Written by Madelyn Bryan 

Introduction

Sports have long been at the heart of pop culture, captivating audiences from every background and transcending language and cultural barriers. Beneath the passion for victory, displays of teamwork, and heartwarming moments of triumph, however, lies a darker reality: countries are exploiting sports to shield their violations of human rights.¹See Zachary J. Baverman, How Sovereign Wealth Investment May Fail to Enter the United How Sovereign Wealth Investment May Fail to Enter the United States Sports Market: Investigating Restrictions on Sportswashing in the U.S., 19 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 301, 301 (2024).  “Sportswashing” is the strategicuse of sporting events to rehabilitate reputations of a country or a company in order to divert attention away from human rights abuses.²See Dr. Monica Sainz, What Is Sportswashing? Its Impact on Global Sports Integrity, Am. Public Univ. (June 17, 2025), https://www.apu.apus.edu/area-of-study/nursing-and-health-sciences/resources/what-is-sportswashing (on file with the American University International Law Review).   

One of the most notable countries engaging in sportswashing is Saudi Arabia.³See Karan Kaushal, The Rise of Sportswashing: How the Support of the West and Global Apathy Enables International Human Rights Violations, 20 Loy. U. Chi. Int’l L. Rev. 55, 56 (2023–2024). Its Public Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund valued at roughly $620 billion, created LIV golf and proposed a merger with the PGA tour in 2023.⁴See generally Minky Worden, PGA-Saudi Deal Tees Up Sportswashing, Hum. Rts. Watch (June 8, 2023, 2:18 PM), https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/08/pga-saudi-deal-tees-sportswashing (on file with the American University International Law Review). This comes a few years after the PIF  acquired UK professional soccer club Newcastle United for $409 million.⁵See PIF, PCP Capital Partners and RB Sports & Media acquire Newcastle United Football Club, Newcastle United (Oct. 7, 2021) https://www.newcastleunited.com/en/news/pif-pcp-capital-partners-and-rb-sports-media-acquire-newcastle-united-football-club (on file with the American University International Law Review). Saudi Arabia is alsoset to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034, and FIFA has recently deepened their relationship with the country by adding the PIF as a Club World Cup partner.⁶ See Brian Boyle, What’s Going on With the PGA-LIV Merger?, The Daily Upside (Sept. 28, 2025), https://www.thedailyupside.com/industries/media-entertainment/whats-going-on-with-the-pga-liv-merger (on file with the American University International Law Review); see also PIF and FIFA Forge Partnership for FIFA Club World Cup 2025, PIF (June 5, 2025) https://www.pif.gov.sa/en/news-and-insights/press-releases/2025/pif-and-fifa-forge-partnership-for-fifa-club-world-cup-2025 (on file with the American University International Law Review) (highlighting that the PIF is also a partner of FIFA World Cup Club, a partnership aimed at expanding the PIFs global footprint in sports). Currently, the LIV deal remains stalled amid public backlash of Saudi Arabia’s persistent human rights abuses.⁷John Ruggie (Special Representative of the Secretary-General), Rep. on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, ¶ 17, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/17/31 (Mar. 21, 2011).   

The United Nations (U.N.) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) mandate companies to conduct human rights due diligence, avoid complicity in abuses, and address risks linked to sportswashing.⁸See id. While offering a framework for corporate responsibility, the UNGPs are nonbinding soft-law and do not strictly prohibit sportswashing, relying instead on voluntary compliance.⁹See Sriram Prasad & Ashish Mishra, Need for Human Rights Due Diligence to Curb Sportswashing, Oxford Hum. Rts. Hub (Sept. 30, 2020), https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/need-for-human-rights-due-diligence-to-curb-sportswashing (on file with the American University International Law Review). Consequentially, Saudi Arabia can use sports investments to shape international perception as it continues to commit human rights abuses, including violence against women, mistreatment of migrant workers, and documented atrocities along the Saudi-Yemen border.¹⁰See Kaushal, supra note 3, at 56. With recent acquisitions and mergers in Saudi Arabia, how can international law hold sports organizations and sponsors accountable for enabling sportswashing with a lack of binding law?  

Legal Analysis 

a) Sportswashing to Gain Influence and the Limits of Soft-Law Responses. 

Saudi Arabia’s strategic deployment of its PIF to acquire teams and develop large-scale sports organizations reflects a calculated exercise of soft-power strategy.¹¹See generally Solomon Ilevbare & Gayle McPhearson, Isomorphism in Sport Diplomacy: Examining the Nexus Between International law, Sportswashing and the Contested Role of Mega Events Owners, 17 Int’l J. Sports Pol’y Pol.’s 1, 2 (2025) (explaining that soft power strategy of sportswashing is to enhance national image).  By increasing control over high-profile sporting institutions and events, Saudi Arabia gains leverage over decisions about participation, hosting, and revenue distribution.¹²See Stefanie Hauseer Ali & Jamie Stansbury, The Real Reason the Saudi Government is Investing in Sports. Hint: It’s not to Impress you., Atl. Council (Jan. 18, 2024), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/saudi-arabia-sportswashing-investment-sports (on file with the American University International Law Review).  This leverage can turn bidding process for major sporting events like the Olympics or World Cup into a politicized exercise, allowing host countries to redirect international attention away from human rights.¹³See Ilevbare & McPhearson, supra note 11, at 2. 

