By Jonathan Kinane – Honors Thesis (Fall 2022)

This is a story of fandom in a city where one team is king. When a brutally repressive regime effectively takes over a club, how are fans supposed to respond? To an outsider without much knowledge of the soccer culture in England, it seems pretty clear-cut. Find a new team.

The reality is that it’s not so simple. Many Newcastle United fans have been supporting the team from a young age. The club and the city are intertwined. To give up on their club would be to give up on a major portion of their life. At the same time, their club is now tainted by Saudi Arabian money and influence.

A look at the intersection between club and culture along with the doomed reign of the previous owner Mike Ashley will provide a deeper insight as to why Newcastle fans are just happy to be winning again, even if they might be pawns in Saudi Arabia’s bigger game.

Inside Peter Dillon’s

It wasn’t too long ago that Saturday mornings at Peter Dillon’s Irish Pub on 36th Street in New York City were usually quiet affairs. A smattering of fans would assemble to watch Newcastle United of the English Premier League and have a pint or two well before the clock struck noon.

Usually, the result was the same. Newcastle, a once-proud club located in the north of England, would go out on the pitch and disappoint for 90 minutes. For many of these fans, the nadir of their support came in the fall of 2021.

The Magpies started the season with 14 consecutive matches without a win. They sat in 20th place, dead last in the Premier League, with seven points (one for each of their seven draws) leaving fans bracing for relegation to the second tier.

Even after a win in the 15th match of the season, the club started a new streak of five games without a win. By the time the new year rolled around, things still looked bleak both at the club and inside the pub.

Then, a miracle happened. Except it wasn’t really a miracle.

The team’s new owners, Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund, were extremely wealthy and used their piles of cash to buy new players who performed better than the old ones.

As the second half of the season began, the team started to win and climb its way out of the basement of the Premier League standings. As the victories piled up and the team’s chances of relegation dissipated, Peter Dillon’s once again began to gain a little life on Saturday mornings.

Although it is an entire ocean away from Newcastle, Peter Dillon’s shows how the fortunes of the city and the fans are tied to the success of the team. When things went poorly, a sort of pall hung over the place. After an especially disheartening loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the fall, Matt Steen was one of the few remaining Geordies that came in to watch and wondered if it was still worth it.

“I remember kind of thinking, ‘is this it?’” Steen said. “I’d seen them playing games in the Championship (the second tier) on live streams where some guy is just recording from the stands from his phone. I thought it couldn’t last much longer.”

The second-half surge from last season has carried over into the first half of this campaign. Newcastle, almost overnight, has gone from a club just trying to stay afloat in the Premier League to one competing for one of the top four spots and a place in the UEFA Champions League.

It’s not a Cinderella story. With the new owners and all of their money, they were expected to be here. The new Newcastle United is operated by a repressive regime that wants to pull the wool over the eyes of long-suffering fans through sportswashing and deception.

This story is not black and white. The fans, many of whom have the team in their blood, are not simply going to stop supporting their club. Still, many have fallen under the spell of Saudi money without fully realizing it. To understand the entire picture, we have to consider different perspectives to see why Newcastle United is one of the prime examples of sportswashing. 

Sportswashing? It’s a thing

Sportswashing can be defined as the practice of an individual, group, corporation, or government using sport to improve their tarnished reputation, through hosting a sporting event, the purchase or sponsorship of sporting teams, or by participation in the sport itself. It’s a relatively new term, but the concept has been around for decades.

The most prominent early examples come from the 1930s when fascism was on the rise across Europe. The first came in 1934 when Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy hosted the World Cup and two years later, Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Games under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler. In both of these instances, the host country hoped it could improve its image by hosting a major sporting event. While we have a historical perspective now that belies the appearances the Fascists and the Nazis were trying to project, both host countries were able to put up a facade of progress in the weeks it took to host the events.

While there have been plenty of other examples of sportswashing in the decades since, it has become very prominent in the last 15 years. Russia got to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 World Cup under repressive autocrat Vladimir Putin. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and got the Winter Olympics in 2022.

While the International Olympic Committee does not have the best reputation, it pales in comparison to FIFA. The last three World Cups (including the one this year) have all had their fair share of controversy. In 2014, FIFA took its biggest tournament to Brazil, a country that struggles mightily with poverty. Many Brazilians were upset about the huge sums of public money that went into the building and renovating of stadiums instead of helping the impoverished. In Rio de Janeiro, there was a block of slums near the Maracana Stadium that housed 700 families that were cleared and destroyed.

One of the most exciting World Cups in recent memory led to much of this being swept under the rug. When most people hear Brazil 2014, they think about the soccer, not the controversy.

