Chelsea FC are the first victims of Sportwashing 2.0: Broader, deeper and for the masses
The British government is leading the way - and the mob - in Sportwashing 2.0 by seizing Chelsea FC from Roman Abramovich.
The British government is leading the way in Sportwashing 2.0 by seizing Chelsea FC from Roman Abramovich. Where first-gen sportwashing was for the Bad Guys to cover up their vices, Sportwashing 2.0 is for the Good Guys to grandstand about just how Good they are.
Somewhere between the Premier League approving Newcastle United's sale to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the International Olympic Committee ratifying the Chinese Community Party's line on the disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai, sportwashing became a lot less practical.
For starters, it wasn't working. Everyone assumed they were doing it, which brought more scrutiny to why they were doing it. More than that, it just wasn't necessary.
The idea behind sportwashing is that governments will buy sports properties or host major sporting events in order to distract attention from their corruption or various human rights abuses, or to prove the validity of their social and political system. Their athletic success can help with the latter goal, but the major lever is their welcome from - and, therefore, implicit sanction of - the other properties or nations involved.
Sportwashing 1.0 was short-lived from the beginning
Sportwashing was effective only so long as people don't know that you're doing it. Its success is measured in the dogs that don't bark. As soon as the term and concept caught on, sportwashing's value evaporated.
Sportwashing 1.0 also had significant barriers to entry. Only relatively wealthy nations and ultra-high net worth individuals could do it. Presumably, some smaller tyrants without, say, a well-developed petroleum industry would have loved to use sports to launder their crimes or poach some prestige. But they couldn't afford the sports properties or events to accomplish that goal. Hosting the regional badminton championships just doesn't have the same effect as a World Cup or major World Championships.
And sportwashing 1.0 depends on an implicit assumption: that anyone cares about whatever it is the sportwasher is hiding. The lesson of at least the last two years is that sportwashing not only doesn't do what it once did, but it's not even necessary, if it ever was.
What's the point of spending billions of dollars to hide your depredations if the sports organizations make it clear that they don't care about those depredations? If surveillance video showing a Washington Post journalist being removed from an embassy in a series of suitcases doesn't decide the outcome of the owners' and directors' test, then you better have another goal for buying the Magpies. If IOC executives happily co-star in a hostage video with a three-time Olympian, did you really need them anyway?
The headlines were arguably worse for those regimes than they would have been without the global attention that comes with the Premier League and Olympics. Yet the outcome was the same.
Nobody changed their mind about Saudi Arabia or China based on the approval of the Newcastle sale or anything related to the Olympics in China. All that the "sportwashing" accomplished was proving that no one really cares about the things they claim to care about on Twitter or in official statements. You can prove that for a lot less money.
But sports are too powerful culturally and economically for governments not to look for ways to leverage them for their institutional goals or whims. They just need to find a new way to do it, a new way to sportwash.
Boris Johnson takes Roman Abramovich to the cleaners
The UK seized Chelsea FC (along with Roman Abramovich's other assets) by quasi-liturgically incanting the word "oligarch" until they could put out what is essentially a bill of attainder. Who would have thought being a Chelsea fan would lead to a new appreciation of Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3?
The government's "case" against Abramovich relies heavily on words like "is or has been" (which is it? That distinction seems relevant when assessing the nexus between the 30+ years that have gone before and the one month that people have chosen to care about, especially given the shifting economic and political dynamics of the oligarchs over the last two decades), "affiliated with," "associated with," "may have" and "potentially" to describe his involvement with supporting Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine.
But let's assume that all those conditionals are, in fact, true and ongoing. None of them apply to Chelsea Football Club. Chelsea FC is mentioned only once, as Abramovich's "Position" is listed as "Owner - Chelsea Football Club."
The government does not suggest a relationship between Chelsea and anything or anyone in the Russian state. They did not sketch any international financial ratlines by which money makes its way from Chelsea's sponsors to the Russian war effort. They did not justify closing the club's Megastore or ticket window by claiming that fans were unintentionally bankrolling Vladimir Putin's regime or aggression. Nor did they argue that Abramovich's personal revenue from Chelsea allows him to direct his profits from Evrask and Norilsk Nickel to the Kremlin.