Although Saudi Arabia is party to several binding human rights conventions aside from the UNGPs, including the Convention of the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), these obligations lack domestic implementation due to conflict with Saudi’s domestic Sharia-based legal system.¹⁴See Abdullah M. Almutairi, The Domestic Application of International Human Rights Conventions in Saudi Arabia and the Need to Ratify Conventions on Migrant Workers, 54 Middle E. Stud. 48, 50–51 (2018) (noting that Sharia law interprets international law in the context of national law, frequently running into issues regarding human rights, as they are not addressed by Sharia law).  While complaints of Saudi Arabia’s violations can be submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), any resulting enforcement relies on State consent, which Saudia Arabia refuses to grant.¹⁵See Austin Irwin, Explainer: What is Sportswashing and Why Should we Care About it?, Austl. Hum. Rts. Inst., https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/students/blogs/what-is-sportswashing (on file with American University International Law Review) (last visited Nov. 14, 2025,5:58 PM).  This dynamic illustrates the weakness of relying on soft-law principles and international covenants to regulate and promote positive behavior in countries. Although institutions like FIFA claim political neutrality, their repeated decision to award teams and events to human rights offenders expose this inconsistency.¹⁶See Ilevbare & McPhearson, supra note 11, at 6 (outlining that countries who receive backlash for failing to address human rights are awarded events, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar in 2022).   

b) Duty to Conduct Due Diligence on Human Rights Violations Under International Human Rights Principles. 

Although sportswashing can give a platform to smaller countries, it distorts global perceptions on the reality of a country’s human rights abuses.¹⁷Lars Bergkvist & Heidi Skeiseid, Sportswashing: Exploiting Sports to Clean the Dirty Laundry, 43 Int’l J. Advertising 1091, 1092 (2024).  Saudi Arabia’s ability to fund largesports events positions it to expand influence over major sports ventures across professional golf, soccer, and future global events such as the World Cup and the Olympics.¹⁸See Worden, supra note 4.  The potential LIV merger and the acquisition of Newcastle United illustrate a gap in international law.¹⁹See Baverman, supra note 1, at 319.  The gap showcases a lack of binding force, leaving vulnerable groups unprotected while simultaneouslystrengthening suppressive actors, who leverage event bidding and high-profile team acquisitions to legitimize their adverse conduct.²⁰See id.  Under the UNGPs, businesses must conduct human rights due diligence before engaging in partnerships or sponsorships that may be connected to abusive regimes.²¹Ruggie, supra note 7.  Allowing Saudi Arabia to host these major events highlights a lack of transparencyby sports organizations, raising serious concerns about their failure to conduct proper due diligence.²²See Kaushal, supra note 3, at 71.   

However, the UNGPs already lay out a framework that prioritizes oversight from business operations.²³See id.  Even though the UNGPs are nonbinding, many jurisdictions are taking the UNGPs and transforming their principles into hard law, including the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act.²⁴See Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence, Nat’l Action Plans on Bus. & Human Rts., https://globalnaps.org/issue/human-rights-due-diligence (on file with American University International Law Review) (last visited on Nov 14, 2025,5:52 PM).  For a business as global and respected as sports, increased oversight mechanisms, like those outlined in the UNGPs, are not only beneficial, but increasingly necessary. Sports corporations should lead this shift by implementing bylaws that prohibit transactions with regimes engaged in human rights abuses that reflect the UNGPs principles.²⁵See id. If countries like Saudi Arbia were forced to forfeit their ability to utilize sportswashing, it would establish precedents for other countries, signaling that such tactics will not be tolerated.²⁶See Prasad & Mishra, supra note 9.   

Conclusion

Countries who can afford to buy their spots to host larger sporting events will do so at the expense of human rights.²⁷See Sainz, supra note 2.  Without any binding framework in both international law and corporate law, there is no way to check these entities. To curb the use of sportswashing, sports corporations should consider adopting binding human rights standards that limit the purchase of sports teams and awarding of major sporting events to abusive regimes.²⁸See Prasad & Mishra, supra note 9.  Specifically, sports corporations and businesses should look implement UNGPs principles into binding regulations that require heightened scrutiny of offending countries, as well as mandatory human rights disclosures in host selections, corporate partnerships, and mergers. By embedding these principles into all transactions between countries and sports federations, these corporations would impose mandatory due diligence and transparency obligations and create enforceable accountability mechanism that hold sports federations and corporate sponsors like the PGA and FIFA responsible under binding law.²⁹See Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence, supra note 24; see also Baverman, supra note 1, at 311.  In doing so, the love and respect for sports can be preserved, safeguarding the very spirit that has moved and united fans across generations.