Analysis: how do fans reconcile the misdeeds of their owners with their identity as Manchester City supporters?
By Colm Kearns, Gary Sinclair, DCU and Jack Black, Sheffield Hallam University
In 2008, Manchester City Football Club were acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group, an entity led by Abu Dhabi royalty and UAE politicians. Over the course of this ownership, the group has injected approximately £1.5 billion into the club, an investment that has been remarkably successful. Since 2008, City have won seven Premier League titles, eight domestic cup trophies, and the prestigious 2023 UEFA Champions League, a level of success that was considered unfathomable prior to the acquisition.
But this remarkable transformation has not escaped criticism, much of which has centred on the status of human rights in the UAE. As a result, City's success has not simply distorted the financial landscape of club football, but also serves as one of the most prominent case studies of "sportswashing".
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From RTÉ 2fm's Game On, David Conn, author of Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football & Growing Up, on the club since the arrival of new owners
What is sportswashing?
Sportswashing is a term coined to elucidate the tactic of leveraging sports to project a favourable image of a country or organisation while concealing, downplaying or complicating its negative facets. This can manifest in various forms, such as one-off event-based strategies and longer-term investment-based strategies.
One-off event-based strategies refer to the practice of hosting major international sporting events, such as, the Olympics or the World Cup, in an effort to leverage their prestige and significance against the host's reputation for wrongdoing. Longer-term investment-based strategies such as purchasing sports clubs can have an even more profound impact on the integrity of sports and the communities that support them.
While investment-based sportswashing may appear innocuous on the surface, its repercussions on the integrity of sports and the communities endorsing them can be severe. Man City’s takeover has not only had long term economic impacts on English and European soccer – the club currently face 115 charges of alleged breaches of the English Premier League’s financial rules – but also seen the club’s fans transformed into proxy defenders of the UAE government and Abu Dhabi royal family.
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From RTÉ 2fm's Dave Fanning Show, Chief Football Writer with The Independent in the UK, Miguel Delaney on soccer club takeovers and sportswashing
The emotional bonds between a club and its supporters are leveraged through investment-based sportswashing. They create a halo effect whereby supporters conflate their joy over their club’s success with its ownership regime. The ownership regime in the case of Man City has brought unprecedented success to the club, but also represents a government that has severely curtailed freedom of expression and subjected its opponents to torture. How then do fans reconcile these misdeeds with their identity as Man City supporters?
Sportswashing and fans
There has been limited scholarly exploration into the perspectives and roles of fans of clubs owned by what some termed sportswashing regimes. What are their experiences? How are fans co-opted into such projects? How do they resist?
As part of a wider project on online hate in football our research team examined a popular Manchester City online fan forum in order to explore the repercussions of sportswashing on the fan community. While some fans were cognisant of the negative aspects of the club's ownership, the study revealed that many were willing to overlook them in their unwavering support for the team.
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From RTÉ Sport, sports law expert Dr Seán Ó Conaill from UCC on the consequences of Premier League charges over breaches of financial rules on Man City
Addressing the problem
One potential solution involves augmenting transparency and accountability in sports ownership. Existing club ownership regulations in the English Premier League, for instance, disqualify potential owners for prior financial misdemeanours or convictions accounted for by UK legislation, criteria unlikely to affect the representatives of repressive state regimes.
Wider reform is also needed for soccer's finance structures to ensure that mid or lower ranking clubs can forge a path to success without the need for the financial might of state owners. The City fans in the forum we examined were understandably bitter about the sport's growing wealth gap and the power of select group of European 'superclubs,’ and this bitterness was key to their justification of their club’s ownership by UAE state actors.
That sportswashing can provide repressive state actors with the potential advantage of the recruitment of a fervent, emotionally invested fanbase is a major concern. Instances of Man City fans harassing journalists (both online and in person) who have dared to criticise their club's ownership attest to the potential of sportswashing as a weapon with the power to distort media coverage and, thus, avoid accountability. Future investigations of sportswashing – whether at Qatari-owned Paris Saint Germain or Newcastle United, recently acquired by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund – should be mindful of this. The intent behind sportswashing may remain opaque, but its impacts are undeniable.
Dr Colm Kearns is a postdoctoral researcher at DCU's Irish Institute Of Digital Business. His current work centres of the Tackling Online Hate in Football (TOHIF) project. Dr Gary Sinclair is Associate Dean for Internationalisation at DCU Business School and Associate Professor in Marketing, specialising in Consumer Behaviour. Dr Jack Black is a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University's Academy of Sport and Physical Activity.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
