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Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dismisses ‘sportswashing’ criticisms

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, has dismissed claims that the Kingdom’s vast investment in sports events and properties represents ‘sportswashing’, stating that he “doesn’t care” about accusations against his country.

Speaking to Fox News of the USA in his first ever interview given fully in English, Bin Salman moved to address criticism that the Kingdom’s investment represents a strategy to deflect attention from its human rights record.

Bin Salman, who became Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler in 2017 and also serves as its Prime Minister, explained “if sport washing is going to increase my GDP by way of 1%, then I will continue doing sport washing.”

Asked how he felt about the term sports washing, Bin Salman advised: “I don’t care … I’m aiming for another 1.5%. Call it whatever you want, we’re going to get that 1.5%.”

As part of Vision 2030, Bin Salman has been driving targets for economic diversification and improving competitiveness in the deeply conservative absolute monarchy.

Part of this has included the acquisition and development of sporting properties, with Newcastle United of the English Premier League football club and LIV Golf being its most high profile investments.

 In June, it was announced that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) would merge their commercial operations under common ownership, a coming together that halted pending litigation related to the breakaway LIV Golf tour.

The Kingdom has also entered the international sporting calendar, hosting a Formula One Grand Prix, being set to host the Asian Games in 2029 and with Jeddah’s King Abdullah Sports City last month being named the host venue for tennis’ Next Gen ATP Finals for the next five years.

In addition, world football governing body’s 2023 Club World Cup will also be staged in Jeddah from 12th to 22nd December this year.

Saudi will host four of the next six editions of football’s Supercoppa Italiana, with the competition to expand to a four-team tournament from next year. Lega Serie A, the governing body of the top division of Italian football, announced the hosting deal in March.

In February, ambitious venue plans were revealed for the 2027 Asian Cup after winning hosting rights to the national team football tournament at the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) Congress.

Explaining this drive to host events as being central to the Kingdom’s goal of becoming one of the world’s top 10 tourist destinations, Bin Salman went on to say “when you want to diversify an economy you have to work in all sectors: mining, infrastructure, manufacturing, transportation, logistics all this.

“Part of it is tourism and if you want to develop tourism part of it is culture, part of it is your sport sector, because you need to create a calendar.”

Bin Salman claimed that since he came to power, tourism has significantly increased in importance to the Saudi economy, noting “we can see tourism used to contribute to Saudi GDP 3%, now it’s 7%.

“Sport used to be 0.4%, now it’s 1.5%, so it’s economic growth, it’s jobs, it’s a calendar, it’s entertainment, it’s tourism. You can see that now we are ranked No.1 in the Middle East, six years ago we were not in top 10 in the Middle East. We are aiming to get over 100 million visits in 2030, maybe 150 million. Last year we reached almost 40 million visits from Saudi and globally.”

With Saudi’s tourism growth focused at least in part on domestic and regional visitors, alongside the substantial number of Muslim visitors from across the world performing hajj or umrah to Mecca, observers have argued that criticism from largely western countries is something Bin Salman can afford to ignore.

The argument is reinforced by Saudi’s increasingly central role in regional politics and its importance as an ally to the USA.

 In his Fox interview, Bin Salman said that normalised relations between the Kingdom and Israel were “getting closer every day”.

A survey released last year by YouGov, Global Sports 2022: Uncovering the Socially Responsible Sports Fan, revealed that sport fans in 2022 have a concern about environmental, sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues with 47% of fans around the world considering whether brands are socially and environmentally responsible when making purchases.

Images: Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (top), LIV Golf (middle) and the city of Jeddah on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Coast (below). Credit: Shutterstock.

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