When FIFA announced the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts in December 2010, it went down as one of the most controversial days in sporting history. The 2018 tournament went to Russia, which drew an outcry. Several issues came up almost immediately. There was a well-known track record of neo-Nazism and blatant racism toward black players in Russia. There was also the issue of rampant homophobia across the entire country, not to mention other human rights abuses by the repressive government. And, to top it all off, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014—yet FIFA doubled down on its decision to allow Russia to host.

The 2022 World Cup, perhaps even more controversially than the prior edition, went to Qatar, a microscopic Middle Eastern nation. Initially, the biggest issue with Qatar was the outright corruption that won it the right to host the tournament. Qatar has allegedly put almost a billion dollars into winning the right to host the tournament with former FIFA president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter practically admitting the country cheated during the bidding process.

Aside from the corruption, Qatar also has a poor human rights record. Being gay is illegal in Qatar. The country, which is easily the smallest to host the World Cup, brought in two million migrant workers to build the infrastructure required to host such a large event. Reports on the treatment of these migrant workers included details about little to no compensation for their efforts, deprivation of food and water, and the confiscation of identifying documents. These workers were, in effect, slaves.

The concern is that once soccer begins these controversies will get swept under the rug. This is what the Qatari royal family wants. They put their country’s name on the World Cup to bolster its struggling reputation. The more focus on the soccer, the more successful their mission becomes.

FIFA’s corruption and refusal to accept that sport and politics are intertwined has led to three consecutive sportswashing World Cups.

So, we’ve seen that sportswashing is rampant in hosting soccer. But hosting a major tournament isn’t the only way to get involved in sportswashing. If you have the money, you can also buy a team.

A Once Proud Club…

They’ve been playing soccer in Newcastle since the late 1870s. The team that became Newcastle United was founded in 1881, moved into St. James’ Park (where it still plays) in 1886, and took on its current name in 1892.

Newcastle found most of its success in the first half of the 20th century, staying in the English top division from 1898-1934 and winning all four of its league titles in that span (1905, 1907, 1909, and 1927). The Magpies also won all six of their Football Association (FA) cups before 1955, including three in five years in the early 50s.

“I attended my first game in 1949 when I was four years old,” said Ed Harrison, who started the Newcastle United Blog in 2007. “I remember the FA Cup that we won in 1955 and the pure elation among our fans.”

Before soccer was a sport controlled by a minority of extremely wealthy teams, it was common to see almost every club go through cycles of promotion and relegation. Newcastle was no exception but it was pretty close to a mainstay in the top flight, never dropping below the second tier even in its darkest days.

After a bit of shuffling between first and second tiers, Newcastle re-established itself in the top flight for the second season of the Premier League era in 1993. These are the teams that most millennial Newcastle fans fondly remember.

“In the era that I grew up in is that it was very difficult to get tickets in what it wasn’t as easy as it has been during periods of my adult life,” said Kris Heneage, a Newcastle native who now works in New York City. “But I think, in a weird way when I was a kid, I very much got accustomed to the idea that we were always going to be this good. We were always going to be near the top of things.”

The Magpies were near the top of things for the first four years of their time in the Premier League. A third-place campaign in 1993-94 was followed by a sixth-place season and then a pair of runner-up finishes that left fans somewhere between ecstasy and heartbreak.

“Unfortunately, my early memories were very much defined by the ability to get to almost the top of the mountain and then stumble at the last hurdle,” Heneage said. “Which in a weird way it was both tragic and exciting at the same time because you were experiencing such wonderful football to watch.”

The first second-place finish was particularly heartbreaking because the team, under famous manager Kevin Keegan, had a 12-point lead over Manchester United in the middle of January but faltered down the stretch, allowing the Red Devils to grab the crown.

After consecutive runner-up finishes in the Premier League, the Magpies appeared in two straight FA Cup Finals and lost them both.

“The best comparison I can make is to a team like the Red Sox or the Cubs,” Heneage said. “It had been so long since our last major trophy and it seemed like we could never get that one breakthrough.”

Still, life wasn’t bad for Newcastle fans in the early 2000s. The team enjoyed three straight top-five finishes, making the UEFA Champions League in 2003 and 2004. Things seemed stable. That was until Mike Ashley entered the picture.

An Absentee Owner

There was a time when Mike Ashley wasn’t despised in the north of England. When he bought the club in May 2007, many fans initially expressed optimism toward the new owner.

The situation back then in some ways mirrors what it was last fall when Ashley sold the club after 14 mostly miserable years in charge. Back in 2007, supporters were relieved to see the club’s then-owners, Sir John Hall and Freddy Shepherd, give up the club to Ashley, who was a breath of fresh air, often partying and drinking with fans.

“I remember being pretty optimistic when he took over,” Harrison said. “It was a month or so after I had started the blog and it seemed like he was doing and saying the right things.”

Ashley even brought back Keegan in hopes of recapturing the magic that the club had captured in the mid-90s. Keegan’s tenure quickly went south and an acrimonious split with Ashley and Newcastle soon followed.

