Fossil Fuel Companies Sponsor $5.6 Billion in Global 'Sportswashing' Deals (theguardian.com) 57
Fossil fuel companies pumped at least $5.6bn of sponsorship money into motorsports, football, golf and even snow sports in an effort to "buy social licence to operate," according to a new report. From a report: Almost no major spectator sport remains untouched by oil and gas money, according to research carried out by the New Weather Institute (NWI), a climate thinktank, which traced more than 200 sponsorship deals between sports teams and the industry. In addition, sports stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have all been successfully recruited to spend time in the Middle East as part of sponsorship deals, the report says.
It comes as concern grows about the fossil fuel industry's increasing efforts to launder its global standing through "sportswashing" -- a practice, long used by nation states, of building associations with sporting events to improve tarnished reputations. In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, said: "If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we'll continue doing sportswashing." According to NWI's Dirty Money report, Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, was the biggest single investor in sports sponsorship identified by NWI's report, handing out almost $1.3bn across 10 deals. The petrochemical company Ineos was second, with $777m in sponsorship deals; Shell had sponsored sports to the tune of $470m; and TotalEnergies, France's leading oil company, had $340m in deals.
It comes as concern grows about the fossil fuel industry's increasing efforts to launder its global standing through "sportswashing" -- a practice, long used by nation states, of building associations with sporting events to improve tarnished reputations. In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, said: "If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we'll continue doing sportswashing." According to NWI's Dirty Money report, Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, was the biggest single investor in sports sponsorship identified by NWI's report, handing out almost $1.3bn across 10 deals. The petrochemical company Ineos was second, with $777m in sponsorship deals; Shell had sponsored sports to the tune of $470m; and TotalEnergies, France's leading oil company, had $340m in deals.
Dumb even by The Guardian standards (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is dumb even by The Guardian standards. What the hell is wrong with sponsorships? Sponsorships provide a huge percentage of the revenue supporting sports. You think when someone sees an STP sticker on a Formula-1 car they think "Wow that sticker means STP must be really concerned about the climate"? Don't be ridiculous. Must be an extra slow news day when this is what you're bitching about
Re:Dumb even by The Guardian standards (Score:4, Interesting)
For most things I would agree, who cares, but for these particular companies it's kinda their own fault that every move they make from now on has to be viewed with the utmost cynicism and scrutiny.
“What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.” [harvard.edu]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Who is "the regime" please, don't be such a shy wittle fella and say what you really think.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh the "mainstream media" eh, so so brave, you're saying the things nobody else is saying! Better watch your back with that spicy 2011 take!
Re: (Score:1)
They power 80 percent our civilization; kind of hypocritical to demonize them while typing on a computer in a building powered by them.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I didn't realize if you do certian things you are just allowed to lie and coverup issue with your own products. Good to know the rules i guess? Is this really where we are at now, the Saudi's happened to rule a region with oil so they can just lie whenever they want?
Re: (Score:1)
"Lies and coverup" are a matter of opinion. I went to school, I know burning fossil fuel makes carbon dioxide. I still use fossil fuel and so do you.
Quit being a snowflake and grow up.
Re: (Score:2)
So what would call what the article talks about? Business as usual?
I went to school, I know burning fossil fuel makes carbon dioxide. I still use fossil fuel and so do you.
This so dumb that I cannot even begin to unpack it in less than 3 paragraphs, you have broken my brain, congratsn you win.
Re: (Score:2)
Jill Stein is a Russian shill.
To use the Trump supporters own line "You have 4 months"
Re: (Score:1)
Pure facts break your brain, noted. A brain can't unpack concepts it is a mental amoeba with no limbs and also can't get a pseudopod up.
Re: (Score:2)
"A lie travels the world before the truth has gotten off the ground"
What's your facts? "Burning Co2 warms the planet"? Glad we agree! They shouldnt have tried to cover that up! Be open about being a greenie!
Re: (Score:1)
The job of a fossil fuel company is to make money selling fossil fuels, anything else is irrelevant. And you give them money so there is no problem. No lies, they provide useful substances that drive forward progress and civilization
No fossil fuel company has to ride your hobby horse agenda and ape your climate hysteria. That's religion.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure and since burning fossil fuels has what we call a negative externality they should be taxed or regulated appropriately.
