Sportswashing: Defining, Reframing, and Measuring Its Soft Power Impact

Understanding Sportswashing

In 2010, Qatar was awarded the rights to host the 2022 FIFA men’s World Cup, raising significant concerns in the world football (soccer) community due to the nation’s human rights record.^[1] The country’s host position also generated public interest in the rise of new entrants in the global sports landscape.

The term, “sportswashing,” while not yet created in 2010, evolved rapidly both in usage and meaning since its coinage in 2015. The term was largely negative in connotation, as it expressed a reaction to deeper shifts in the political economy of international sport.^[2] In 2022, media use of the term significantly grew with Beijing hosting the Winter Olympics in February and Qatar hosting the World Cup in November and December.^[3] However, for much of this early period when the “sportswashing” label became entrenched in media discourse, the term itself remained largely undefined, and its usage tended to distract from rather than inform the ways in which countries instrumentalize global sporting events or team ownership as enactments of soft power.

In recent years, a growing set of academic literature has emerged that has critically examined aspects of sportswashing, adding scaffolding and details to what was initially a term that largely lacked conceptual clarity. This report reviews this literature to establish a clearer definition of sportswashing, frame the concept within the broader context of diplomacy and soft power, and assess various metrics that measure its impacts.

Defining Sportswashing

Term’s Origins

Understanding the origins of “sportswashing” is crucial to defining the term. For Kyle Fruh et al.’s article, the term is related to “whitewashing” and “greenwashing.” “Whitewashing” is a metaphor for casting someone or something in a favorable light while glossing over more contentious features. “Greenwashing,” derived from whitewashing, specifically refers to the practice of actors — typically corporations — overstating commitments to environmentally conscious or “green” practices in the production of goods and services to capitalize on consumers’ sustainability values.^[4]

Fruh et al. articulate the underlying dynamic of the term “greenwashing,” as a tension between a knowable, public ethical infraction and an actor’s desire to divert interest from this action in order to receive less negative media attention. The key difference between greenwashing and sportswashing is that sports, rather than sustainability commitments, become the medium through which the attention is diverted. Sports engage fans’ values, emotions, and community attachments and garner significant media and public attention; thus, sports can be a useful medium to redirect interest toward a specific event or team and from potential ethical misconduct.^[5]

Primary Dynamics and Objectives

Additionally, Fruh et al. identify three key mechanisms by which sportswashing functions on the global stage: distraction, minimization, and normalization.

1. Distraction: Sportswashing distracts audiences by saturating the digital information environment with articles and content about the actor’s sports endeavors to then curtail information on their ethical infractions. In effect, when searching for information on a person, nation, corporation, or other actor, fewer people will likely access news on an actor’s misconducts, as content on the sports event or investment occupy the top search results.
    
2. Minimization: Sportswashing minimizes the importance or urgency of the infractions by altering the context under which such contentious behavior appears. By attaching reports of misconduct to information about sports, actors can relegate the action’s importance in global discourse by coupling coverage of offenses with news of a global or major sporting event.
    
3. Normalization: Through both audiences’ associations with sports and sportswashing information strategies, fans can begin to view a host country’s infractions as routine or insignificant, making them seem unworthy of attention. As a result, this can then normalize an actor’s ethical or legal violations.^[6]

Leveraging Fan Emotions and Communities

Fruh et al. also discuss the two primary pathways that provide a means of achieving the three mechanisms above. The initial pathway is through an actor’s association with the passionate, positive emotions and identity-based commitments that many fans hold toward specific sports, teams, or events. An actor’s image is therefore viewed through the lens of sports fandom’s emotional attachments to their team and community, which an actor can leverage to their benefit. Fruh et al. draw attention to an underlying “induced tribalism” that compels fans to defend and potentially excuse the misconduct or violation of an actor they support. By capitalizing on the emotions and community of sport fans, actors can strategically build a more positive image.^[7]

Understanding how fans’ emotions are mobilized in favor of a sportswashing actor can further discussions on what drives the sportswashing effect. Jack Black et al. propose the concept of “fetishistic disavowal,” which refers to the idea that one’s disavowal — the decision to maintain one’s beliefs and practices in the face of new information — is encompassed in a fetish.^[8] For example, some Newcastle United fans wore Arab head coverings and robes to acknowledge and accept the club’s Saudi ownership, despite questions regarding the country’s human rights record.^[9] As Black et al. note, sports thus function as the fetish that allows fans to acknowledge and even accept contentious information while continuing to support their team. This concept does not suggest that the fans are naive or uninformed on an actor’s infractions, but rather that they have recognized and consciously or unconsciously chosen to overlook potential contradictions or contentions between a country’s actions and their ties to sports.^[10]

Strategic Use of Narrative

In addition to Black et al.’s concept of “fetishistic disavowal” and the mechanisms described by Fruh et al., sportswashing can also be understood as a way to strategically shape narratives and information. By intentionally introducing sports information into media environments, narratives can be deployed to account for the social and political context of an actor’s ethical or legal concerns in ways that ultimately benefit the actor.