“Keegan was gone very quickly,” Heneage remembers. “And he very clearly stated to the fans, ‘you can’t work with these people. You can’t trust them.’ They stay one thing and they do another thing.” 

The same fate befell Alan Shearer, a hometown hero who starred for Newcastle as a player from 1996-2006, scoring 148 goals in 303 appearances for the Magpies. After Joe Kinnear, Keegan’s managerial successor had to undergo major heart surgery near the end of the 2008-09 season, Shearer got the call to take over on an interim basis for the last eight games.

This was only Ashley’s second season but the team was already facing the very real threat of relegation after playing in the Champions League in the mid-2000s.

Under Shearer, the team drifted back and forth between relegation to safety in the table. Newcastle’s fate was sealed on the final day of the season, with a loss sending them to relegation and breaking a 16-year spell in the Premier League.

Shearer reportedly had a detailed plan to help the club recover from relegation but Ashley never even responded, opting to go with a different manager. To add insult to injury, the well-known “Shearer’s Bar” in St. James’ Park had its name changed to “Nine.”

In only a few years, Ashley had managed to alienate two club legends who represented some of the last connections to tangible success.

“It didn’t take long to see that his ownership was an absolute disaster,” Harrison said. “Fans had to muzzle their ambitions of being a top club in Europe but they also had to see stars like Keegan and Shearer get excommunicated in a sense.”

Fans began to quickly lose patience with the owner who had first appeared as a savior.

“I think what at first seemed like potential naivety on Mike Ashley’s part very quickly became intentional and almost fostered negligence,” Heneage said. “He was someone that didn’t want the thing that he had bought. I mean that was very much a story that dominated his narrative is that he didn’t do any form of due diligence on the club’s accounts when he purchased the club.”

Though Newcastle made it back to the Premier League the next season, fans had to re-think what a successful season meant to them.

Though the team did enjoy a temporary resurgence, finishing in fifth place in their second season after promotion, the Magpies regressed to the bottom half of the Premier League for the next five seasons, culminating in another relegation in 2015-16.

“I mean, the thing about those seasons in the Championship,” the second tier of English soccer, “is that they were kind of fun,” Steen said. “In those seasons we actually got to see our club win. We were a dominant team unlike in the Premier League where we just hoped we would stay up.”

Through it all, whether it was in the transfer market, shuffling in different managers, or issues of collusion with player agents, Ashley continued to make decisions that left supporters scratching their heads.

“I think had he taken a club in a different city that maybe wasn’t as so aligned with the mood of the city that it represented, he may have had a better time of things,” Heneage said. “That’s not to say you didn’t make a series of just baffling decisions and decisions that I think deep down even in you would not foster any positive sentiment with supporters.”

Then, there were the decisions that seemed to be made purely out of spite for the club.

Ashley’s most notable transgression came when he licensed the naming rights of St. James’ Park to his own company, SportsDirect.com.

“It was essentially a front to promote his business,” Heneage said. “That was one of the biggest issues that fans consistently had with him was not necessarily the idea of fronting Sports Direct as the retailer, but the idea that they were doing that with no financial incentive. It didn’t boost transfer funds, it didn’t boost commercial funds, if anything, it was a benefit for him and him alone.” 

At this point, Ashley was practically holding the club hostage.  He had unofficially had the club up for sale since 2009 (reportedly asking for $481 million during a trip to Dubai during that year) but there seemed to be no end to his tenure in sight. Fans had become desensitized to the rumors of him selling their beloved club.

“There was heavy skepticism that this deal will get done because you want it north of 300 million pounds for a team that doesn’t own a stadium,” Heneage said. “For a team that he’s kind of bought between the bottom half of the Premier League and the top half of the championship a little bit and not really achieved all that much in the last decade.”

Amid all this skepticism, a white knight emerged.

A Prince…With a whole lot of money

Mohamed bin Salman is a man of many hats. He is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and also serves as prime minister, chairman of the Council of Political Affairs, and chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs in his home country. Known as MBS to many, it is clear to say he has centralized power in Saudi Arabia, one of the most authoritarian and repressive countries in the world.

To understand MBS, one must first understand the conditions in his country. In Saudi Arabia, there is no semblance of democracy. There is “gender apartheid” with women having almost no human rights. Reporters Without Borders places it 170th out of 180 countries in its freedom of the press rankings. Dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists are often repressed by violence, torture, jail time, and even murder.

The most prominent example of this is the story of Jamal Khashoggi, a former palace insider turned dissident and Washington Post journalist. Khashoggi was forced to flee from his home country, eventually relocating to the United States where he began writing for the Post. In October 2018, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Turkey and never came out. By November, the CIA had concluded with “high confidence” that the crown prince was connected to the murder.

A view of Saudi Arabia’s page on Amnesty International sheds the light on a laundry list of human rights violations.

