When Saudi Arabia hosts the 2034 World Cup, it promises to be a world-class spectacle, offering state-of-the-art stadiums employing cutting-edge technology. But behind the curtain, there’s a different story. In a country where human rights are systematically suppressed, the government will do everything it can to use the event to project a positive image. Civil society will try to highlight the grim reality underneath the glitzy facade.

Sportswashing in full effect

The decision to award the tournament to Saudi Arabia, announced on 11 December, was one of the year’s least surprising news stories. Saudi Arabia was the only candidate. FIFA, football’s world governing body, had stipulated that the host must come from among its Asian or Oceanian members, but allowed only a very narrow window for bids; given this, Australia, which had been considering applying, withdrew.

FIFA head Gianni Infantino has been accused of privately lobbying for Saudi Arabia and manipulating the rules to ease its path. Since Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup, becoming the first Middle Eastern country to do so, it should have been some time before the competition returned to Asia. But the 2030 World Cup will span an unprecedented three continents, with games in Africa, Europe and South America – an international extravaganza conveniently paving the way for Asia’s next turn.

FIFA’s argument for staging its flagship competition in Qatar and now Saudi Arabia is that this helps expand the game’s footprint and recognise emerging football powers. It’s also about the cash: FIFA makes almost all its money from World Cup broadcast and sponsorship deals, and banked record profits from Qatar. Payments flow to the many national football associations around the world that Infantino hopes will vote for him when he next stands for re-election.

Meanwhile, it’s easy to see what’s in it for Saudi Arabia. It must have stung when its rival, Qatar, got there first, and now it has a chance to do it bigger and better. Hosting the World Cup is all about projection and prestige. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will use the tournament to present himself as the face of a welcoming, forward-thinking, future-focused nation.

That’s been the strategy ever since 2016, when bin Salman launched Vision 2030, which ostensibly aims to diversify the economy away from its reliance on fossil fuel exports by boosting sectors like services and tourism. The sincerity of this plan isn’t clear – Saudi Arabia is still the world’s top crude oil exporter and continues to develop oil and gas fields – but the marketing exercise has been relentless.

Saudi Arabia now hosts glitzy film and music festivals. It has recruited influencers to promote it as a deluxe tourism destination. And it’s poured money into sport, often through its Public Investment Fund (PIF), the vast sovereign wealth fund fuelled by its oil and gas riches. Bin Salman controls the body that manages the PIF and picks its board.

The country now routinely hosts high-profile sporting events, including boxing, motor racing and tennis. It has effectively taken control of golf, setting up a breakaway competition before merging with its main rivals. PIF has also invested heavily in e-sports.

But it’s the global game, football, where it’s made the biggest effort. In 2021, PIF bought English Premier League football club Newcastle United, and with it the instant affection of its large fan base. Since 2023, its domestic competition, the Saudi Pro League, has been awash with famous names, often at the end of their careers and playing for breathtakingly high wages. In 2023, clubs in the league spent close to US$1 billion on 94 foreign players, none bigger than superstar Christiano Ronaldo, who’s said to be the world’s highest-paid sportsperson. PIF has also taken a controlling interest in four of the league’s clubs. The country recently hosted Italian and Spanish cup finals and the 2023 Club World Cup tournament. The Saudi state tourism authority also sponsored the 2023 Women’s World Cup

Beyond sport, Saudi Arabia also works hard to present itself as a responsible player. It hosts international meetings, including the Internet Governance Forum, held in the capital, Riyadh, this December. And it’s the current chair of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women, the key global body promoting gender equality.

The dissonance is huge. It hosted a summit on inclusive digital spaces and online human rights while its prisons are filled with people jailed for online posts. It oversees the UN’s work on gender equality even as its laws discriminate against women.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t always win: mercifully, it lost its bid for a UN Human Rights Council seat in October, with many states refusing to back it because of its appalling human rights record. But sportswashing and other forms of reputation laundering work by offering a competing narrative, enabling Saudi Arabia to present itself as a progressive state and claim criticisms are unfair. There are plenty of states, international bodies and influential people willing to oost the narrative.

An autocratic state

Whatever it may claim, Saudi Arabia is a deeply autocratic state with closed civic space. This means people have virtually no ability to organise, protest and speak out. The state uses broad and vague laws, including on counterterrorism and cybercrime, to stifle dissent. Those who speak out can expect lengthy jail sentences and various forms of ill-treatment while in detention, including sexual abuse in the case of women political prisoners. They’re often denied adequate legal representation and convicted in flawed trials, with torture extensively used to extract confessions.