Analysis of narrative strategies employed by actors should address, as Jonathan Grix and Paul Michael Brannagan observe, how this information circulates in complex media environments and, as Vitaly Kazakov notes, how the circulation of sports content may be related to tools of “dis- and misinformation.”^[11] Building on Grix and Brannagan’s work, Kazakov examines sports investment and sportswashing as tools to strategically engineer narratives in potentially misleading ways to achieve benefits for an actor. More specifically, Kazakov notes how sportswashing can include the practice of disseminating disinformation through sports.^[12] Sportswashing thus can be understood as a means of sharing “dis- and misinformation” that results in the normalization, distraction, and minimization of an actor’s perceived ethical or legal violations that ultimately help improve an actor’s image.

Context and Application

Alongside a foundational understanding of sportswashing’s definition and underlying mechanisms, recognizing how the term can be qualified by its social and political context and application is also crucial. Specifically, Jules Boykoff notes how many in media and academic discourse refer to sportswashing only when discussing authoritarian settings. However, while authoritarian states certainly engage in sportswashing, democratic nations do as well. For example, Boykoff notes that Los Angeles is likely using the 2028 Summer Olympics as an opportunity to shift the narrative from the city’s significant homelessness issue, highlighting how domestic messaging aimed at an internal — rather than external — audience is also important. A similar dynamic occurred in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, which functioned as a source of domestic soft power for President Vladimir Putin rather than an exercise in external messaging.^[13]

In Lars Bergkvist and Heidi Skeiseid’s analysis, the actor should not be overspecified.^[14] Any entity, whether it be a state, person, or corporation, can engage in sportswashing. For example, in 2021, FTX Trading Ltd. — previously one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, which filed for bankruptcy in 2022 — built associations with high-profile sportspeople and placed its name on the Miami Heat basketball arena as a way to promote its business.^[15] Limiting sportswashing’s definition or application to solely political actors or even authoritarian actors could lead to the erroneous assumption that democratic actors and corporations do not commit ethical and legal infractions. Therefore, accounting for all potential actors and actions when discussing sportswashing in academic discourse is key to avoid misguidedly restricting the term’s applicability.

Additionally, by adopting a definition of sportswashing that accounts for all possible actors, one is able to recognize that assessing misconduct, as Grix and Brannagan argue, can be based on subjective interpretation.^[16] Including all potential actors, such as corporations and Western nations, allows the “sportswashing” term and the academic discourse surrounding it to hold all appropriate entities accountable for any sports investment used to redirect undesired attention. Furthermore, Bergkvist and Skeiseid define “negative information” to encompass a wide range of actions and misconduct, not solely human rights violations.^[17] While recognizing human rights concerns is important, sportswashing should also be applied in cases where actors use sports to divert attention from any violation.

Colm Kearns et al. put forward an additional distinction to more clearly define what sportswashing is in practice, as they distinguish between “one-off event-based” strategies, such as hosting the World Cup or Olympic Games, and “longer term investment-based” strategies, such as team or club ownership.^[18] Kearns et al.’s 2024 article observed that most existing research on sportswashing at the time focuses on event-based strategies with less analysis attending to the impacts of the long-term investment-based approach, particularly on fans.

Given fans’ devotion and loyalty to their teams, such as Manchester City, Newcastle, and Chelsea — particularly during the Roman Abramovich era — despite concerns over their ownership, Kearns et al. call for further studies on an actor’s ability to practice sportswashing by leveraging fanbases. ^[19] For example, similar associations have not been as visibly evident in France with Qatari ownership of Paris Saint-Germain.^[20]

Reframing Sportswashing

Sport Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

Framing sportswashing discourse within the broader framework of sport diplomacy demonstrates how the term and practice shape countries’ soft power and international relations. Michael Skey cites previous literature to highlight how sports’ access to prominent actors makes it an effective tool for diplomacy. This point situates sportswashing as a subcategory under the broader concept of sport diplomacy, which then falls under the more general term of public diplomacy.^[21]

As Grix and Brannagan also argue, sportswashing is an act of sport diplomacy, which Stuart Murray defines as the practice of using “sports people and sporting events to engage, inform, and create a favorable image amongst foreign publics and organisations to shape their perceptions in a way that is more conducive to achieving a government’s foreign policy goals.”^[22] While the immediate purpose of sportswashing is to deflect attention from negative information or ethical infractions, this diversion is largely not the end goal behind an actor’s investment in sports, as sport diplomacy is a greater key function of sportswashing.