As is the case in Qatar, migrant workers in Saudi Arabia have very few rights. The kafala, or sponsorship system for migrant workers has been in place for decades and allows for almost total exploitation at the hands of Saudi business owners.

Under the system, the Saudi Arabian state gives businesses or individuals sponsorship permits for migrant workers in something that isn’t too far off from slavery. These workers are usually subjected to brutal living conditions and are not protected by Saudi Arabia’s labor laws.

Women and girls continue to face systemic discrimination under the law and are subordinate to men when it comes to marriage, divorce, and custody of children. In Saudi Arabia, a male relative has to serve as the guardian of a female, making every decision for her.

The country still uses capital punishment and infamously executed 37 people on a day in April 2019. Saudi Arabia also institutes methods of punishment like flogging and routinely tortures prisoners.

MBS’s regime has also seen him preside over a deadly air war in Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and has also jailed several human rights activists.

So yes, MBS’s rule is a juxtaposition of repression and modernization.

When he rose to the position of crown prince, he was 31 years old and wanted to bring about drastic changes to Saudi Arabia’s image as an oil-dependent nation with an awful human rights record.

Besides the murder of Khashoggi, MBS’s most infamous move came in 2017 in the weeks after he was named crown prince. He had several Saudi businessmen and other members of the royal family rounded up and brought to the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.

While they might have been held up at a five-star hotel, the reality is that they were imprisoned and only released after they agreed to cede large parts of their fortunes back to the state. The Saudi state claimed that it was cracking down on corruption, but what MBS was really doing was concentrating his power.

At the same time, he did introduce reforms such as allowing women to drive and attend sporting events. Western sporting events also came back into the fold as the country has hosted a high-profile golf tournament since 2019 and has also hosted Spanish and Italian Super Cups in soccer.

MBS was interested in broadcasting the guise of a reformed Saudi Arabia to the Western world while holding on to unchallenged, authoritarian power.

This is where sportswashing squarely entered the equation. Other Middle Eastern countries like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had made the foray into soccer with the purchases of Manchester City and Paris St. Germain respectively.

Injections of Middle Eastern money have turned both clubs into perennial favorites in their domestic divisions and contenders for the Champions League which encompasses all of Europe.

As the Tifo Football YouTube Channel puts it, “there is no greater billboard than televised European football, especially in the Premier League and Champions League.”

The Saudis were looking for that billboard.  

Dreams of a Takeover Become a Reality, Finally…

Ashley wasn’t going to get the $481 million he asked for in Dubai back in 2009, but he did want to offload the club. In October 2017, Newcastle United was officially put up for sale.

The presence of Amanda Staveley at a game against Liverpool at St. James’s Park raised eyebrows among many supporters. Staveley, a Dubai-based, English-born businesswoman, helped broker the takeover of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Staveley made three offers to buy Newcastle in the latter part of 2017 but Ashley rejected them all.

“A source close to Ashley basically described her as a time-waster,” said Chris Waugh, who covers Newcastle United for The Athletic. “For the next three years, she maintained on-and-off contact with Mike Ashley trying to put together a deal because I think she saw the business opportunity to try and acquire an undervalued asset that had a lot of room to grow.

“One of the main things she worked on during that time was trying to bring in big investors and get them interested in the club.”

Staveley enlisted the help of David and Simon Reuben, a pair of brothers who were named as the second-richest family in the UK by the Sunday Times Rich List worth $19 billion. While the Reubens had money, they were minnows compared to the third party in the deal.

Staveley worked her Middle Eastern connections to get Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) involved in the potential takeover. The PIF, valued at over $600 billion, is the country’s sovereign wealth fund controlled by none other than MBS himself.

“Now, when Staveley came back with the consortium, most of the money was coming from the PIF,” Waugh said. “Not a lot of supporters knew who they were but they did know the Reuben brothers, who owned a lot of property in Newcastle and Staveley was a familiar name because of her growing up in the north and her initial attempts to buy the club.”

By April 2020, there was an agreement, in principle, for the consortium to acquire Newcastle for $300 million. Fans were elated at the prospect of being rid of Ashley. At one point, the Newcastle United Supporters Trust put out a survey regarding the takeover and over 97 percent of fans approved the change of ownership.

While Newcastle fans were anxious about new leadership, the deal wasn’t confirmed yet. The takeover still had to pass Premier League’s owners and directors test.

It would have seemed reasonable for the PIF’s connection to the Saudi Arabian state to have held up the deal, but the takeover hit a snag because of Saudi piracy of Premier League matches.

beIN Sports, a network based in Qatar, held broadcast rights to the Premier League (a very valuable commodity) and raised concerns over a station in Saudi Arabia named beoutQ that was pirating broadcasts.

Qatar accused Saudi Arabia of failing to prevent piracy of beIN’s content. Takeover finally went through after the Saudis began allowing beIN to be broadcast and cracked down on piracy. The relationship between the two countries had been fraught with tension and Saudi Arabia initially refused to back down.

