Washington sports mogul Ted Leonsis cultivates a diverse fan base for his franchises. All three of his major sports teams — the Capitals, the Wizards and the Mystics — organized Pride events, and digital billboards at Capital One Arena in June lit up with rainbow-colored themes. Monumental Sports & Entertainment, Mr. Leonsis’s ownership group, takes measures “to help empower all who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, or asexual in continued allyship,” according to a company news release.
Mr. Leonsis’s allyship, however, risks springing a leak. In a prospective deal reported by Sportico, Monumental is nearing closure to sell a 5 percent stake to the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, and Human Rights Watch last year reported on the detention and beatings of LGBTQ+ people. “As a requirement for their release, security forces mandated that transgender women detainees attend conversion therapy sessions at a government-sponsored ‘behavioral healthcare’ center,” noted the group.
Joining the Washington professional sports club is part of a careful strategy on the part of Qatar, and there’s a name for it — “sportswashing,” whereby authoritarian regimes siphon respectability from sports brands by establishing alliances with them. Post sports columnist Candace Buckner put it well: “Sportswashing is a slow play, an erosion of ethics that takes its time to absorb the blows, weather the pushback and wait out the howls of disgust until they become quieter and quieter.”
The world leader in modern sportswashing is Saudi Arabia, whose government, under the de facto leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, approved the assassination and dismemberment of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to a U.S. intelligence report. Despite those unconscionable acts — as well as the kingdom’s enduring record of human rights violations — the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit recently managed to reach a framework deal with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour to create an unprecedented international golf partnership. The Justice Department is poised to probe the PGA Tour’s arrangement over antitrust concerns, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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End of carouselJamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist since 2017, was killed in Istanbul at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in 2018. According to a U.S. intelligence assessment, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill him.
Fred Hiatt, The Post’s editorial page editor at the time, called it “a monstrous and unfathomable act.” He wrote a column titled “Why bring a bonesaw to a kidnapping, Your Highness?”
Khashoggi’s columns for The Post described Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman, calling it “unbearable” and comparing him to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
President Biden, after vowing on the campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” visited the country in July 2022. Biden defended the trip in a guest opinion for The Post. Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan wrote that Biden’s trip showed American values are negotiable.
Biden greeted Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump, which columnist Karen Attiah called “a crass betrayal.” Attiah edited Khashoggi’s columns for The Post.
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By all means, probe away. (Saudi Arabia is also aggressively bidding to host the 2030 World Expo, a coup that would complement, and perhaps eclipse, its other sportswashing activities.)