Grix and Brannagan also maintain that when assessing sportswashing, it is crucial to consider that sports and cultural investment are an important element of larger, multipronged approaches to foreign policy.^[23] For example, Saudi Arabia’s successful campaign to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034 is inextricably linked to Vision 2030 and its associated “giga-projects” intended to establish Saudi Arabia as a global tourist destination and contribute to economic diversification.^[24] Recognizing that sportswashing is one tool in a larger toolbox of sport diplomacy and foreign policy allows academics not only to demystify the uncertainty surrounding the term’s framework, but also to provide a basis for future assessments.^[25]

Soft Power

As an instrument of sport diplomacy and foreign policy, sportswashing should also be considered in analyses of soft power. The definition of soft power was first established by Joseph S. Nye Jr., who argues that soft power “rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others.”^[26] In conversation with Nye’s definition, Boykoff notes that soft power relies on nations appealing to others to adopt their values and ideas, rather than pressuring them to do so. Nye also contends that soft power “is more difficult to wield” because many factors lie beyond a nation’s control, including whether it is accepted as a credible entity worthy of being followed as a model.^[27] However, reading Nye’s definition of “soft power,” Amit Gupta finds that Nye implies that only liberal democratic nations can achieve soft power. Citing efforts from China, Russia, and others, Gupta counters Nye’s description, noting that the idea that nondemocratic nations can only achieve “sharp power” is misleading.^[28]

Critiquing Nye’s limited definition of soft power that assumes only democratic nations can influence other nations through such means, Gupta notes that Nye’s work was written in the 1990s, a decade marked by America’s significant military, economic, and cultural power across the globe. This context likely lead him to dismiss China’s ability to develop soft power. As Gupta continues, Nye’s initial assertion has since been challenged by China’s growing influence on the global stage and the rising soft power of other nondemocratic states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.^[29]

Importantly, Gupta’s work expands the discourse surrounding sportswashing and revises previous analyses’ limitations. This is crucial work because establishing a uniform framework and measuring the scale of sportswashing’s operations require that the analytical framework account for all possible instances and actors of sportswashing. The assumption that certain nations are unable to build soft power while viewing sportswashing as a tool of sport diplomacy meant to achieve soft power determines what nations can or cannot successfully engage in sportswashing. This restriction can prove detrimental to work examining sportswashing’s practices and effects by excluding genuine cases of sportswashing from both academic and media discourses.

To further expand the concept of soft power, Gupta refers to E.H. Carr’s definition of soft power as “the power of opinion,” which is equal in importance to a country’s military and economic power. Carr redefines the concept as a nation’s ability “to shape opinions” rather than one’s capacity to attract a particular nation to a specific set of values. Carr’s distinction bases soft power on a nation’s skill to craft its own image rather than on its liberal democratic or nondemocratic position. If Carr’s definition of soft power is applied to sportswashing, nations or actors engaging in sportswashing can be evaluated differently, based on their ability to shape others’ opinions rather than on military or economic dominance.

Sportswashing as a Tool of Soft Power

Redefining soft power as noted above helps reframe sportswashing as a part of a nation’s broader foreign policy strategy to shape its own image and other nations’ opinions. Thus, an actor’s use of sportswashing to engineer strategic narratives and divert attention from negative information through distraction, minimization, or normalization is also an act of soft power.

In the case of sportswashing, sports become a tool of soft power for international image-building, as demonstrated by Qatar's hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and by other instances in which countries with concerning human rights records or other infractions host or sponsor major sporting events. Additionally, goodwill is frequently used in foreign policy negotiations to enhance an actor’s status on the international stage, and sportswashing accomplishes similar work by utilizing goodwill with sports as its medium to support a nation’s overarching foreign policy goals.

Altogether, coupling sportswashing with soft power allows one to recognize how sports can function as a tool to support a nation’s foreign policy objectives, international relations, and image-building aspirations. For example, Natalie Koch notes that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar incorporate sports investment into their respective national visions, titled Vision 2030 in each case; thus, sport investment rarely occurs in isolation of other policy or economic objectives.^[30] Redirecting attention from ethical or legal misconduct or promoting misleading information are not necessarily sportswashing’s end goals, but rather one of the possible ways nations can utilized sportswashing to build a positive image on the global stage.