Had they attempted to do so, they would have run up against the simple fact that Abramovich, like nearly every other sports owner, loses money by owning and operating a pro team. If money flowed from SW6 to Abramovich (and then on to Russia) instead of from Abramovich to the club, he would not have had over a billion dollars of loans to forgive when he announced his attention to sell the club.
If the UK government really wanted to cut into Abramovich's finances, they would have forced him to hold on to the club. Instead, the UK government is sportwashing away the salaries, career opportunities, business opportunities and enjoyment of its own citizens.
Who is really paying the price for the UK government's foray into sportwashing?
The details of the "license" the British government "granted" to Chelsea Football Club to operate on a limited basis, on the grounds of being a "cultural asset," reveal some of who will suffer the consequences.
The license prohibits the club from selling new tickets to any games. The first-team games sell out far in advance - as of this writing, first-team games are sold out through early April. The women's and youth teams' games, though, are much more dependent on week-of and walk-up ticket sales. Those teams will now be playing in front of emptier stadiums and bringing in less money.
The club will not be able to undertake any stadium redevelopment plans. Hopefully no British construction firms and workers were angling for that contract, and no local businesses were looking forward to an even more-revitalized section of west London. And that in a future pandemic or other emergency, no health care workers are in need of free, accessible and safe hotel rooms.
The license imposes spending caps on security, stewarding and catering at home matches. Not sure how reducing security and stewarding during a season when football fans have returned to the days of throwing bottles, lighters, coins and other objects at players punishes an aggressive dictator on the far side of the continent and protects the integrity of the game, but OK.
Finally, the seizure precludes the quick sale Abramovich hoped for. When he announced his intention to sell the club, he pledged to donate the proceeds to the victims of the war in Ukraine. Every day the government holds onto the club and stalls the sale is a day a few billion dollars don't reach the relief organizations. And let's not indulge in "Do you really trust Abramovich to keep that promise?" Those will be the most heavily scrutinized billions on the planet today. The investment bank handling the sale, The Raine Group, cannot afford to let one penny or pence stray off the balance sheet. That money would never get within two intermediaries of Abramovich.
The UK government is not doing anything to help the Ukrainian people or state by seizing Chelsea FC, and is arguably doing little by seizing the rest of Abramovich's assets. The UK is simply doing Something, which is the imperative of all virtue signallers.
In that sense, they are doing the same thing as the global sports organizations that have banned Russian athletes from their competitions. Which is the same thing as the cultural organizations expelling Russian performers or purging long-dead Russian artists from their catalog or upcoming program. Which is the same thing as whatever that cat organization is doing. That'll teach those para-athletes, musicians, 19th century authors and, um, cats not to be born in Russia! But it won't stop Vladimir Putin and his war.
Sportwashing 2.0: Act publicly, strike personally and mobilize the mob
What makes the UK's action against Roman Abramovich and Chelsea unique - and the first real expression of Sportwashing 2.0 - are how they have personalized it and applied it to the private sector. They are not going through their Minister of Television, Culture, Recreation, Sport, Tourism and Dance to pressure a global sporting organization. They are not calling for a boycott at the state level, as some countries did prior to the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Johnson's government are expropriating an individual's assets and then setting the terms for how a segment of those assets - the sports property - can operate in a hobbled form until a government-approved sale.
Observers of the American finance industry and civil asset forfeiture regimes have seen this show before.
In doing so, they are democratizing sportwashing. Whereas sportwashing 1.0 was a tool for wealthy authoritarian governments and their pantomime Bond villains, sportwashing 2.0 is open to any government and grandstander.
Only a few state-owned entities can buy sports properties or host sporting events. But any government can repossess assets. Small, poor countries can be just as prolific expropriators as large wealthy ones.
And seizing and freezing assets is all the rage now, if not at the behest of a loud group of moral preeners then certainly with their immediate approval and demand for more.
What limiting principle says only\ oligarchs who own major league teams can have their sports properties seized? If the owner of a minor league soccer team in Canada showed up on the hacked list of donors to the Truckers' Convoy, why wouldn't the Trudeau administration seize the team along with freezing his bank accounts? The team is surely a "cultural asset" that can not be left under the stewardship of someone with such dangerous ideas. What about the main investor in a race car team who donates to the National Rifle Association? Or a sports event promoter who not only listens to The Joe Rogan Experience, but once took a picture with Rogan after a UFC fight that his company presented?
