(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When professional sport has to choose between money and ethics, there’s usually only one winner.
Amnesty International has dubbed it sportswashing: the practice of exploiting athletic events or investments to whitewash dubious human rights or criminal records. The group counts Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament and 2014 Winter Olympics as examples, as well as Abu Dhabi’s ownership of City Football Group Ltd., the parent company of Manchester City Football Club. But England’s Premier League now has an opportunity to make a stand that could satisfy both financial and ethical imperatives.
You see, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was reported last month to be in advanced talks to acquire Newcastle United Football Club for a reported 340 million pounds ($440 million). But at the same time, a company broadcasting in the kingdom is one of the biggest pirates of television programming in the world, not least of top soccer games.
Is the Premier League likely to make a stand on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, whether it be the alleged torture and assassination of political opponents, the persecution of LGBT communities or airstrikes in Yemen? It’s certainly hard to imagine. After all, the U.K. exports almost $3 billion of goods a year to Saudi Arabia. Why, the Premier League might ask, should it balk on principle when plenty of other industries sell their products there?
That’s where the piracy comes in. When it comes to broadcasting, perhaps the biggest thorn in professional soccer’s side is a firm called BeoutQ. According to Qatari broadcaster BeIN Media, which holds the Premier League rights in the Middle East, the mysterious company takes its feed, superimposes its logo and then broadcasts it all through Arabsat, a Riyadh-based satellite network. So BeIN becomes Beout, geddit? Presumably the Q stands for Qatar — no-one said trolling had to be funny. (Arabsat, more than a third owned by Saudi, has denied broadcasting BeoutQ; and the head of the Saudi soccer federation has said the government isn’t involved in any piracy.)
The transgressions might seem like another manifestation of the ongoing tensions between Saudi Arabia and neighboring Qatar — BeIN Media hasn’t been able to broadcast into Saudi Arabia since 2018. But it’s also costing the Premier League and a slew of others money. BeoutQ also pirates content from the British Broadcasting Corp. and Comcast Corp.’s Sky. Indeed, when BeIN decided not to renew its $30 million-a-year contract with Liberty Media Corp.’s Formula One competition last year, it cited the losses it was enduring from BeoutQ’s piracy.
BeIN’s existing Premier League deal is worth $140 million a season, according to sports-rights publication Sportcal, equivalent to about 10% of the league’s overseas income. That would be a big hit for the Premier League were it to decide not to renew the deal because of the piracy. Which makes the Saudi interest in Newcastle United, a club which has fallen on harder times under the ownership of retail billionaire Mike Ashley, an important bargaining chip.
Earlier efforts to tackle the problem have failed. The Premier League, alongside world governing body FIFA, European governing body UEFA, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and Germany’s Bundesliga, strongly condemned the intellectual property theft last year, noting they had failed to find a single law firm in Saudi Arabia willing to pursue the matter through available legal channels. They called on Saudi authorities to do something fast, given that the piracy remained rampant.
To own a football team in the U.K., you have to pass the Owners’ and Directors’ Test, formerly known as the fit-and-proper person test. Its disqualifying conditions include any conviction for “dishonestly receiving a programme broadcast from within the U.K.” That might provide a little wiggle room for the Saudis to pass the test, but if the Premier League and the Football Association, soccer’s governing body in the U.K., have any gumption whatsoever, they should absolutely give it a shot. There are hundreds of millions of pounds of income at stake.
Saudi Arabia may, in a sense, just be following archrival Qatar’s lead. Qatar’s own sovereign wealth fund acquired French team Paris Saint-Germain back in 2011, and the nation is set to host the World Cup in 2022. Indeed, BeIN CEO Nasser Al-Khelaifi is also the CEO of Paris Saint-Germain and is a member of the UEFA executive committee.
Plenty of others have readily accepted lucrative contracts with Saudi investors and venues — boxer Anthony Joshua enjoyed a reported $70 million payday for his December fight with Andy Ruiz, dubbed Clash on the Dunes; the mythic Dakar Rally off-track motor race roared across the kingdom’s deserts in January for its first Middle East edition; Spanish soccer’s Super Cup also took place in Saudi Arabia this season; and World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. has a 10-year deal to host events there.
Any move from the Premier League might stop short of demonstrating a strong and principled backbone. But the franchise does have the opportunity and the financial motive to extract some concessions from Saudi Arabia.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe's technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.