Measuring Sportswashing

Since a definition of and conceptual framework for sportswashing have been established through the academic literature, it is possible to examine how sportswashing’s intended effects — or lack thereof — might be measured. Notably, sportswashing may not be effective in swaying public opinion. While media discourse and current events may frame sportswashing as an operative solution for actors seeking to enhance their image, academic discourse has challenged its effectiveness. For example, Johannes Gerschewski et al. emphasize that little is known about the effects of what they describe as “authoritarian games” and related sportswashing actions on those who engage in such practices. While these events are not limited to authoritarian nations, the authors’ assertion regarding the lack of established or recorded impacts is supported by other academic studies.^[31]

Research Methods

Rafael Rocha and Brian P. McCullough identify significant gaps in quantitative and empirical research on sportswashing. The academic literature the authors examined was predominantly qualitative, which allows for the conceptualization of sportswashing but increases the difficulty of examining how it operate in the real world. After analyzing 49 articles and book chapters, Rocha and McCullough found that the majority of the 49 scholarly studies used qualitative methods, while three employed quantitative methods. Moreover, of the 40 articles that used qualitative methods, 16 employed a case study methodology, 11 employed content analysis, nine relied on discourse analysis, and four relied on semi-structured interviews. Of the pieces that employed quantitative methods, two articles used an empirical approach, and one used an exploratory approach. Therefore, Rocha and McCullough’s findings on sportswashing studies demonstrate that measuring and isolating the effects of sportswashing efforts is more difficult than drawing a correlational line between investment and outcomes.^[32]

Sportswashing’s Potential Negative Effects

Measuring sportswashing’s effects is further complicated by the possibility of an actor’s sportswashing strategy having adverse effects on their goal of building a positive image. As Guillaume Detchenique and Gilles Grolleau observe, sportswashing’s outcomes can be detrimental toward the actor, as media coverage of the event can uncover negative information rather than suppress it. For example, the kafala system — a restrictive legal framework for migrant employment — in Qatar was exposed to a global audience after the nation won the rights to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.^[33] Here, the concept of “soft disempowerment” has been articulated to explain how actors’ attempts to accumulate soft power through sports can invite greater international scrutiny and cause reputational harm.^[34]

The concept of “soft disempowerment” was first introduced by Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti in 2015, just as the earliest mentions of sportswashing were entering the lexicon of sports fans and political analysts. The authors argue that “we should move beyond thinking only of how soft power is positively accumulated,” as soft disempowerment “enables us to examine how social actions may have positive and negative outcomes that are empowering and disempowering respectively.”^[35] In a 2018 article building on their previous work, Brannagan and Giulianotti add that “the processes by which soft power and soft disempowerment intersect and interact have remained largely unidentified, and essentially unexamined.”^[36]

Detchenique and Grolleau also note that the capacity for action and the extent to which the actor can control the narrative are key factors in determining whether sportswashing can have adverse effects on the acting entity. As they emphasize, media analysis is a potential avenue for measuring the effectiveness of sports investment in shaping an actor’s or nation’s public image. The mechanisms of sportswashing unfold primarily through media discourse, which, in turn, shapes public discourse.^[37]

Additionally, this report has established sportswashing mechanisms as informational manipulation, which furthers the importance of applying a media analysis lens when measuring the impacts of sportswashing. As early as 2004 — years before sportswashing emerged as a recognized term — a special issue of Third World Quarterly examined the interplay between sport and international relations, as major sporting events began to be hosted beyond Europe and the Americas. The issue’s introduction drew attention to “the powerful role of the Western media, in particular, in determining the degree to which hosting a mega-event amplifies or effectively diminishes the host’s international reputation.”^[38]

Additionally, once an event receives media coverage, the actor engaging in sportswashing has minimal control over the discourse. Target audiences can react differently than expected and be difficult to influence. Also, critics of alleged sportswashing ventures often attempt to establish counternarratives to a sportswashing actor’s own account. A study by John A. Fortunato examines the role of media in “agenda-setting” through The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of LIV Golf’s establishment in 2022. The Journal’s pieces on the LIV Golf league included its Saudi funding source, the notion of Saudi Arabia as a “problematic partner,” and references to the kingdom’s concerning human rights record, especially the death of Jamal Khashoggi, which was featured in 15 articles.^[39]

Research by Calvin Nite et al. found that much of the negative framing around LIV Golf came from the PGA Tour and affiliated parties, as they sought to delegitimize the “institutional disruption” caused by the new league’s establishment. This framing centered on linking LIV Golf with allegations of Saudi Arabia engaging in sportswashing, including in statements made by the PGA Tour commissioner and filings by lawyers acting for the PGA Tour in their antitrust lawsuits with LIV Golf in 2022–23, which were ultimately terminated.^[40]

