Saudi sports diplomacy: A mirror image of the kingdom’s already challenged policies
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi sports diplomacy is proving to be a mirror image of
the kingdom’s challenged domestic, regional and foreign policies.
Overlorded by sports czar Turki
al-Sheikh, Saudi sports diplomacy, like the kingdom’s broader
policies, has produced at best mixed results, suggesting that financial muscle
coupled with varying degrees of coercion does not guarantee success.
Mr. Al-Sheikh, a 37-year old brash and often blunt former honorary
president of Saudi soccer club Al Taawoun based in Buraidah, a stronghold of
religious ultra-conservatism, and a former bodyguard of crown prince Mohammed
bin Salman, is together
with Saud al-Qahtani among the king-in-waiting’s closest associates.
Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the kingdom’s wealthiest
investors, acknowledged Mr. Al-Sheikh’s
ranking in the Saudi hierarchy when he made a donation of more than a
half-million dollars to Saudi soccer club Al Hilal FC weeks after
having been released from detention.
Prince al-Waleed was one of the more recalcitrant detainees
among the scores of members of the ruling family, prominent businessmen and
senior officials who were detained a year ago in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton Hotel as
part of Prince Mohammed’s power and asset grab.
Prince Al-Waleed said on Twitter at the time that he was
“responding to the invitation of my brother Turki al-Sheikh.”
Mr. Al-Qahtani, who was recently fired as Prince Mohammed’s
menacing information czar in connection with the killing of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was banned
this week from travelling outside the kingdom. Mr. Al-Sheikh has not
been linked to the Khashoggi murder.
Nevertheless, his sports diplomacy, exhibiting some of the
brashness that has characterized Prince Mohammed as well as Mr Al-Qahtani’s
approach, has largely failed to achieve its goals. If anything, it appears to
have contributed to the kingdom’s growing list of setbacks.
Those goals included establishing Saudi Arabia as a
powerhouse in regional and global soccer governance; countering Qatari sports
diplomacy crowned by its hosting of the 2022 World Cup; projecting the kingdom
in a more favourable light by hosting international sporting events; becoming a
powerhouse in soccer-crazy Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation; and
using the competition for the 2026 World Cup hosting rights to bully Morocco
into supporting the Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led boycott of Qatar.
To be sure, with the exception of a cancelled tennis
exhibition match in Jeddah between stars Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic,
most scheduled sporting events, including this
season’s opening Formula E race in December and the Italian
Supercoppa between Juventus and AC Milan in January, are going ahead
as planned despite a six-week old crisis sparked by the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.
Yet, if last month’s friendly
soccer match in Jeddah between Brazil and Argentina and this
month’s World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) Crown Jewel showpiece
are anything to go by, major sporting events are doing little to polish the
kingdom’s image tarnished not only by the Khashoggi killing but also the war in
Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War
Two. The sports events have so far failed to push Mr. Khashoggi and Yemen out
of the headlines of major independent media.
Mainstream media coverage of Saudi sports has, moreover,
focussed primarily on Saudi sports diplomacy’s struggle to make its mark
internationally. One focus been the fact that Gianni Infantino, president of
world soccer body FIFA, has run
into opposition from the group’s European affiliate, UEFA, to his plan to
endorse a US$25 billion plan for a new club tournament funded by the
Saudi and UAE-backed Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
If adopted, the plan would enhance Saudi and Emirati
influence in global soccer governance to the potential detriment of Qatar, the
host of the 2022 World Cup. Saudi Arabia and the UAE spearhead a 17-month old
economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar designed to force it to surrender its
right to chart an independent course rather than align its policies with those
of its Gulf brothers.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought to engineer a situation
in which Qatar is either deprived of its hosting rights or forced
to share them with other states in the region, a possibility Mr. Infantino has said
he was exploring.
Mr. Infantino has also said he was looking into implementing
an expansion of the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams already in 2022
rather than only in 2026. An expansion of the Qatari World Cup would probably
involve including others in the Gulf as hosts of the tournament. Qatari
officials have all but ruled out sharing their hosting rights.
Another media focus has been alleged
Saudi piracy aimed at undermining Qatar-owned BeIN Corp, the world’s
biggest sports rights holder, including the rights to broadcast last summer’s
Russia World Cup in the Arab world.