The deal stalled, beginning 18 months of uncertainty, with the deal seemingly collapsing after the PIF pulled out. There were protests, court battles, and conflicting statements between the club and the Premier League. 

A petition brought forward by fans seeking transparency from the Premier League garnered 110,000 signatures. No one really knew what was happening and things went back and forth until October of 2021 when Saudi Arabia suddenly lifted its ban on beIN Sports and pledged to make an effort to shut down piracy.

Just like that, the door for the takeover was back open and proceedings went ahead with the Premier League stating that it had received “legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United Football Club.”

Fans were jubilant that the weight of Ashley’s ownership was finally off their shoulders.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t down at the pub having a few drinks to celebrate,” Steen, the Peter Dillon’s regular said. “I think I knew the implications of what was happening but there was so much joy that the change finally happened.”

The consortium promised to bring a sense of ambition to the club that had been lacking under Ashley. There were visions of bringing the club forward instead of simply treading water.

“We’d waited for this for 14 long years,” Harrison said. “When we learned that the new owners had big ambitions for Newcastle, fans were simply ecstatic and couldn’t contain their delight.”

“I got the sense of an overwhelming release among fans,” Waugh said. “It’s kind of a cliche, but a lot of the fans saw the club as a sleeping giant and the fact that the new owners wanted to inject some money into the club got pretty much everybody excited because they believed they could turn this around.”

More than a year on, those pledges to turn the club around have come true. Not only is Newcastle winning and near the top of the Premier League, but the club is also more engaged in the community.

“I would like to think Newcastle are now a club with a heart and a soul,” Harrison said. “The Newcastle United Foundation is doing one of the best charity jobs I know of and at every home game, fans bring cans of food to help people who still don’t get enough to eat in this day and age. That’s what a real football club should be doing – helping and being part of the community.”

Though she only ended up taking a 10 percent stake in the club (the Reuben brothers also took 10 percent for themselves), Staveley has been the face of the club’s ownership.

“She’s been saying all the right things from the beginning of talking about not just the club itself, but the community,” Steen said. “We weren’t subjected to a Saudi spokesperson coming out that night to reconcile with what they’re saying. It was a northern lass saying, ‘okay, it’s done. Let’s get to work.’”

The consortium has invested in the Newcastle women’s team, with the women’s club playing at St. James’s Park for the first time. There’s also been an effort to support the city itself.

“They’re making the effort,” Waugh said. “That’s the biggest thing. Ashley basically walled himself off to the public. The new owners are doing what they can to rebuild the relationship with the community and they’re seeing the dividends.”

A Culture Based on the Sport

When most Americans think of England, London is usually the first city that comes to mind.

London, a city of almost 10 million people, is home to seven Premier League teams. This size and saturation of the soccer market allow many players to live with a certain degree of anonymity within the city.

Newcastle, on the other hand, is pretty much everything that London isn’t. A working-class, industrial city on the banks of the Tyne River, home to just over 800,000 people and one soccer team.

The divide between the North and South of England isn’t something that is lost on many people from Newcastle

“When I was growing up, the northeast, in particular, was always a poor area of England with huge unemployment,” Harrison, the Newcastle blogger said. “We were looked down on by the southern population, especially in London.”

Harrison, who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, thinks the city got a bad reputation because of the industrial decline after World War II.

“Typically, the northeast was known for coal and shipbuilding,” he said. “After the second world war, demand for both these commodities dropped significantly, which added to unemployment… That view of the northeast being backward and poor exists to this day.”

Newcastle is no longer a city defined by industrial decay and a filthy River Tyne that overflowed with sewage. It is a modern city, defined by a blue-collar attitude that is still trying to escape London’s broad shadow.

“Coming from a working-class town in the States, when I came over for the first time I was instantly able to relate,” Steen said. “They rightfully feel kind of forgotten about by London, where you’ve got, you know, the seats of power and money down in London. And then just kind of like the hardscrabble traditionally coal miners and shipbuilders up north.”

How did all those workers forget about the time they put in underground or at the docks? By attending the match on Saturday and a church service on Sunday. For many, Newcastle was one of their few escapes from the reality of a tough life.

As society secularized and church attendance declined, Newcastle United became the main religion for some fans.

“They talk about St. James’s Park being like the Cathedral on the hill,” Heneage said. “It’s one of those things you can see as part of the skyline and I think, in a funny way, that kind of poetically articulates how important that football club is to that city.”

“It transcends race, sexual orientation, and gender,” Steen added. “You go to St. James’s Park and that’s essentially your weekly communion.”

Unlike the United States where football, basketball, baseball, and hockey make up the four major sports, soccer is the undisputed number one in England.

