It’s been just over a year since Newcastle UnitedThey were taken over by a Saudi consortium.
The AthleticThis article is a part of a series that has been covering the anniversary in detail. Riyadh explains how the club is perceived by Saudi ArabiaAn article about the The investment has led to an exciting futureTake a look at The club is influenced by Saudi Arabia..
Newcastle United fans are able to experience a different kind of fandom than they were a year ago. St James’ Park is now an exciting place to visit, there are realistic ambitions of breaking into Europe and the football is entertaining.
However, the transformation has brought up many moral issues. The Public Investment Fund (PIF), a Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and its 80 percent share in the club have raised important and serious questions about club ownership as well as state influence.
Co-owner Amanda Staveley, whose PCP Capital Partners firm holds 10 per cent of the club, has insisted the Saudi PIF is an “autonomous commercially driven investment fund” and the state does not have a say in club affairs. Mohammed bin Salman, de facto crown prince of the kingdom, is PIF’s chairman.
The club has continued to support Rainbow Laces (Photo by Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images).
The PIF board includes Bin Salman and six ministers of the Saudi government. A Royal Court advisor is also a member. Yasir Al Rumayyan, Newcastle chairman, serves as the governor of the investment funds, but he doesn’t hold any official government positions.
At the time of the takeover, Amnesty International, the human rights charity, said the deal “raises a host of deeply troubling questions about sportswashing, human rights and the integrity of English football”.
Human Rights Watch, the international non-governmental organisation, says on its website: “Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars hosting major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events as a deliberate strategy to deflect from the country’s image as a pervasive human rights violator. Many human rights activists and dissidents are still in prison or being tried for peaceful criticism. Authorities did not hold officials at the top of their ranks accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (Saudi journalist) in 2018. Through 2021, the Saudi-led coalition continued a military campaign against the Houthi rebel group in Yemen that has included scores of unlawful airstrikes that have killed and wounded thousands of civilians.”
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Last year, Adam Crafton described the abuse LGBTQ+ Saudis have enduredIt includes conversion therapy and physical or mental torture. Saudis LGBTQ+ are accused Premier League of “pinkwashing” by promoting the Rainbow Laces inclusion campaign while permitting the Saudi takeover of Newcastle.
When the takeover was announced, United with Pride, the Newcastle United LGBTQ+ fans group, released a statement saying it “acknowledged that Saudi Arabia as a country is one of the least tolerant of LGBTQ+ and gender rights anywhere in the world” but it hoped the takeover could lead to “a positive influence to improving the conditions for the LGBTQ+ community in Saudi Arabia”.
Other LGBTQ+ fan group criticised the statement and United with Pride ended Pride in Football as the network of LGBTQ+ football fan groups.
One year on, Ian Pearson-Brown, former chair of United with Pride and now treasurer, discusses the statement, whether there has been any progress on the group’s ambitions and its relationship with the owners.
Pearson-Brown is sitting in Bobby’s Bar, a regular pre-match spot for United with Pride, about a 20-minute walk from St James’ Park.
He reflects on how busy he’s been with media interest since the takeover. He is in high demand as a spokesperson.
What does he think of the takeover one year later?
“From our perspective, not a lot has changed,” he says and explains that United with Pride is still working closely with the club under its umbrella inclusion brand United as One, which existed before the takeover and has received support from the new owners.
Fans celebrate the takeover. (Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images
I ask him if there is anything he would change about the group’s controversial statement, now there has been time to reflect. “Well, that statement had been drafted a year before,” he says. “So, we should have probably reviewed it more thoroughly than we did. The takeover took place so abruptly. Suddenly it was like, ‘Oh god, we need to release something now’.
“So while everybody else was celebrating outside St James’ Park, we as volunteers sat in a committee meeting till 11pm trying to just have a quick look over. Could we have altered some of its wording? Yes. Sometimes when you put a sentence together and there’s a group of 10 of you doing it, it’s not always going to flow very well. But the message doesn’t change in that we are representing the view of our membership, who believe that engaging with Newcastle United, as we did previously, to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion through our values both in the stadium and online, is the right way to go around tackling wider issues.”
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United with Pride’s relationship with the club is key. It is something that the group holds dear and is discussed throughout the conversation. Pearson-Brown believes that a healthy relationship with the club is essential if you want to make progress and be a positive influence.
