Market for sportwashing could wane quickly

The long season comes to an end this week when the final international games, most of which are firmly in the meaningless category, or the Nations League, as Uefa prefer to call them.  Those in the Scotland squad, like Callum McGregor, have to make their way home from Armenia tonight.  There will hopefully be time for the captain to rest mind and limbs before he is recalled for preseason training.

It is a small mercy that we don’t have European qualifiers this summer, our Scotland players missing out on the World Cup is also welcome, although our Japanese contingent will be affected.

2022 could be the year Fifa is finally forced to pull back.  Confirmation of the corruption behind the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar did nothing to prevent the tournament going ahead as planned.  Instead, the world will watch the efforts of a tiny state hosting the world’s greatest sporting event (it is) in stadiums built and destined for obsolescence before the year is out.

The is also a strange calculus underway in the sportwashing sector.  Whatever the Saudi motivation for LIV Golf, it surely was not to put the human rights record of the kingdom front and centre of news broadcasts.  ‘You are blatantly trying to get us to ignore the thing we are all going to talk about.”

Google Trends show the word “Khashoggi” has rocketed since golfers gathered for the LIV tournament.  The market for sportwashing may be set to turn.