News Coverage and Public Sentiment

Part of applying a media analysis lens is understanding news outlets’ approaches to covering sportswashing content. The decision of news outlets to publish or not publish content that would be understood as sportswashing ultimately determines whether an actor’s message is disseminated to an adequate number of people. A mixed methods study by Christopher M. Toula and Ryan Broussard compared Qatar’s coverage of hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup by Al-Jazeera, a Qatari-funded media group, with that of five other international news outlets. By employing qualitative thematic analysis and a quantitative analysis of Deutsche Welle (Germany), the BBC (U.K.), Al-Jazeera (Qatar), NHK (Japan), CNN (U.S.), and France 24 (France), the authors viewed each outlet’s coverage as representative of organizational values. After analyzing hundreds of video broadcasts over two months, they conducted a content analysis to examine how the content varied across outlets, with a focus on mentions of human rights. The analysis found that CNN mentioned human rights across 60% of its 2022 World Cup coverage, whereas Al-Jazeera mentioned human rights 7% across that same timespan.^[41]

News outlets not only determine how often coverage of sportswashing appears, but also what type of coverage is shown, whether positive or negative. As sportswashing’s effectiveness depends on the presence of positive news coverage, the positive or negative framing of news is as equally important as its presence. Thus, sportswashing’s success is contingent on information both being shown and fostering positive discourse. A significant example is the one mentioned above with the variations across news outlets’ focus on human rights issues related to the 2022 World Cup. Altogether, news outlets are the first obstacle that an actor is required to cross in sportswashing, as they are responsible for circulating the information needed to create the distraction as well as minimize and normalize ethical or legal infractions.

A study by Mohammed el-Nawawy and Mohamad Hamas Elmasry analyzed the New York Times coverage of the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and found that Times reporting was significantly more critical of Qatar than of Russia. The authors also observe, “A more striking difference was found in relation to how directionality changed, or did not change, over time”; coverage of Russia became more positive once the 2018 World Cup began, while coverage of Qatar during the 2022 tournament remained negative before and during the event.^[42]

Additionally, Ahmed A.M. Hassan and Jia Wang’s study of Twitter sentiment during the 2022 Qatar World Cup generated results that suggests “public sentiment,” as expressed in tweets, differed from the media coverage described in el-Nawawy and Elmasry’s work. Hassan and Wang reviewed approximately 8.25 million tweets from November to December 2022 and found that sentiment was broadly negative at the start of the 2022 World Cup, which mirrored responses to the beginning of the 2018 tournament in Russia.^[43] However, the sentiment in Qatar began to improve more quickly (toward the end of the group stage) than it had in Russia (during the quarter-final stage, around a week later in the tournament). The authors note that “a rigorous topic analysis is required to better understand the reasons behind this rapid sentiment improvement” in Qatar.^[44] The variation in results between news coverage and social media posts highlights how measuring sportswashing and its practical impact may be more effectively conducted by further empirical studies of specific case studies, rather than attempts to formulate a grand or overarching theory.

Country Responses

Johannes Gerschewski et al. conducted a survey experiment that generated more than 14,000 responses across eight European countries to examine how the framing of an event — specifically the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — can determine sportswashing outcomes. They first provided respondents with vignettes that variously emphasized human rights conditions in Qatar, the efficient and sustainable organization of the event, or the tournament itself. Then the authors asked participants to evaluate Qatar’s role as host of the tournament. The survey experiment found that how the tournament was framed affected respondents’ thoughts on the World Cup in Qatar. Although the negative framing elicited stronger responses than those with the positive framing, both framings had a substantial impact on participants’ evaluations of the tournament.^[45] This study’s results provide key support for the information manipulation discourse noted earlier. By altering how the information is presented as well as how much information is given or withheld, sportswashing actors can more effectively achieve their desired outcomes.

By focusing on one nation’s response to sportswashing, an academic study can more specifically understand the concept’s structural nuances and its effects across different countries. Christian Gläßel et al. provide this country-specific analysis by examining Germany’s responses to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The authors conducted two waves of public opinion surveys: the first wave began a week before the World Cup’s opening, and the second wave began immediately following the tournament’s start. The timing of these waves were completed in what the authors describe as “a highly conservative manner,” with the intent of excluding the possibility that results could be influenced by the German national team’s performance.^[46]

However, Gläßel et al. suggest that the impact of the national team’s performance should still be considered, as it could shape the sportswashing actor’s efforts.^[47] This is particularly the case if the host at a major event performs well. The hope of the sportswashing actors is that competitors not only participate in these events but also do well in that nation, helping forge a positive association with the hosting actor or nation with fans across the globe. For example, Argentina’s 2022 FIFA World Cup victory could have created a positive association between Argentina fans and Qatar, although further study would be required to confirm this correlation.