Mr. Al-Qahtani
reportedly played a key role in the sudden emergence of BeoutQ, a
bootleg operation beamed from Riyadh-based Arabsat that ripped live events from
BeIN’s feed and broadcast the games without paying for rights. The
Saudi government has denied any relationship to the pirate network.
The piracy has sparked international lawsuits, including international
arbitration in which BeIN is seeking US1 billion in damages from Saudi Arabia.
The company has also filed a case with the World Trade Organization.
FIFA has said it has taken steps to prepare for legal action
in Saudi Arabia and is working alongside other sports rights owners that have
been affected to protect their interests.
Mr. Al-Sheikh’s effort to create with funds widely believed
to have been provided by Prince Mohammed an international Saudi sports
portfolio that would project the kingdom as a regional power broker collapsed
with fans, players and club executives in Egypt furious at the Saudi officials
buying influence and using it to benefit Saudi rather than Egyptian clubs.
“No one, no one at all — with all due respect to Turki or no
Turki … will be allowed to interfere in the club’s affairs,” said Mahmoud
el-Khatib, chairman of Egyptian club Al Ahli SC, one of the Middle East’s most
popular clubs with an estimated 50 million fans. Mr. Al-Sheikh had
unsuccessfully tried to use his recently acquired honorary chairmanship of Al
Ahli to take control of the club.
Al Ahli’s rejection of his power grab persuaded Mr.
Al-Sheikh to resign in May and instead bankroll Al Ahli rival Pyramid FC. He
invested US$33 million to acquire three top Brazilian players and launch a
sports channel dedicated to the team.
The club’s fans, like their Al Ahli counterparts,
nonetheless, denounced
Mr. Al-Sheikh and the kingdom and insulted the Saudi official’s mother in crass
terms during a match in September. Mr. Al-Sheikh decided to abandon
his Egyptian adventure after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ignored his request
to intervene. “Strange attacks from everywhere, and a new story every day. Why
the headache?” Mr Al-Sheikh said on Facebook.
Mr. Al-Sheikh’s attempt to form a regional powerbase by
creating a
breakaway group of South Asian and Middle Eastern soccer federations beyond the
confines of FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) collapsed
five months after the formation of the South-West Asian Football Federation
(SWAFF) when seven South Asian nations pulled out with immediate effect.
The collapse of SWAFF and Mr. Al-Sheikh’s withdrawal from
Egypt were preceded by his backing of the US-Canadian-Mexican bid for the 2026
World Cup against Morocco after
he failed to bully the North Africans into supporting the boycott of Qatar.
Adopting a Saudi Arabia First approach, Mr. Al-Sheikh noted
that the United States “is our biggest and strongest ally.” He recalled that
when the World Cup was played in 1994 in nine American cities, the US “was one
of our favourites. The fans were numerous, and the Saudi team achieved good
results.”
That was Mr. Al-Sheikh’s position six months ago. Today, men
like Prince Mohammed and Messrs. Al-Sheikh and Al-Qahtani are seething. US
President Donald J. Trump is proving to be an unreliable ally. Not only is he
pressuring the kingdom to come up with a credible explanation for Mr.
Khashoggis’ killing, Mr. Trump is also seemingly backtracking on his promise to
bring Iran to its knees by imposing crippling economic sanctions.
Saudi
distrust is fuelled by the fact that Mr. Trump first asked the
kingdom to raise oil production to compensate for lower crude exports from Iran
and then without informing it made a 180-degree turn by offering
buyers generous waivers that keep Iranian crude in the market instead of drive
exports from Riyadh's arch-rival down to zero.
Seemingly cut from the same cloth as Prince Mohammed, Mr.
Al-Sheikh, drew his pro-American definition of Saudi Arabia First from the
crown prince’s focus on the United States. Prince Mohammed, Mr. Al-Sheikh and
other senior Saudi officials may be considering whether putting the kingdom’s
eggs primarily in one basket remains the best strategy.
Whatever the case, Mr. Al-Sheikh’s sweep through regional
and global sports has left Saudi leaders with little to leverage in the
kingdom’s bid to pick up the pieces and improve its image tarnished first and
foremost by Mr. Khashoggi’s killing but also by the trail the sports czar has
left behind.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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