“The A-1 story is always Newcastle United, whether it’s good or bad. And for that reason, I think it’s very difficult as a young child, in general, to not in some way come in contact with Newcastle United as a football club as an organization as an institution and that’s because it really does seem to run parallel in terms of the power lines that are Newcastle as a city.”

The team and the city aren’t the same things, but they might as well be. When Newcastle United is doing well, the city is a happier place. When things get tough, it’s just another burden for fans to carry.

“The heartbeat of the city is the club when the club’s doing well,” Steen said. “It’s the best place on earth. When it’s not. That’s when they’re confronted with more of the hardships of their life outside of St. James’s Park.”

Under Ashley’s ownership, St. James’s had transformed from an oasis to a sort of hell that fans descended into to watch their team disappoint week after week. Soccer in Newcastle used to be an escape but, until recently, it was a reminder of the hardships that many people in the poorest region of England face.

Now, with Newcastle winning again, the city and the stadium have come back to life.

“You can feel it in the air in Newcastle now,” Harrison said. “When the club have won a number of games and is on a run like it is now, there is just a buzz in the city.”

Back Inside Peter Dillon’s

On a sunny Saturday in early November in New York City, a flock of 20-somethings with short-cropped hair and black and white striped shirts were eager to watch the match.

Wandering the midtown streets and drinking out of water bottles that probably had something else in them, one of them wondered aloud in a thick English accent, “where’s this place again?”

The place in question was Peter Dillon’s Irish Pub near the corner of 36th Street and Fifth Ave. A black exterior with gold lettering announced that the lads had found the right place and they descended down a small flight of stairs into the madness.

The atmosphere was already swelling up as the pregame coverage played over the TVs that lined the walls. The pub itself was pretty small, with a smattering of tables in the back and the bar in the front. There was plenty of space to stand for the fans that were already queueing up to watch.

There was a sense of familiarity with most of the people sitting at the bar. This wasn’t their first Newcastle match at Peter Dillon’s.

Songs that supporters knew blared over the sound system and a host of mostly off-tune voices permeated the air that smelled of cigarettes and beer.

It was a big day to be a Newcastle fan. With the break for the Qatar World Cup looming, Newcastle, sitting fourth in the Premier League table, was hosting traditional power Chelsea with a chance to cement themselves as a real contender.

The 12:30 p.m. starting time meant that fans in New York City could justify having a pint or two while watching their beloved Magpies.

Fifteen minutes before kickoff, the pub was already near capacity. A string of cigarette-smoking blokes in their Newcastle jerseys served as a sort of welcoming committee to the cozy bar decorated with Guinness paraphernalia and a large black and white Newcastle flag.

The famed Irish stout was the beverage of choice for pretty much every fan in the place. By the time the match started, there were nearly 100 fans eagerly supporting their club.

“A year ago, we couldn’t have dreamed a day like this,” said Fergal Titley, the pub’s manager, in a thick Irish brogue. “You can say all you want about the takeover but a better team means more business for us.”

Indeed, this goes back to how the takeover has benefitted the city of Newcastle itself. A good soccer team means a prosperous city, and even though Peter Dillon’s is an ocean away, it is feeling the boost.

The Newcastle fans wouldn’t be happy with a draw against a Chelsea team that was struggling to meet its usual standards on the season.

“I think it shows how far we’ve come,” said Steen, sporting an old jersey and a man bun. “You can ask around. I think everyone in here expects a win. You’ll live with a draw but we know this is a huge opportunity for us.”

As the game started, the pub took on the feel of a mini soccer stadium. Every positive move was applauded and every bad call was booed. The most dedicated fans, positioned in the corner of the bar often broke into sporadic songs and chants, including a take on ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” that went “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A Swedish striker” after Swede Alexander Isak nearly scored.

Fans were eager to talk about their team. There was a solid mix of young and old in the pub. Most of the older fans were Newcastle lifers with northern accents. The younger fans weren’t the bandwagoners one might expect.

Amanda Carr, one of the most vocal youngsters, has family connections in Newcastle and has supported the club since she started watching soccer.

“It’s definitely great to see after what we’ve been through with Ashley,” Carr said. “Yes, there are problems with the Saudis and I think most fans understand that but what I always come back to is that after all those tough years literally anyone is an improvement.”

Carr’s attitude was shared by many of the fans young and old. There was a sort of “let us have this” mentality that permeated throughout the bar.

Back in the pub, there’s a sense of growing anticipation as Newcastle repeatedly gets the ball into Chelsea’s box without the ultimate reward of a goal. As the team gets a string of corners, the rising tide of 100 or so fans in the bar matches the swelling of 50,000 voices at St. James’s Park.

A shout for a Newcastle penalty after what looked like a handball inside the box from a Chelsea players falls on deaf ears and the game goes to halftime scoreless.

“It’s my opinion that sports and politics shouldn’t mix together,” said Mark, a hulking figure with a thick Newcastle accent. “We hear all of the things about the Saudis but in this league, they’re just another example of filthy rich owners.”