Despite the study’s conservative estimates, Gläßel et al.’s results provide insights into how hosting a major sporting event shapes the effectiveness of sportswashing. They found that, as the tournament advanced, viewers “grew skeptical about the impartiality” of German media coverage on Qatar, Germany’s respect toward freedom of expression, and related issues. Overall, their research concluded that sportswashing effects were not as pronounced as media discourse seemed to indicate, but framing could still potentially shape viewers’ responses. This media-centric approach demonstrates that analyzing fan behavior in response to sportswashing is another approach to gaining insights on sportswashing’s effects.^[48]

For example, Tom Taylor’s study followed 14 English fans who traveled to Qatar in 2022, using semi-structured interviews conducted both pre- and post-tournament along with audio-visual diaries and field observations during the event. The results were that these English fans enjoyed their time in Doha, despite the negative media attention they witnessed during the runup to the World Cup. At the same time, the study found that the participants made little effort to engage deeply with Qatar and returned home with their perceptions largely unchanged.^[49]

Fans’ Online Responses

Analyzing fan behavior online can also offer insights into the impacts of sportswashing, demonstrating whether the opinion-altering goals of sportswashing actors have been achieved. As mentioned earlier by Black et al., the fetishistic disavowal is exemplified by fan behavior, with one notable example being when Newcastle United fans changed their behavior in support of the club’s new Saudi ownership in 2021.^[50]

Research by Morgan Wack et al. provides another example of how analyzing fan behavior can uncover sportswashing’s effects. Their study examines the online behavior of Chelsea fans during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, before and after their Russian owner of the club, Roman Abramovich, announced that he would relinquish his control. Specifically, Wack et al. sampled over 700,000 tweets from 7,414 profiles of London-based English Premier League fans and classified them into groups that mentioned the invasion, criticized Russia, or supported Ukraine. Notably, at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine war and prior to Abramovich’s announcement, many Chelsea fans supported the Russian business oligarch, going so far as to plan a banner thanking the billionaire for delivering the club numerous trophies during his tenure. By sampling from London-based fans, Wack et al. also compared the behavior of Chelsea fans with that of fans of other London clubs.^[51]

Additionally, Wack et al. posit that, following Abramovich’s decision to renounce control, the association between Chelsea and Russia would increase in prominence, leading to less fan engagement with these topics to avoid diminishing the club’s reputation or stability. After analyzing the tweets, the authors found that Chelsea fans were less likely to post in support of Ukraine, criticize Russia, or discuss the ongoing conflict after Abramovich’s announcement. Thus, these results supported the authors’ initial hypothesis, which they explain using social identity theory.

However, the authors, potentially incidentally, include examples of disavowal and information manipulation both before and after Abramovich’s decision to relinquish control of the club. Fans’ plans to showcase a banner in support of Abramovich constitute information manipulation, as an attempt to reshape discourse in the face of an evolving conflict. Also, after Abramovich’s announcement, fans demonstrated disavowal as discussed by Black et al. by avoiding mention of the Russia-Ukraine war online, prioritizing fandom in the process. In doing so, the mechanisms of sportswashing’s effects are on display, as the analysis of fan behavior illustrates sportswashing’s operations unfolding in real time. However, analyses similar to Wack et al.’s approach are limited in number; thus, more studies are needed for a fuller understanding of how fans react to sportswashing attempts as they occur, rather than how fans respond after the event.^[52]

Conclusion

Ultimately, sportswashing research and discourse are relatively recent developments in academic study. The term itself was not yet formulated when Abu Dhabi acquired Manchester City in 2008 or when Qatar was awarded the hosting rights to the 2022 World Cup in 2010. Even today, the concept of sportswashing is nearing a decade in age and is only beginning to generate an academic literature that has moved beyond media terminology. The public reaction to the 2023–24 announcement that Saudi Arabia would host the 2034 World Cup offers a recent example of sportswashing’s effects, as the response has largely been far more muted, perhaps more normalized, than the response in 2010 to Qatar. While some research to date has examined how sportswashing evolves through media framing and its effects on fans, more research is needed to understand sportswashing’s multifaceted impacts and the extent to which it is effective at building soft power.

Examining sportswashing’s component parts can also assist in producing more targeted studies of its effectiveness, whether on sportswashing actors or the targets of such strategies. This work would also include evaluating campaigns’ and influencers’ roles in shaping narratives either in support of or in opposition to sportswashing efforts. The long buildup to the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia offers an opportunity to assess how a greater awareness of sportswashing — as a concept, a tool, and a measurable impact — can translate into different public or political discourses than those studied during the concept’s evolution over its first decade.

Notes

^[1] Abdulrahman Al Marri and Hind Al Ansari, “World Cup in Qatar: Human Rights and Normalization,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 26, 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2023/01/world-cup-in-qatar-human-rights-and-normalization.

