Football’s dirty money problem
Journalist Miguel Delaney on what’s gone wrong with the beautiful game. Plus: the return of Liz Truss’s Growth Commission
Here at Democracy for Sale we are big fans of the beautiful game, so I’m delighted to have celebrated sports writer Miguel Delaney joining us today to talk about his book States of Play: How Sportswashing Took Over Football.
States of Play tells the story of how football has been taken over the world’s wealthiest businessmen, state-backed corporations and oil-rich oligarchs. It’s a vital investigative read.
But before turning over to Miguel, I wanted to give you an update on two very different stories that we have often covered: the long descent of Liz Truss, and the British government’s woeful transparency record.
One of the very first stories this newsletter ever reported was about Truss’s self-styled ‘Growth Commission’, and how it was stacked with representatives from dark money-funded think tanks (such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, which was so instrumental in her 44-day reign.)
Well, now the Growth Commission is back, and is trying to cosy up to Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, the Growth Commission’s chairman - and IEA ‘fellow’ - Shanker Singham unveiled a “memo” to president-elect Trump for how to supercharge US economic growth. Amongst other things, the lobbyist - who this newsletter revealed had 50-plus meetings with ministers pushing freeports (and bee-killing pesticides) - wants the US to push his “prosperity zones” around the world.
But most striking about the Growth Commission memo is what’s missing: across more than 90 pages there’s no mention of the person who brought the gang together, the Trump-supporting Truss. Why the silence, guys?
As well as keeping tabs on the Growth Commission, this week we have also been reading Spotlight on Corruption’s excellent new piece on transparency in U.K. government departments.
The Conservatives had promised to start publishing monthly lists of ministers’ meetings with lobbyists and others. But guess what? Two years later and this still isn’t happening - indeed at the beginning of November, the government confirmed that it was actually backing away from moving to monthly releases of transparency data.
The latest government transparency releases - published on Thursday - are so old that they don’t even cover Labour, just the fag end of the last Tory administration. Is this Keir Starmer’s promise of a new politics of openness and transparency?
Like a Truss premiership, let’s move swiftly along (sorry, bad joke…) and turn to the interview I recently did on email with Miguel Delaney about his new book States of Play.
PETER GEOGHEGAN: Your book asks a really important question: 'who really owns football?' What answer did you find?
MIGUEL DELANEY: One that isn't particularly positive, but is underlain by some optimism about the future. The spirit of the game is still owned by the supporters. That is who drives it. That is also what is being monetised, used or exploited, because the sport itself is in large part owned by autocratic states and capitalist enterprise. They reflect two of the three major forces shaping football in the 21st century: geopolitics, largely centred in the Gulf; a distinctive form of capitalism that football has greedily embraced, largely from the west; the failure of the game itself. This is basically why I wanted to write the book. For a few years, in covering all of these topics in a more disparate way, I could sense that there was something bigger linking it together; that an analysis of where the game was felt necessary. And it's basically this. I hope it isn't a bit over-the-top to say one intention is almost to change the discussion around football and its direction.
PETER: Abu Dhabi owns Manchester City. Saudi Arabia's investment fund controls Newcastle United. What are states trying to achieve by buying football clubs? Is this sportswashing?
MIGUEL: So this is basically the second chapter of the book. Even though the word "sportswashing" is on the cover, that section is also an exploration on how the word is at best a useful shorthand for a concept much more complex than the term entails. "Wash" indicates cleaning or obscuring something. I don't think a lot of these states are interested in obscuring anything at all. There's more to it than that.
From speaking to a lot of people who work in human rights, geopolitics and various other related areas, I sort of summed up this version of sportswashing as this: it is the political use of sport (in this case clubs) by mostly autocratic states with unprecedented financial means, for the purpose of sustaining their state structure.
A core to this is obviously the idea of economic diversification in a post-fossil fuels future, but that's where the idea of "sustaining the structure" is so key. They basically want to keep the same level of revenue so there is no political upheaval and these ruling families retain power. That requires business with the west and other areas of the planet, which is where a football club of global dimensions - with all of the social capital involved - is so important.
I quote Tom Holland in the book saying football is maybe the most popular cultural pursuit that's ever existed, and that is what these states are attracted to. It is about normalisation of their presence. As a basic illustration, look at Newcastle United now. It probably isn't going the way the Saudis wanted and there is now constant talk of selling the club. It did work in one very important way. Who talks about Jamal Khashoggi now, outside of the anniversary? The purchase of the club has served to normalise the Saudi state’s involvement. That is an immensely powerful thing. By the same token, Doha is now forever associated with one of the great sporting stories in Messi lifting the World Cup. That is an effect no amount of propaganda or black ops can buy.
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PETER: States of Play is filled with stories about bribes and corruption in football. We know that the World Cup hosting rights have been for sale. Has there been any accountability, do you think? Why not?
MIGUEL: I think the story of December 2010, and the winning of the 2018-22 World Cups, is absolutely indicative about football's authorities and what happens here. The USA's failure to win 2022 influenced an existing investigation into football, and focused scrutiny. That did lead to arrests, resignations and overhaul at Fifa and Uefa over 2015 and 2016... but is what happened next really any better?
Both organisations are inexplicably in thrall to two men, who needlessly have executive presidential powers. Repeated legal cases have criticised Fifa and Uefa for not fulfilling their remit, as the bodies' relationships with autocratic states have only deepened. Fifa have Saudi Aramco as a major partner, and the photo of Fifa president Gianni Infantino sitting beside Mohammed Bin Salman and Vladimir Putin at the 2018 World Cup is one that almost sums up modern football.
Qatar exerted huge influence over Uefa through Nasser Al Khelaifi, who is president of Paris Saint-Germain, chair of the BeIn Sports broadcasters and - out of all that, as well as the Super League - chairman of the European Club Association, who are the most influential club body in the sport. Uefa president Aleksandar Ceferin's relationship with Al Khelaifi is a focus of the book, too. Is this really the context for bodies that are supposed to be the ultimate safeguards of the sport? There are various other concerns, too, not least how Uefa and Fifa are essentially in competition with the clubs due to their roles as event organisers.
PETER: Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules were supposed to curb the influence of money on football. Has this worked?
MIGUEL: I think they have worked in a basic way, in the sense that City or Newcastle or PSG can't just pay players whatever they want. That shouldn't be discounted. New PSR (Profitability and Sustainability) regulations have worked in terms of preventing Newcastle doing what City or PSG did, at least in terms of speed. It's much harder.
But the book actually argues that a lot of debate about FFP is misplaced. That's just one necessary element of a system that needs to be much better. Central to this question is one that is really much more profound and necessary, that football's regulators don't even bother to think it. How many teams should ideally win a title over a given set of years? What number of points are healthy as a threshold to win a league? How much "competitive balance" do we want? Football barely even considers this, and instead embraced an almost total free market that has led to concentration of wealth, and a group of super clubs that dominate everything and tried to break away. In essence, then, regulation is essential to competitive team sport; to the very business of putting on commercially attractive matches. FFP, which is really just cost control, is only one part of that regulation. Football needs far more, like redistribution of resources, controls on ownership, for an effective system. As it is, FFP/PSR just has this unfair burden.