Why Saudi oil may just meet its match in booming power of women’s football

Mohammed bin Salman has never been that big a football fan. That is more speculation than confirmed truth, based on a lack of hard evidence to support a history of playing or watching the game in any meaningful way.

There is a chance that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler – an avid gamer – may, at some stage, have played some iteration of Football Manager. But his swift rise to the status of most influential figure in world football does not appear to have that much to do with football at all.

Mohammed bin Salman with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Russian president Vladmir Putin at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.Credit: Getty

Bin Salman, best known for reckless foreign policy, sanctioning the brutal murder of a journalist in Turkey and upending centuries of religious conservatism in the birthplace of Islam, has spent the years since 2017 trying to diversify his country’s wealth beyond the rise and fall of oil prices, achieve global dominance and distract his citizens from their lack of political freedom.

Initially, that looked like turning Saudi into a tourist attraction and global business hub much like Dubai, in a plan which soon expanded into unprecedented spending on sport. For reasons only the 39-year-old will know (but which may involve a geopolitical spat with Qatar and an impulsive, ego-driven ambition of one-upmanship, while also placating a young Saudi population enough to avoid another Arab Spring), he decided to throw everything at football.

There was the 2021 takeover of Newcastle United, to match Qatar’s ownership of Paris Saint-Germain and Abu Dhabi’s of Manchester City and now back in the headlines due to his alleged personal involvement. And then the eye-watering acquisition of superstars Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Karim Benzema to the Saudi Pro League, all paid for by the nation’s sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). Now he effectively has a done deal to host the 2034 men’s World Cup.

Last year Bin Salman said he “doesn’t care” about accusations of sportswashing. “If sport washing is going to increase my GDP by way of 1 per cent, then I will continue doing sport washing,” he told Fox News.

Alex Chidiac is among the signatories of the open letter to FIFA.Credit: AP

For the purposes of understanding bin Salman’s relationship with FIFA, however, none of this conjecture about motivation matters one bit. It will also have little influence over FIFA’s response to the letter signed by 106 professional female footballers and sent to president Gianni Infantino this week calling on the governing body to reconsider its partnership with Saudi-owned oil giant Aramco.

FIFA has long demonstrated it understands only one language: money. Since the early days of the game’s commercialisation – and corruption – football has been for sale to the highest bidder, regardless of motive or human rights records, lack of appropriate infrastructure or football history. Regardless of even, to quote the open letter, “Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations, especially towards women”.

The correspondence, which includes the signatures of Matildas Aivi Luik and Alex Chidiac, is powerful. It points out the high representation of LGBTQ+ players in women’s football and the fact same-sex relationships remain heavily criminalised in Saudi Arabia, and underscores the country’s oppression and imprisonment of women who advocate for more rights and freedom. It also highlights Aramco’s huge carbon footprint and history of lobbying to delay climate action.

“The Saudi authorities trample not only on the rights of women, but on the freedom of all other citizens too,” it reads. “Imagine LGBTQ+ players, many of whom are heroes of our sport, being expected to promote Saudi Aramco during the 2027 World Cup, the national oil company of a regime that criminalises the relationships that they are in and the values they stand for?”

Gianni Infantino (left) with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at Saudi Arabia’s group-stage upset of Argentina at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.Credit: Bloomberg

FIFA is well aware of these well-documented concerns, and says it cares about them. It has it own human rights policy, and has pledged to halve its carbon emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040. Even so, it announced in April that the Aramco sponsorship would run until the end of 2027, taking in the next men’s and women’s World Cups.

It therefore stands to reason that a reiteration of the same concerns will not be enough on its own to engender a rethink. Which is where money comes back in, and why – in FIFA’s eyes, at least – this will be reduced to a struggle between the established financial might of the Gulf and the booming commercial value of women’s football.

Vivianne Miedema has been outspoken about the Aramco sponsorship this week.Credit: Getty Images

As recently as a decade ago, such a strong stand may not have registered enough to make international headlines, let alone stand a chance of affecting FIFA’s sponsorship decisions. But the exponential growth of the past few years has propelled the women’s game into a genuinely profit-oriented stratosphere. Record crowds and television audiences during last year’s World Cup have contributed to that growth and wealth, and further enhanced the platforms of the top female players.

Women’s football is now a key contributor to FIFA’s real and projected revenue, which makes it far more difficult to ignore such a public call to action. That is particularly when the signatories include the current skippers of the Canadian, Italian and Croatian national teams and former captains of the US and Afghan sides, and there are more than 2300 caps between the 106 players from 24 countries.

And especially when Vivianne Miedema warns players could take further action should Aramco remain a sponsor for the 2027 Women’s World Cup. “I think you’ve seen over the past couple of years that women’s teams are not scared to stand up for what they believe in,” the Netherlands and Manchester City forward said.

“You’ve seen boycotts from numerous teams, obviously recently, like with the America team, with the Canadian team, everyone is very open and willing to share their opinions. That shows you that going forward, there will be a lot of attention and there will definitely be things happening around the World Cup.”

The unanswered question is: who will win in this battle of FIFA’s financial stakes? And if it does ultimately decide to renege on the deal, how much collective action will it take?

We got a taste of this tension early last year, when FIFA abandoned plans for Saudi Arabia’s tourism arm, Visit Saudi, to sponsor the 2023 Women’s World Cup after a ferocious response from co-hosts Australia and New Zealand and some of the highest-profile players including Miedema, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe.

This time, FIFA has simply stated that Aramco is an “inclusive organisation with many commercial partners also supporting other organisations in football and other sports”, and argued the partnership is justified because commercial revenues are reinvested back into the development of the women’s game.

In the end, though, the “why” will matter little to an organisation whose primary concern has always been money, and FIFA has already shown it is about as likely to care about women’s and LGBTQ+ rights as it is about bin Salman’s interest or otherwise in the sport it governs.

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