^[2] Lars Bergkvist and Heidi Skeiseid, “Sportswashing: Exploiting Sports to Clean the Dirty Laundry,” International Journal of Advertising 43, no. 6 (2024): 1091–109, 1091–2, https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2024.2310937.

^[3] Karim Zidan, “Could 2022 Be Sportswashing’s Biggest Year?,” The Guardian, January 5, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/05/sportswashing-winter-olympics-world-cup.

^[4] Kyle Fruh et al., “Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption,” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2023): 101–18, 102–3, https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2022.2107697.

^[5] Fruh et al., 103.

^[6] Fruh et al., 104.

^[7] Fruh et al., 104.

^[8] Jack Black et al., “The Fetishization of Sport: Exploring the Effects of Fetishistic Disavowal in Sportswashing,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 48, no. 3–4 (2024): 145–64, 146–7, https://doi.org/10.1177/01937235241269906.

^[9] Black et al., 154.

^[10] Black et al., 154–5.

^[11] Jonathan Grix and Paul Michael Brannagan, “Sports Mega-Events as Foreign Policy: Sport Diplomacy, ‘Soft Power,’ and ‘Sportswashing,’’’ American Behavioral Scientist (July 2024): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241262042; Vitaly Kazakov, “’Sportswashing’ as Mediated Deceit: Applying a Critical Disinformation Model to Address Political (Mis)Communication Through Sports,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 18, no. 2 (2026): 293–313, 294, https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2025.2583973.

^[12] Kazakov, 294–5.

^[13] Jules Boykoff, “Toward a Theory of Sportswashing: Mega-Events, Soft Power, and Political Conflict,” Sociology of Sport Journal 39, no. 4 (2022): 342–51, 342–5, https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2022-0095.

^[14] Bergkvist and Skeiseid, 1095.

^[15] Eben Novy-Williams and Jacob Feldman, “Inside FTX’s Now-Shaky $135 Million Deal for Miami’s NBA Arena,” Sportico, November 11, 2022, https://www.sportico.com/business/sponsorship/2022/ftx-miami-heat-arena-contract-1234694694/; Ken Sweet, “Crypto Exchange Giant FTX Collapses, Files for Bankruptcy,” Associated Press, November 11, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/ftx-crypto-bankruptcy-filing-ed0f06c5db468e285f58af2d8766b51a.

^[16] Grix and Brannagan, 5–6. 

^[17] Bergkvist and Skeiseid, 1095.

^[18] Colm Kearns et al., “’Best Run Club in the World’: Manchester City Fans and the Legitimation of Sportswashing?,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 59, no. 4 (2024): 479–501, 479, https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902231210784.

^[19] Kearns et al.

^[20] Thomas Ross Griffin, “Identity Matters: Qatar and Paris Saint-Germain,” in “Qatar’s World Cup Goals,” special issue, ed. Danyel Reiche, Journal of Arabian Studies 13, no. 1 (2023), 73–90, 83, https://doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2024.2356290.

^[21] Michael Skey, “Sportswashing: Media Headline or Analytic Concept?,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 58, no. 5 (2023): 749–64, 756, https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221136086.

^[22] Stuart Murray, “The Two Halves of Sports-Diplomacy,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 23, no. 3 (2012): 576–92, 581, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2012.706544; Grix and Brannagan, 2.

^[23] Grix and Brannagan, 4–5. 

^[24] Graham Dunbar, “FIFA Confirms Saudi Arabia as 2034 World Cup Host Despite Human Rights Concerns,” Associated Press, December 11, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/fifa-world-cup-2030-2034-saudi-arabia-spain-portugal-945f8d7bf332553de0726901d096b956; Annelle Sheline and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and a Nation in Transition,” Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, July 24, 2025, https://doi.org/10.25613/F7J4-6X14.

^[25] Ulrichsen, Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer (Hurst Publishers, 2025).

^[26] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Succeed in World Politics (Public Affairs, 2004), 5, quoted in Boykoff, 343.

^[27] Nye, 99, quoted in Boykoff, 343.

^[28] Amit Gupta, “The Nonwestern Takeover of Global Sports: Sportswashing or Global Power Shift?,” Sport in Society 28, no. 6–7 (2025): 821–34, 825, https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2025.2560169.

^[29] Gupta, 822 and 825.

^[30] Natalie Koch, “Sporting Cities and Economic Diversification in the Arabian Peninsula,” in Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East, ed. Reiche and Brannagan (Routledge, 2022), 287–96.