These are far from extremes, in terms of how the mob can scale the absurdity. Anyone can signal their support for the government seizing a sports-related asset. If you want to stand out, you need to say that's not enough. Demand that the sport's authorities or the government rewrite history by declaring 20 years of titles null and void, or petition for post facto league rules that allow - nay, require - a team be relegated if the owner is PNG'd by the government.
The digital morality mob and authoritarian governments coexist precisely to make these things happen. Whereas only a handful of individuals and nations can afford first-gen sportwashing, anyone can contribute their noise to the virtue signalling started on high. Instead of being exclusive, implicit and limited, once a government embarks on a campaign of next-gen sportwashing, it becomes a mass participation event. Like any other digital mob, every little bit helps, from a simple retweet to tagging influencers to dragging nobodies (or long-standing enemies) who wrongthink to writing long-form articles expressing the moral necessity of whatever it was you just heard about a few hours ago.
Together, they pressure a third group: the sponsors. Three backed out of their deal with Chelsea early on, with Hyundai being a few days behind. Last we heard, Nike was still “evaluating” their relationship, so let’s pause for a moment to savor that. Sponsorships are already making their way to companies’ ESG reports, and sportwashing will be one more factor to assess. Can a company really be in good ESG standing if their logo is on the jersey of a team or athlete in the sportwashing machine?
Sportwashing 2.0 fixes the bugs in v1.0, but has its own gaps
The reactions to the full launch of sportwashing 2.0 have been a lot of us-vs.-them vindictive glee ("them" being both Russians and Chelsea fans), a new avenue for labelling dissent as support of Putin and a new competition for who can virtue signal louder, harder and more unhinged. But today's unhinged is tomorrow's mainstream, so who can safely say that sportwashing 2.1 won't entail stripping titles and rewriting or memory-holing entire seasons?
Sportwashing 2.0 corrects the shortcomings of first gen sportwashing. It is meant to be overt, is well-suited for virality and is highly scalable. Where sportwashing 1.0 was the realm of a few wealthy authoritarian states, sportwashing 2.0 is open to all authoritarians, regardless of party, status, position, resources or number of Twitter followers.
That points to the main vulnerability of v2.0. The First Rule of Mobs is that mobs always, eventually, eat their own. Neither nation-states nor Twitter randos can stay on the mob's side of history forever. At the individual level, the mob always, always turns on its members. Pleading "But I'm one of you" is just the penultimate step in the process.
But sportwashing - both versions - is ultimately a governmental endeavor. Government-level next gen sportwashing is easily defeated by cashing in on the hypocrisy.
If there was any sense of consistency, the UK government would proceed against Newcastle United and Manchester City, for starters. Of course, if there was any sense of consistency, the same global sporting organizations banning Russian athletes would not be hosting events in Doha or Beijing. But those aren't the Very Bad People of the moment, so they get to proceed apace.
If there was any sense of consistency within the press, they would be asking someone in Boris Johnson's government - not Newcastle manager Eddie Howe - about the mass execution in Saudi Arabia the day before Newcastle played <checks notes> Chelsea. And they would do the same of the government and Premier League owners and directors if a Saudi media consortium tenders the high bid for Chelsea FC.
Consequently, if a country, organization or company decides to prohibit a British team or athlete because of something the UK has done, or welcomes in someone on the UK's PNG roster, the UK government will have no standing to object.
They can say "Well what we did was different because..." but everyone will know that it's not different at all. And as we learned from Norm MacDonald, the hypocrisy isn't actually the worst part.
When did Chelsea fans start showing perspective?
Perhaps precisely because they are so partial and emotionally attached, Chelsea fans have maintained a better sense of perspective on these events than the moral majority in the media and on Twitter. Their fandom precludes the mob's Manicheanism.
They know who will actually be affected by the government's actions: Yes, Roman Abramovich. But not Vladimir Putin, not the Kremlin. And yes, Britons. Plus people around the world who depend on commercial transactions with the club. And even more who not only take emotional satisfaction from Chelsea FC but are able to keep two thoughts alive in their heads at the same time: Chelsea and sports good, Vladimir Putin evil.
Maybe I'm just over-optimistic upon my return to writing about Chelsea, but sportwashing 3.0 could entail cleaning all the grudges and hobby-horses out of sport, ending its destructive era of being a "platform" to do SOMETHING so it can once more be an "arena for admiration."
The fans singing their players' names are already there.