s chief executive Richard Masters, that as a “huge investor in the Premier League, we urge you to consider carefully all the implications” of approving the takeover of Newcastle. Al-Obaidly also wrote to the teams, voicing the same
Given the recent headlines around the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the jailing of Saudi women’s activists, and the country’s involvement in the Yemeni war, it’s no surprise that the Kingdom has been and will continue to be accused of using major events to sportswash its reputation.
“So long as these questions remain unaddressed, the Premier League is putting itself at risk of becoming a patsy of those who want to use the glamour and prestige of Premier League football to cover up actions that are deeply immoral, in breach of international law and at odds with the values of the Premier League and the global footballing community,” Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen wrote earlier in April to Premier League chief executive Richard Masters.
Given the Premier League’s never-ending need for funding, it may have to choose between Emirati, Qatari and Saudi money.
Sadly, the question of how football and its reputation have been impacted by nation branding doesn’t seem to have ever been asked. Maybe that needs to change?
Photo by Phu Cuong Pham on Unsplash