^[31] Johannes Gerschewski et al., “The Limits of Sportswashing. How the 2022 FIFA World Cup Affected Attitudes about Qatar,” PLoS ONE 19, no. 8 (2024): e0308702, 2, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308702.

^[32] Rafael Rocha and Brian P. McCullough, “From Image to Impact: Scoping Review of Sportswashing and Greenwashing in Sport,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics (2026): 1–22, 14–5, https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2025.2599144.

^[33] Guillaume Detchenique and Gilles Grolleau, “Turning Sportswashing Against Sportswashers: An Unconventional Perspective,” Prometheus 40, no. 3 (2025): 146–65, https://doi.org/10.13169/Prometheus.40.3.0003.

^[34] Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti, “Soft Power and Soft Disempowerment: Qatar, Global Sport and Football’s 2022 World Cup Finals,” in “Leveraging Mega-Events,” special issue, Leisure Studies 34, no. 6 (2015): 703–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2014.964291. See also John S. Krzyzaniak, “The Soft Power Strategy of Soccer Sponsorships,” Soccer & Society 19, no. 4 (2018): 498–515, 505, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2016.1199426.

^[35] Brannagan and Giulianotti, “Soft Power and Soft Disempowerment,” 706.

^[36] Brannagan and Giulianotti, “The Soft Power-Soft Disempowerment Nexus: The Case of Qatar,” International Affairs 94, no. 5 (2018): 1139–57, 1140, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy125.

^[37] Detchenique and Grolleau.

^[38] David R. Black and Janis van der Westhuizen, “Editorial: The Neglected Allure of Global Games?,” in “Going Global: The Promises and Pitfalls of Hosting Global Games,” special issue, ed. Black and van der Westhuizen, Third WorldQuarterly 25, no. 7 (2004): 1191–94, 1192, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993804. See also Paul Dimeo and Joyce Kay, “Major Sports Events, Image Projection and the Problems of ‘Semi-Periphery’: A Case Study of the 1996 South Asia Cricket World Cup,” in “Going Global,” 1263–76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993809.

^[39] John A. Fortunato, “The Wall Street Journal’s Agenda Setting of the LIV Golf Tour and the PGA Tour in 2022,” Journal of Sports Media 18, no. 2 (2023): 61–90, 71–2, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jsm.2023.a945469.

^[40] Calvin Nite et al., “The Legitimacy Work of Institutional Disruption and Maintenance: Examining the Rivalry Between LIV Golf and the Professional Golf Association,” in “Agency and Institutions in Sports,” special issue, ed. Matthew Dowling, European Sport Management Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2024): 113–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2023.2229848; Jodi S. Balsam, “LIV Golf v. PGA Tour and the Future of Professional Golf,” Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Law Blog, May 1, 2023, https://sports-entertainment.brooklaw.edu/sports/liv-golf-v-pga-tour-and-the-future-of-professional-golf/#_Toc132123064.

^[41] Christopher M. Toula and Ryan Broussard, “Soft Power through Soccer: How Al-Jazeera, and Other International Broadcasters, Covered Qatar and the 2022 World Cup,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 17, no. 2 (2025): 221–36, 226–7, https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2024.2424581.

^[42] Mohammed el-Nawawy and Mohamad Hamas Elmasry, “World Cups Apart: Comparing New York Times Coverage of the 2018 Russia and 2022 Qatar World Cup Tournaments,” Soccer & Society 26, no. 3 (2025): 437–54, 446, https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2024.2446862.

^[43] Ahmed A. M. Hassan and Jia Wang, “The Qatar World Cup and Twitter Sentiment: Unraveling the Interplay of Soft Power, Public Opinion, and Media Scrutiny,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 59, no. 5 (2023): 679–704, 685, https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902231218700.

^[44] Hassan and Wang, 690.

^[45] Johannes Gerschewski et al., “The Limits of Sportswashing. How the 2022 FIFA World Cup Affected Attitudes about Qatar,” PLoS ONE 19, no. 8 (2024): e0308702, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308702.

^[46] Christian Gläßel et al., “Does Sportswashing Work? First Insights from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar,” The Journal of Politics 87, no. 1 (2025): 388–92, 390, https://doi.org/10.1086/730728.

^[47] Gläßel et al., 390.

^[48] Gläßel et al., 391.

^[49] Tom Taylor, “Journeys to the ‘Other’: England Fans, Orientalism, and the 2022 World Cup,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport (2025): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902251383553.

^[50] Black et al., 154.

^[51] Morgan Wack et al., “Silence in the Stands: Assessing the Impact of Russian State‐Linked ‘Sportswashing’ on Online Fan Behavior Following the Full‐Scale Invasion of Ukraine,” Social Science Quarterly 106, no. 1 (2025): 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13485.

^[52] Wack et al.

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