Sportswashing and The UAE’s Baseball United League

On Monday October 23, 2023, Baseball United, a newly created baseball league in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), held its first ever draft.¹[1]See Sam Connon, Robinson Canó, Bartolo Colon Among Former MLB Players Drafted to New League in Dubai, FAN NATION: FASTBALL FN (OCT 23, 2023, 12:54 PM), https://www.si.com/fannation/mlb/fastball/news/robinson-cano-bartolo-colon-pablo-sandoval-among-former-mlb-players-drafted-to-new-baseball-league-in-dubai. Baseball United consists of four teams, the Cobras, Monarchs, Wolves, and Falcons.²[2]See Baseball United, https://www.baseballunited.com/teams/. The draft included numerous Major League Baseball (“MLB”) legends such as Robinson Cano, Pablo Sandoval, and Bartolo Colon, now all retired from MLB.³[3]See Pablo Sandoval, Bartolo Colon, Robinson Canó among ex-MLBers joining Dubai-based league, CBS News Bay Area (Oct. 23, 2023, 12:48 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/dubai-baseball-league-pablo-sandoval-bartolo-colon-robinson-cano-uae/; Connon, supra note 1. All these players had stepped away from the game of baseball. Yet, the allure of being featured as the faces of and stars of this newly created league in Dubai lured them back from retirement.⁴[4]See Connon, supra note 1; Pablo Sandoval, Bartolo Colon, Robinson Canó among ex-MLBers joining Dubai-based league, supra note 3; Baseball United, supra note 2 In addition to these MLB player legends, the league has also signed Barry Larkin, Adrián Beltré, Miguel Tejada, Félix Hernández and Nick Swisher to coach or serve as general managers for the teams.⁵[5]See Baseball United, supra note 2. The four teams rosters are comprised of players from all over the world including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Curacao, Japan, the Dominician Republic, South Africa, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, and the Netherlands to name a few.⁶[6]Id. The rosters of these four teams truly represent a global community of baseball players, coaches, and owners.⁷[7]Id.

The league is set to have its “All-Star Showcase” on November 24 and 25, 2023, and will feature two rosters of All Stars within the league including many of the aforementioned players.⁸[8]Id. The All-Star showcase will coincide with community wide events to generate further interest in the league.⁹[9]Id. Presently, the league has yet to announce how games will be televised or streamed as they slowly announce partnership deals such as naming Sonder the official hotel of the All-Star Showcase and subsequently partnering with Dubai’s leading social content brand, Lovin Dubai, to generate further buzz around the league.¹⁰[10]Id. It is possible that these initial games will not be broadcast but rather streamed on YouTube, which is how the league broadcast its first ever draft.¹¹[11]Id. Expect to hear more information from the new league as it launches.

Baseball United is just the latest episode of Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, increasing their presence in the sports world.¹²[12]See Ruth Michaelson, Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s $6bn spend on ‘sportswashing’, THE GUARDIAN (Jul. 26, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/26/revealed-saudi-arabia-6bn-spend-on-sportswashing; Alex King, Sportswashing allows autocrats to burnish their reputations — and leaves a stain on hosts, POLITICO (Jul. 14, 2023), https://www.politico.eu/article/sportswashing-manchester-abu-dhabi-deal-allow-autocrats-to-burnish-cities-leave-stain-on-hosts/#:~:text=A%20comparative%20study%20of%20the,but%20also%20undermine%20the%20institutions. For example, Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf, a competitor of the PGA Tour, and the Saudi Pro League in soccer show the nation’s tangible efforts to enter the global sport community.¹³[13]See Alan Blinder, Tariq Panja, and Andrew Das, What is LIV Golf? It Depends Whom You Ask, THE NEW YORK TIMES (May 22, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/article/liv-golf-saudi-arabia-pga.html; Amy Woodyatt, Krystina Shveda, and Antonio Jarne Cubero, Saudi Arabia is trying to disrupt soccer’s world order. The reasons why might surprise you, CNN (Sept. 24, 2023, 5:44 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/sport/saudi-arabia-soccer-spl-bin-salman-intl-spt-cmd-dg/index.html. The UAE made a massive splash in the sports world in 2008 when ownership of Manchester City was taken over by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG).¹⁴[14]See Alex King, supra note 5; Rob Pollard, The Remarkable Story of Manchester City’s Rise Under Sheikh Mansour, BLEACHER REPORT (Oct. 18, 2016), https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2670212-the-remarkable-story-of-manchester-citys-rise-under-sheikh-mansour Qatar, meanwhile, hosted the most recent World Cup in 2022, a global showcase of soccer and correspondingly of the nation of Qatar.¹⁵[15]See David Wearing, A game of two halves: how ‘sportswashing’ benefits Qatar and the West,’ THE GUARDIAN (Nov. 16, 2022, 2:00 PM), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/16/sportswashing-qatar-west-world-cup-regime; Ian Ward, The many, many controversies surrounding the 2022 World Cup, explained, VOX (Nov. 19, 2022, 8:00 AM), https://www.vox.com/world/23450515/world-cup-fifa-qatar-2022-controversy-scandals-explained. Furthermore, Qatar has recently entered the American sports space when its sovereign wealth fund invested in the parent company of the NBA Washington Wizards, NHL Washington Capitals, and WNBA Washington Mystics.¹⁶[16]See Qatar sovereign wealth fund buys stake in Washington’s NBA, NHL, and WNBA teams, AP source says, CBS NEWS BALTIMORE (June 22, 2023), https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/qatar-sovereign-wealth-fund-buys-stake-in-washingtons-nba-nhl-and-wnba-teams-ap-source-says/. This is the first known time the government of Qatar has invested in U.S. professional sports.¹⁷[17]Id. As these nations have invested heavily in sports, many commentators have charged that they seek more than revenue or diversifying their economy, but rather are using sports to sanitize their troubled records of human rights abuses.¹⁸[18]See Caroline Bologna, What is ‘sportswashing,’ THE HUFFINGTON POST, (Jun. 9, 2023, 2:24 PM), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-sportswashing-pga-golf_l_647f717de4b0a7554f473efc.