Nobody said they didn't provide "useful substances", that's a neck snapping pivot off the point.
Saying "company provides useful things so they can lie and obscure what those useful things affect" is also a "religion"
If you want to shift your point to "co2 has only a small effect on the environment" then make that point because we are back at bedrock, if we cant agree there is even a pr
Re: (Score:1)
Everything has a "negative externality", we spread deadly diseases around the globe quickly and kill millions with transportation tech we've had since late 19th century. That would happen whether green or black power used.
A government taking taxes doesn't mitigate anything if the taxed good is essential to life. It just makes those with little money have less health and shorter lifespan. Fossil fuel is essential to life right now.
A government won't use extra money for anything good, certainly not lesseni
Re:Dumb even by The Guardian standards (Score:4, Informative)
Also this meme was driven into the ground like 8 years ago, it's over, just stop it. [thenib.com]
Re: (Score:1)
I didn't make any meme. If you want to respond to reality with "waaah waaah you're meming" go ahead.
Re: (Score:2)
But you did the thing! The "We should improve society somewhat".
I understand you don't get it, conservatives never have to be accountable for anything anymore
Re: (Score:1)
I never said anything about improving society or improving anything else. Try again, you have all this random nonsense between your ears disconnected from the thread.
Re: (Score:2)
They power 80 percent our civilization; kind of hypocritical to demonize them while typing on a computer in a building powered by them.
"Cars should have seatbelts"
"Yet you bought one, hypocrite much?"
You're doing the thing!
Re: (Score:2)
For most things I would agree, who cares, but for these particular companies it's kinda their own fault that every move they make from now on has to be viewed with the utmost cynicism and scrutiny.
“What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.” [harvard.edu]
In every company different research teams can produce reports that are in conflict with each other. Management then decides how to proceed. That doesn't make them "deniers" of the research that was rejected.
Re:Dumb even by The Guardian standards (Score:4, Informative)
Together, he and Oreskes spent a year researching those documents and in 2017 published a series of three papers analyzing Exxon’s 40-year history of climate communications. They were able to show there was a systematic discrepancy between what Exxon was saying internally and in academic circles versus what they were telling the public. “That led us to conclude that they had quantifiably misled the public, by essentially contributing quietly to climate science and yet loudly promoting doubt about that science,” said Supran.
Re: (Score:2)
Together, he and Oreskes spent a year researching those documents and in 2017 published a series of three papers analyzing Exxon’s 40-year history of climate communications. They were able to show there was a systematic discrepancy between what Exxon was saying internally and in academic circles versus what they were telling the public. “That led us to conclude that they had quantifiably misled the public, by essentially contributing quietly to climate science and yet loudly promoting doubt about that science,” said Supran.
"what Exxon was saying internally" doesn't address what other groups in Exxon might have been saying about the same subject. This study's author was not interested in internal studies and communications with opposing views.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, ther documents are out there, what were the opposing views and who was making them? You seem pretty confident this is what happened, i shared my source....
Re: (Score:1)
Yep. Human beings do not get any worse. Mass-murder, genocide, all peanuts in comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For most things I would agree, who cares, but for these particular companies it's kinda their own fault that every move they make from now on has to be viewed with the utmost cynicism and scrutiny.
There's nothing cynical about it. Fossil fuels aren't illegal. The advertisement for fossil fuels aren't illegal. If you want that to change you need to address it in a different place. Simply calling a brand marketing campaign involving sport "sportwashing" is just low IQ level complaining. It's like the XR group who were upset that bp sponsors the British Museum. No shit Sherlock they've been sponsoring them for long before anyone gave a shit about the environment. That doesn't magically make it ${noun}wa
Re: (Score:2)
Fossil fuels aren't illegal.
This is nonsense talk, means nothing, of course they aren't illegal, that's not whats at question here. Whats at question here is fucking motives, WHY are they so heavily advertising so heavily now in this particular way?
In court they call this "mens rea" or state of mind. What makes most crimes in fact crimes are the persons intents, what are the companies intents here?
Re: (Score:2)
Only PC organizations can contribute/sponsor money now.
