Sportswashing and the Limits of Sports Governance
Few issues in modern sport generate as much disagreement as sportswashing. For some, it describes the use of sport by governments to improve international reputation and shift attention away from criticism. For others, it has become an overused political label applied to any significant state investment in sport. Qatar's hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Saudi Arabia's growing investments in football, golf, boxing, tennis, and Formula One, Russia's hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and Azerbaijan's role in hosting international sporting events have all been drawn into the debate. Yet despite the attention these examples receive, the conversation often asks the wrong question.
The debate usually centres on whether sportswashing exists or whether a particular government is guilty of engaging in it. Those questions matter, but they are unlikely to produce consensus. Governments argue that investing in sport supports tourism, infrastructure, economic diversification, and international engagement. Critics argue that those same investments generate reputational benefits that help improve a state's international image. Both claims may be true at the same time.
A more interesting question is what these controversies reveal about the institutions responsible for governing sport. Regardless of where one stands on sportswashing itself, the debate exposes three important challenges facing modern sports governance: how governing bodies should regulate reputational risk, whether they can genuinely remain politically neutral, and how far their responsibilities should extend beyond the administration of competition.
The Limits of Regulating Reputational Risk
Modern sport is already heavily regulated. Governing bodies oversee financial sustainability through regulations such as UEFA's Financial Fair Play, protect competitive integrity through anti-doping programmes and anti-corruption measures, implement safeguarding standards, regulate ownership, and establish licensing systems designed to ensure competitions remain stable and credible. Although these frameworks address different issues, they all reflect the same principle: identifying risks that could undermine confidence in sport and developing governance mechanisms to manage them.
Reputational risk has become one of those risks, yet it remains one of the least clearly regulated. Awarding a World Cup, approving a sovereign wealth fund's acquisition of a football club, or entering major commercial partnerships inevitably affects how governing bodies are perceived by supporters, sponsors, athletes, and governments. Unlike financial or operational risks, however, reputation cannot be measured through objective criteria. There is no audit that determines institutional legitimacy and no universal standard for deciding when reputational concerns should outweigh commercial or sporting benefits.
That does not mean reputational risk should be ignored. Sports regulators routinely make complex judgments in areas such as safeguarding, ethics, and integrity where certainty is equally difficult to achieve. The governance challenge is not to eliminate disagreement but to ensure that decisions are made through transparent, proportionate, and consistently applied processes. Sportswashing highlights that this framework remains underdeveloped.
The Limits of Institutional Neutrality
Sports governing bodies frequently describe themselves as politically neutral institutions. In theory, their role is to govern competitions rather than participate in international politics. In practice, that distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain.
Decisions about tournament hosts, ownership groups, and commercial partnerships are no longer viewed solely through a sporting lens. Hosting a FIFA World Cup or acquiring a globally recognised football club carries economic, diplomatic, and symbolic significance. Whether fair or not, these decisions are interpreted as statements about legitimacy, governance, and international standing. Governing bodies may not intend to make political judgments, but their decisions increasingly produce political consequences.
This creates an uncomfortable dilemma. If governing bodies actively assess political and reputational issues, they risk accusations of exceeding their mandate. If they ignore them entirely, they risk undermining public confidence in the legitimacy of their decisions. The challenge is therefore not whether sport should become political, but whether political neutrality remains possible when the decisions of sporting institutions have consequences far beyond the playing field.
The Limits of the Sports Governance Mandate
Perhaps the most significant lesson from the sportswashing debate is how dramatically the role of sports governance has changed. Governing bodies were once primarily responsible for organizing competitions, enforcing playing rules, and resolving disputes. Today they regulate financial sustainability, athlete welfare, corruption, safeguarding, ownership, environmental sustainability, and increasingly, human rights. Each expansion has been driven by legitimate governance concerns, but together they raise an important institutional question: where should the responsibilities of sports governing bodies end?
Calls for governing bodies to evaluate sportswashing reflect this broader evolution. Increasingly, sporting organizations are expected not only to regulate sport but also to assess issues traditionally associated with diplomacy, ethics, and public policy. Yet they often lack the expertise, governance frameworks, or institutional mandate to make such judgments consistently. As expectations continue to grow, so too does the risk that governing bodies will be criticised regardless of the decisions they make.
This does not mean sports organizations should avoid difficult issues. Modern sport is too economically and politically significant for governing bodies to retreat behind the argument that they simply organize competitions. Equally, they should not be expected to become international arbiters of political legitimacy or resolve geopolitical disputes. Attempting to determine whether a particular government is engaging in sportswashing would require subjective political judgments that extend well beyond the expertise of sporting regulators.
The more realistic solution is to improve governance rather than broaden political authority. Instead of asking governing bodies to determine the motives of governments, they should strengthen the processes through which major decisions are made. Formal reputational risk assessments could become part of existing governance frameworks alongside financial sustainability, integrity, safeguarding, and operational risk. Tournament bidding processes, ownership approvals, and major commercial partnerships could be supported by clearer evaluation criteria, greater consultation with independent experts, and more transparent explanations of how competing governance considerations are balanced. This would not remove subjectivity from decision-making, but it would make those decisions more consistent, accountable, and easier for stakeholders to understand.
Governing bodies should also recognise that reputational risk is not static. Public expectations evolve, political circumstances change, and governance decisions that appear appropriate at one moment may require reassessment in the future. Developing mechanisms for periodic review, ongoing stakeholder engagement, and independent oversight would allow sports organizations to respond to changing risks without relying on ad hoc decision-making whenever controversy arises. In many respects, this would mirror the evolution of financial regulation and safeguarding, both of which have become increasingly sophisticated through continuous review rather than one-off reforms.
None of these measures would eliminate controversy, nor should they be expected to. Good governance is not measured by the absence of disagreement but by the quality of the decision-making process. Transparent criteria, proportional regulation, independent oversight, and consistent application of governance principles are far more likely to strengthen institutional legitimacy than expecting governing bodies to solve inherently political disputes. Sport has already demonstrated that it can develop robust regulatory frameworks to manage financial integrity, corruption, anti-doping, and athlete welfare. Reputational risk should be approached with the same institutional discipline.
Sportswashing will remain a contested political concept, and debates about individual governments are unlikely to disappear. The more enduring question is whether sports governance is evolving quickly enough to meet the responsibilities it has assumed. If governing bodies are willing to regulate financial risk, integrity, and safeguarding through sophisticated governance frameworks, then reputational risk deserves equally careful consideration. Ultimately, the sportswashing debate tells us less about the motivations of governments than it does about the changing nature and growing limits of sports governance.
*Photo courtesy of theScore