This effort to use sports to mask the narrative regarding a nation’s human rights abuses has become known as sportswashing.¹⁹[19]Id. Specifically, the term is associated with authoritarian regimes that use sports to improve their reputation by recentering discussion from past abuses to their current presence in the sports world.²⁰[20]Id. Sportswashing is intended to “promote a ‘positive public image’ for a government or an organization while ‘distracting attention from other activities considered to be unethical, illegal, or otherwise controversial.’”²¹[21]Id. The real concern arising from sportswashing is not that these regimes are simply rewriting and masking their history, but rather that they are attempting to acquire ”soft power.”²²[22]Id. ”Soft power” is using “positive attraction and persuasion, rather than coercion, to achieve desired outcomes.”²³[23]Id. So, Qatar’s 2022 World Cup is an example of sportswashing as it recentered conversations around the games and its stars rather than the nation’s restrictions on individual freedom and exploitation of workers who constructed the venues for the World Cup itself.²⁴[24]See Cathryn Grothe, The Long Shadow of Qatar’s Human Rights Abuses, FREEDOM HOUSE (Dec. 7, 2022), https://freedomhouse.org/article/long-shadow-qatars-human-rights-abuses.

Similarly, as the UAE launches Baseball United, consider first the nation’s troubled history of human rights violations.²⁵[25]See United Arab Emirates 2022, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/united-arab-emirates/report-united-arab-emirates/; U.S. Dept. of State, 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: United Arab Emirates (2022). https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/united-arab-emirates/#:~:text=Significant%20human%20rights%20issues%20included,in%20another%20country%3B%20unlawful%20government These include torture and abuse of prisoners, suppression of freedoms to speak, associate, and assemble, and absence of free and fair elections.²⁶[26]See U.S. Dept. of State, supra note 26. Overall, the country has scored 17/100 on the Freedom House metric, falling into the category of “not free.”²⁷[27]See United Arab Emirates: Freedom in the World 2022, FREEDOM HOUSE, https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-arab-emirates/freedom-world/2022 Yet, despite these known abuses, the country has now created a baseball league that attracted big name talent in hopes of expanding the leagues presence not only in the UAE but on a global scale.²⁸[28]See Connon, supra note 1; Pablo Sandoval, Bartolo Colon, Robinson Canó among ex-MLBers joining Dubai-based league, supra note 3.

By agreeing to play and coach within Baseball United, these former MLB greats are implicitly approving the regime’s presence in the sports world. It raises the questions whether the risk is worth the reward of the huge payday and the opportunity to be the faces of a developing league with a lot of potential. Phil Mickelson offers a cautionary tale. When he became the face of LIV Golf, he initially was met with severe backlash as he acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s deep-rooted human rights abuses.²⁹[29]See Jack Rathborn, Phil Mickelson insists he ‘doesn’t condone human rights violations’ after leading Saudi-backed LIV Golf breakaway, THE INDEPENDENT (June 8, 2022), https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/golf/phil-mickelson-liv-golf-saudi-arabia-b2096319.html. Many critics speculated that Mickelson was willing to overlook these human rights atrocities in favor of a contract that made him the highest paid athlete of 2022.³⁰[30]See Fergus Bisset, How Much Did LIV Golf Pay Phil Mickelson?, GOLF MONTHLY (Feb 1, 2023), https://www.golfmonthly.com/features/how-much-did-liv-golf-pay-phil-mickelson#:~:text=Reports%20and%20estimates%20speculate%20that,%24200%20million%20from%20LIV%20Golf. Similarly, after Cristiano Ronaldo joined the Saudi Pro League, Amnesty International called upon him to acknowledge the human rights record of Saudi Arabia.³¹[31]See Andy Martin, Amnesty urges Ronaldo to speak out over human rights in Saudi Arabia, THE GUARDIAN (Jan. 4, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jan/04/amnesty-international-christian-ronaldo-human-rights-saudi-arabia. It remains to be seen what the response with those associated with Baseball United will be, but if talent associated with the league fails to adequately acknowledge UAE’s troubled human rights record, outcry is reasonable and should be expected.

While it is unclear if Baseball United will be able to compete with either MLB yet alone other international professional baseball leagues, the UAE’s intentions seem clear: to sportswash a checkered human rights track record.

Written by: Maxwell Russ
Maxwell is a 2025 J.D. Candidate at Brooklyn Law School