Sport and politics are, of course, inextricably linked. From the playing of national anthems before sporting events to the statements of activism that athletes continue to make during their games and events.

Sports can be used for good (activism) and for bad (sportswashing). The fan reaction at Peter Dillon’s shows how the Saudis have effectively bought loyalty in the north of England. If you were to mention Saudi Arabia to a Newcastle supporter, the first place their mind would go is to their surging team, not the human rights violations to continue to occur under MBS.

Back at the bar, the game remains a scoreless draw as the second half ticks along. Newcastle has had the better of the game but hasn’t broken through. Chelsea gets its first real good look of the night, forcing a Newcastle save. There’s a feeling of anxious anticipation among all the fans that are still packed in tight. 

Then, it’s decided in the 67th minute. Newcastle’s Joe Willock strikes a goal and the bar erupts. Beer goes flying out of glasses, grown men hug each other, and singing erupts.

It looks like this might be the day Newcastle fans had expected.

How Complicit are the Fans?

Fans of teams or events that are sportswashed face a major ethical dilemma. Do they remain fans despite the sportswashing or do they turn their back on a team or sport they’ve supported often for most of their lives?

Jake Wojtowicz, who helped author “Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption,” studied several instances of sportswashing and understands that Newcastle fans face a special kind of dilemma.

“It’s basically like fans are in love,” Wojtowicz said. “Sports teams play a really important role in our lives, they shape our identities and give meaning to our lives. When you go to every home game. When you’ve done that for sixty years when you go to the game with your family – you went with your grandparents, you go with your grandkids – and your friends, when you love your team, you can’t just give them up because some new owners come in. So, these fans face a real dilemma.”

When the takeover became a reality in October 2021, The Athletic conducted a survey among fans to gauge their response to the new ownership. Unsurprisingly, 99 percent of respondents thought that Ashley’s ownership was either disastrous or bad.

When asked if they were concerned about Saudi Arabian human rights abuses, 83 percent said they were. However, when the question shifted to whether the Saudi-led ownership would discourage them from going to matches and spending money on merchandise, only 29 percent of fans said it would.

It is important to remember that this survey took place when Newcastle was still at the bottom of the Premier League last fall. Now, as the ownership group has helped bring the team from worst to (almost) first, it has gotten more difficult for that 29 percent of fans to stay away.

“There were a few fans I know who said ‘okay, this is it,’” Steen said. “A lot of us, myself included, were hesitant at first but it was just impossible to ignore the progress we’ve been making as a club.”

Ashley was hated by supporters for a reason. In most sports, it is all about results, and for Newcastle, the records show that his tenure reduced the club from a fixture in the top of the Premier League to a team that was just trying to avoid relegation.

His controversial licensing deal for the naming rights to St. James’s Park and his freezing out of club legends would have been tolerated if the club had continued to win.

Chelsea, who was under the control of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich until this past spring, provides an interesting case study. Abramovich, who had owned the club since 2003, was at the helm for recent triumphs in the UEFA Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup.

Despite his close connections with Vladimir Putin, Chelsea fans applauded Abramovich during a moment of silence for Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. While Abramovich was on his way out of the club, the fans didn’t want to say goodbye because of the club’s continued success.

While fans might not be taking part in the killing of journalists or invasions of neighboring countries, they are still pawns in the bigger game. 

“Someone watching the World Cup from England or cheering on Newcastle at St James’s Park isn’t taking part in these abuses or directly helping them get done,” Wojtowicz said. “It’s not like how I might be complicit in a murder if I drive the getaway car.

“Rather, complicity comes at a subtler level. The point of sportswashing is to get people to forget about these acts of wrongdoing and to no longer associate the state with those things.”

In Newcastle, just because of the prominence of the sport, any mention of the Saudis will likely tie back to the club. As evidenced by Chelsea, winning allows people to focus on the positive rather than dwell on the negative.

Fans who claim separating sport and politics is a justification for supporting the new owners are missing the point.

“I think you can separate the two so far,” Harrison said. “The fans were more intent on looking at it from a football perspective and wanted to stay out of the politics, but we understand Saudi human rights record is not what it should be – and that’s probably putting it mildly.

This is the kind of attitude the Saudis want to see from fans. Separating the two makes it easier to forget the laundry list of Saudi transgressions like the murder of Khashoggi. A winning team shouldn’t get in the way of that but, for far too many people, it does.

Is There a Solution?

When the PIF invested in Newcastle United, it was putting its money into more than the club. It was investing in a city and in fans that had been long-deprived of a winning team.

Though it wasn’t quite universal, the vast majority of fans welcomed the new owners with open arms. They had money, and ambition, and took an active interest in the club and the city. When the team started to win, it completed a 180-degree turnaround from the tenure of Mike Ashley.