It's another attempt to "corpo-wash" consumers (Score:1)
Oil companies aren't the ones providing hundreds of billions of dollars for energy. That's drivers, and boaters, people heating buildings, running their industrial equipment. And my oh my do consumers get angry if oil prices rise by even a penny a gallon. Entire governments fall when that happens.
But neo-communism-as-religion nutballs can't admit this, so instead they blame the vendors for the existence of the market.
That said, there is also corruption in the oil industry - especially around acquisition of
Re: (Score:2)
Individuals choose what is in their own best interests. Those are often poor or irrational choices from a wider perspective, even for the individuals in the long run.
Telling the average person to reduce oil use isn't going to help, since the Tragedy of the Commons pressures them to keep on using.
The solution is to apply pressure at the source so everyone is affected by the new rules and motivated to behave in a collectively sane fashion. The few who profit most are still motivated to fight this.
Re: (Score:2)
Fossil Fuel != Tobacco (Score:2)
In the past, it was tobacco companies doing this. Now it's fossil fuels.
The two are not equivalent. Tobacco companies do nothing but cause harm, if they disappeared tomorrow society would be much better off. If all the fossil fuel companies disappeared tomorrow you would be without power, transport, essential medicines etc.
We are moving towards a low, abd perhaps zero, carbon economy but it will take time. In the meantime if those companies providing the fuels we need unfortunately need want to spend some of their profits sponsoring sport where is the harm in that? Would yo
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what one things when they see an STP sticker on a Formula-1 car. But what they should think is that STP's products must be terribly harmful. In the past, it was tobacco companies doing this. Now it's fossil fuels.
"Now?"
1970 [autoevolution.com] called, they want their sponsors back.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what one things when they see an STP sticker on a Formula-1 car. But what they should think is that STP's products must be terribly harmful. In the past, it was tobacco companies doing this. Now it's fossil fuels. Companies that look for venues where their marketing money is welcome because they've been locked out so many places due to the harm their products cause.
No, they will think that if STP products are good for Formula-1 race cars then they are good for their personal car too.
And they will be right
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell is wrong with sponsorships?
The problem isn't sponsorships. Did you even read the summary?
Re: (Score:3)
Explain me marxism without googling
The veil of workers owning the means of production while in actuality, those means (and the workers) remain under the control of a group of self-appointed intellectual elites.
How'd I do?
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the totalitarianism. Oh, and the murder, can't forget the murder.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The media and internet drives this (Score:2, Insightful)
We have an online culture and media that demand this sort of feel-good theater
On the topic (Score:3)
My competitive Tree hugging and Polar Bear massaging league is still looking for a title sponsor.
So if anyone knows of a Fossil Fuel company with an extra billion or two left to allocate just drop me a line!
Re: (Score:1)
The tree huggers accidentally wanked off the polar bear and it's now insisting on more "love". Please, no more night events.
Advertising != washing anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Advertising predates anyone's concern about the environment and it will be around for long after. You have a legal company producing a legal product and advertising it legally. If you want to change any of those behaviours you need to actually address the legality of it rather than inventing some words to make it sound like advertisement is suddenly "washing" something.
For actual sportwashing look to what the Saudis do. You know, the people who didn't previously advertise, didn't previously sponsor anything, but suddenly are trying to get some international recognition for something other than brutally murdering US journalists.
It is Sports-Washing (Score:2)
The fossil fuel companies, especially the Middle East ones with less than desirable human rights records, are trying to become financially integral in popular western sports so sports club fans are willing to turn a blind eye to how countries like Saudi Arabia still treat their women and chop up journalists, as well as softer support for renewable energy.
Even if a club explicitly doesn't support the human rights or fossil fuel policies of their sponsors, they are in fact supporting all of it by presenting c
Re: (Score:2)
The people who would care are mostly not sports fans.
Re: (Score:2)
The Saudi's waited too late and had to spend a whole lot of extra money. The Egyptian government got a bargain right before Trump was elected where $10 million cash got then a big chunk of withheld aid
Eurocentric (Score:2)
"Almost no major spectator sport remains untouched by oil and gas money" ... except for American football, baseball, and basketball. That is, almost all major American spectator sports are ignored by oil and gas money. This article is very Eurocentric. Of course, there are plenty of other corporate sectors pouring money into American sports, like cars, drugs, and alcohol, but not oil and gas.