Those in jail include women’s rights activists, anti-corruption campaigners, people who criticised the government on social media and those who defend the rights of people being evicted to make way for Vision 2030 development projects – including the futuristic new city of Neom, where a World Cup venue is to be built. People have been sent to jail just for editing Wikipedia entries.

An even worse fate awaits some. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most enthusiastic executioners. Bin Salman once promised to abolish the death penalty for most crimes, but instead he’s escalated its use. This year the state has beheaded over 300 people, the highest number on record. Some had been convicted of drug-related crimes, while others were political dissidents, particularly from the persecuted Shi’a minority. Some were executed for taking part in protests and some for offences they committed when they were children. Families often aren’t informed of executions in advance.

Even when reforms are introduced – such as the limited liberalisation of laws on what women are allowed to do – people in Saudi Arabia don’t have the right to demand rights. Closed civic space means they can only hope bin Salman will make concessions from on high when it suits his agenda.

In from the cold

There was once hope there might be repercussions for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which made clear that dissidents aren’t safe even in exile. Saudi agents killed the journalist when he visited his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. There’s little doubt that bin Salman ordered the assassination.

Khashoggi’s killing sparked a wave of international outrage, with political figures around the world distancing themselves from bin Salman. For the first time, he looked isolated. But that didn’t last, and economic realities soon enough kicked back in, not least because Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a recalibration of international relations. US President Joe Biden went from vowing to make Saudi Arabia a pariah to visiting the country, fist-bumping with bin Salman and signing an arms deal.

Saudi Arabia’s oil and the vast wealth it generates mean a wide range of states are keen to maintain good relations. They hope to gain influence, for example, over the decisions it makes as part of the OPEC cartel to set global oil prices, or to benefit from its investment largesse. Many will say they’re engaged in quiet diplomacy over human rights issues while doing so.

But the Saudi government keeps showing it can’t be trusted to act in good faith. It talks of curbing executions while stepping up the beheadings. It gestures towards liberalising its constraints on women’s freedoms while jailing women’s rights activists. And it positions itself as a good international citizen, but it’s one of the most destructive forces in climate change talks, consistently blocking action on fossil fuels. It’s doing the same in negotiations for a treaty to control plastics.

Change needed

Any hopes that FIFA’s decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar would be a one-off have clearly now been dashed. That was a competition played at the wrong time of year due to the oppressive summer heat, devoid of the usual atmosphere and, crucially, held in a state where human rights are systematically denied. And yet FIFA evidently saw this as a success story.

FIFA’s evaluation report on Saudi Arabia’s uncontested bid gave the country only a medium risk rating on human rights and was optimistic that hosting the World Cup could have positive human rights impacts. Civil society accuses the law firm that conducted the assessment of being selective and partial, and of failing to consult properly. Key human rights issues, including freedom of expression and LGBTQI+ rights, weren’t taken into account.

The deaths of thousands of migrant workers brought in to build venues and infrastructure for the Qatar World Cup were swept under the carpet. This pattern is set to be repeated in Saudi Arabia, already home to a staggering 13.4 million migrant workers, including many working on Vision 2030 megaprojects and subject to widespread rights abuses. At least 13,685 Bangladeshi migrant workers died in Saudi Arabia between 2008 and 2022, with hot and harsh working conditions likely a factor, and there’s been little investigation of their deaths. With 11 new stadiums and a great deal of supporting infrastructure to be built, the problems can only increase.

And just like in Qatar, not everyone will be welcome in 2034: given Saudi Arabia’s criminalisation of same-sex activity, which can bring the death sentence, many LGBTQI+ football fans won’t feel safe attending.

This can’t go on. Sports bodies must develop strong human rights criteria that hosts must meet before an event can be awarded, since the idea that holding an event will bring progress has been disproven time and again, including in China, Russia and Qatar. Host states should expect to face scrutiny and should allow civil society and the media to do their job of holding them to account.

More and more states are using sportswashing, and what many of them have in common is fossil fuel wealth. Petrostates with poor human rights records are both fuelling the climate catastrophe and using the wealth gained from it to make themselves look good. Ending the grip of fossil fuels on the global economy is vital to tackling the climate crisis – and would have the considerable bonus of draining sportswashing autocracies like Saudi Arabia of their power.

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