Saudi oil giant spends well over a billion on ‘sportswashing,’ new report says

Saudi Arabia is spending more than a billion dollars to sponsor global sporting events as it looks to burnish its reputation and assert itself as a global superpower, according to a new report out Wednesday.

The report by think tank New Weather Institute revealed that oil giant Aramco, a Saudi state-controlled company and one of the world’s most profitable firms, is pouring around $1.3 billion into the global sports industry, leveraging a playbook widely employed by Big Tobacco before it was banned from doing so.

The findings come as the just-concluded Paris 2024 Olympics shed light on the extent to which climate change, primarily caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal, is already affecting the health and performances of athletes.

“Petrostates are betting on sports sponsorship to sell tourism and business opportunities in their countries, but also to sell the idea that their countries can offer something just like the West,” said Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto and the author of Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport.

Since 2016, when Riyadh launched its strategic “Vision 2030,” a roadmap setting out how Saudi Arabia could diversify its oil-reliant economy to remain competitive in the long run, the Gulf country has become a regular host of international sporting events. Saudi Arabia will likely stage the 2034 FIFA World Cup and could also throw its hat into the ring to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2036. 

Experts use the term “sportswashing” to refer to the sponsoring of an athlete or a major sporting event with the intention of distracting world attention from unethical practices such as human rights abuses and corruption scandals.

The huge Aramco figure doesn’t include further huge sums that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is spending separately on sports.

Riyadh, for its part, isn’t particularly bothered by the accusations.

“If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1 percent, then we’ll continue sportswashing,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said bluntly in an interview last year, rebuffing accusations that the country was using positive associations with hugely popular sports to distract from its core business: fossil fuel extraction.

A global trend

Aramco isn’t alone in pouring mammoth sums into global sports events aiming to legitimize its fossil fuel production and market its products to millions of sports fans. 

Including Aramco, top fossil-fuel firms like TotalEnergies and Shell and petrochemical giant Ineos have together injected “at least” $5.6 billion through 205 active sponsorship deals, the report calculated. Most of the deals remain opaque, however, so their exact amounts, duration and conditions are unknown.

“Sportswashing isn’t new,” Orr said, noting the practice was developed by Western oil companies to head off potential uprisings in local communities that were grappling with worker rights and public safety.

“For decades, sports have been a very effective tool for selling things, from sports drinks to shoes, flights to cereal,” she added.

According to the study, the sports that attract the largest sums include football, motor sports, rugby union and golf.

To crack down on sportswashing, the authors of the report implored sports organizations like world football governing body FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to introduce tobacco-like bans on sponsorship from fossil fuel firms. They should also ensure that the green credentials of future donors are scrutinized, the authors said.

“If sport is used as a billboard to promote the very companies, products and lifestyles that fuel climate breakdown, it becomes at best an obstacle to climate action, and at worst fans the flames of a heating planet,” the report stressed.