After Ashley’s ruinous tenure, pretty much any owner or ownership group — even one associated with a repressive, murderous regime — was seen as an improvement. Now, with tangible results, fans are finding fewer reasons to doubt the PIF.

“I’m having the time of my life on a week-in, week-out basis,” Steen said. “If you told me we’d be sitting in this position this time last fall, I flat out would not have believed it.”

American sports has its share of fair-weather fans, who only support a team when it’s doing well. In England, especially Newcastle, you are much more hard-pressed to find these kinds of fans.

Even when it was relegated to the second tier after the 2015-16 season, the club still managed to draw over 50,000 fans to St. James’s Park. If the fans stuck with the team even in the leanest days of Ashley’s tenure, why, in their minds, would they abandon the team now when it is sitting in the top four of the Premier League?

“I can’t imagine anyone from Newcastle not supporting this club,” Harrison said. “Some people say that after all this, fans shouldn’t support the club, but I think that’s a bit of nonsense. The club is their life.”

Harrison is all in on the club and has fallen for the new owners in the manner Wojtowicz suggested. Other supporters like Henaege and Steen know that the situation is more nuanced.

“There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance involved,” Steen said. “And for me, having followed for a third of my life, I can’t imagine what it’s like for somebody who was born into the club… It’s going back and forth. Because I’m not going to be the type of fan to justify saying, ‘well look at what the Russians do or look at the Emiratis do because the Saudis are in a foreign repressive regime.’”

For Steen, it’s like turning on a switch. He has these thoughts when Newcastle isn’t playing, but on the pitch, it’s all forgotten. When Newcastle scored the winning goal against Chelsea, Steen was in the middle of the celebration, dancing, singing, and jumping along with the other die-hard supporters. The only thing he cared about was the result of the game.

Steen is making the effort to recognize what’s wrong with his club. But, in the end, he still loves Newcastle United. Heneage, who has followed the club his whole life struggles with many of the same concerns.

“The emotional attachment, the investment in what is essentially concrete was 50,000 seats and it is very difficult to get away as if it were tied to a string,” Heneage said. “And I think that’s something that we do kind of lose a little bit speaking with a second when we evaluate these situations. 

“It’s very easy to tell someone to give this to step away into to do whatever. I think it is so much easier to say that than to do that and for that reason, I wish I had a clear silver bullet solution as to what to do with this because I don’t know.”

So, what is the solution? Is there a solution?

Is it possible to separate the success of the club from the new owners who have made it possible? There were fans who protested the takeover but they were a small minority. The decade-and-a-half of Ashley might have played the biggest role in why the takeover was so well received.

Fans protested his ownership for the better part of a decade. Would fans consider doing the same for an ownership group that is getting results but is closely tied to several human rights violations?

“Yes it makes it harder that the previous owner was a real piece of shit,” Wojtowicz conceded. “But fans protest their owners all the time. They make it clear that they don’t like them and want them out. Why can’t Newcastle fans do this?”

Well, the short answer is that Newcastle is enjoying real, sustainable success for the first time in 20 years. When things go well, the fans tend to forget or gloss over things that might get in the way of that success.

Back at Peter Dillon’s, Amanda Carr, one of the younger Newcastle fans was about to answer a question about if she would ever consider protesting the new owners.

Before she could answer, another fan butted in and said, “Why would we ever consider doing any of that in the state we’re in now?”

The truth is that Newcastle is going to get stronger with each year that passes with the PIF ownership. It’s a complex situation that puts fans in an ethical bind.

“There are small elements that actually support the Saudi regime and I don’t think anyone condones that,” Waugh said. “But I also think to tar every single Newcastle fan with the same brush and say ‘how can you possibly support this regime?’ When actually what they’re doing is supporting their own club?

This is what sportswashing does. It puts fans in a bind. Some realize it, while others remain willfully ignorant. 

It is nearly impossible for most of these fans to give up the club they’ve had such a stake in for most of their lives but what they do have to acknowledge is the role their club plays geopolitically.

Saudi Arabia isn’t here on a charity mission. It took over Newcastle and invested in the city to paint a better picture of itself through sportswashing. If fans can at least grasp this concept, then they can lay the foundation for taking a bigger stand against sportswashing.

One Last Trip to Peter Dillon’s

After the goal, Newcastle is able to coast home to victory pretty smoothly. The last scare comes in the final of the game when Chelsea earns a free kick outside the box and even sends the goalie up as an attacker.

It comes to nothing. Seconds later, the whistle blows.

Newcastle wins 1-0. More singing, dancing, and drinking ensue. These fans might have other worries, but for now, they are all forgotten For some supporters, this may well be the high point of their Newcastle fandom. For others, it’s a reminder of the glory days under Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer. Their team that looked doomed last season is now third in the Premier League and has a real chance of qualifying to play in Europe.

And they have the Saudis to thank.