sportswashing

From the 2016 European Formula 1 Grand Prix, matches at football's 2020 European Championship, and now the European Games, Azerbaijan is practicing sportswashing – using major sporting events as a way of diverting attention from human rights violations.

2015, Caroline Christie, “Human Rights Abuses and the European Games in Azerbaijan”, in Vice

By taking this line are we as sports fans not also complicit in this sportswashing?

2018, César Jiménez-Martínez, Michael Skey, “How repressive states and governments use 'sportswashing' to remove stains on their reputation”, in The Conversation

2019 Felix Jakens, quoted in Sean Ingle, "'They want the money': the real reason boxing is going to Saudi Arabia", The Guardian The fight is pure sportswashing and that's why it’s so important to challenge the Saudi propaganda machine and its increased use of sport to gloss over its abysmal human rights record.

There is this assumption that sportswashing works, especially with football fans. I suspect there is a bit of a class thing going on here – as in, we are all thought gullible enough to have our awareness of the Saudis’ human rights record washed clean out of our simple minds.

2023 July 12, Adrian Chiles, “Is anyone convinced by Saudi sportswashing? Only the crooks who sell fake football strips”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

“There are risks directly related to the tournament in the case of Morocco,” Carlen added. “[We ought to] look exactly at the harms generated by the tournament rather than the general question of sportswashing.”

2024 September 22, Eromo Egbejule, “Football-mad Morocco dreams of a World Cup final in its own ark”, in The Observer, Guardian Media Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, retrieved 17 Jun 2026