“Some LGBT fans, groups from elsewhere, believed we should have been standing outside the stadium protesting,” he continues. “We had garnered our relationship with a club based on trust and if we had issues, we came to them directly, we didn’t go running to the press or protesting outside the stadium. We would be denied access to the stadium and to the United as one team’s resources if that were done. It would stop a lot of the good work we’ve been doing.
“We have to look at it from a pragmatic point of view and think, ‘We can only control the controllables, we can’t control who owns Newcastle, we can’t control domestic policy in countries in the Middle East’. We can make sure we put on a great show, report any homophobic or negative comments on social media and monitor them. We can help our members promote the mental health campaign and make sure that there is a presence at Northern Pride for LGBTQ+ football fans.
“Some people say we should down tools and stop our engagement work with the club, or some people say we should go support another club… that was never realistically going to happen.”
Pearson-Brown is disappointed at the expectations that supporters have for a club that has been a part of their lives for decades is to stop supporting it. It binds their community together and they don’t want to lose that. But why can’t they do that and also raise awareness about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia?
Proud Lilywhites, the Tottenham Hotspur LGBTQ+ fan group, has criticised Spurs on several occasions and protested outside St James’ Park last season, and there are many climate activists who have been campaigning against clubs they support with banners and social media posts.
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“In the UK, hate crime is on the rise, generally, social disorder is on the rise. We’ve had an increase in homophobia, biphobia, transphobia in stadiums and online in the last year,” Pearson-Brown says.
“If you’re an LGBTQ+ fan, 86 per cent of us have heard some sort of homophobic chanting in a stadium. We are more likely not to exercise and to have long-term mental problems. Sport is more difficult for us. There are many issues that we need to address in our country and with our north-east population. They’re the issues that we can have more of an impact on.
“Our reach beyond that is exceptionally limited. You mentioned environmental concerns — yes, we can have those concerns and there isn’t a single fan within our organisation who isn’t conflicted to support Newcastle. However, at the same time, we’re not going to do what that bloke at Everton did and chain ourselves to the posts because we don’t think the message that it conveyed was the right one.
“Will we have conversations with senior people at Newcastle about continuing support for the LGBTQ+ community, both locally and nationally and internationally? Yes. But in terms of how we go around doing that, we’re going to be having that conversation with them and not with other fans groups.”
A van depicting Jamal Khashoggi outside St James’ Park (Photo: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
Having a positive influence on LGBTQ+ rights in Saudi Arabia was a key part of United with Pride’s statement, so are there any signs of some foundations?
“I would severely doubt it at this stage,” he says. “We do talk with Amnesty International every so often to find out not just what is read in the press, but also what goes on. We feel it’s responsible for us to do that. So I guess, ‘It’s watch this space’.
“Saudi Arabia is engaging with a lot of Western organisations in many different ways. Presumably, this is due to the belief that Saudi Arabian officials will change their views over time on human rights issues. Remember that their approach to LGBTQ+ inclusion is no different to what ours was in the ’40s and ’50s when we were chemically castrating our war heroes, and that’s 70 years ago. Are we expecting anything to change in a year? No, it’ll take a much longer time.”
What about the fact that PIF’s ownership isn’t just a silent investment in Disney or other international companies? PIF is investing in a culture and an identity. Newcastle United has power and influence, it’s a place of worship and refusing to challenge the owners could be seen as washing over the awareness of atrocities in Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t sense anybody’s deleted any of the awareness,” Pearson-Brown says. “There is still a negative area where there’s conflict going on — if you ask me in an ideal world who should own football clubs, I loved Sir John Hall as an owner (former owner of Newcastle United) because he was a local guy done good, made his money locally and invested in the club. Jack Walker did exactly the same thing at Blackburn. In reality, we don’t live in that world anymore in football. What can fan groups do to change that? Nothing. It all comes down to controlling the uncontrollables. It is futile to ask us to comment about something beyond our control. Ask the Premier League if you have these questions. They’re the ones who’ve approved the owners’ and directors’ test, and approve them as owners.”
Pearson-Brown is confident that the visual presence of the rainbow flag at games, through United with Pride and the club’s upcoming Rainbow Laces match, will have a trickle-down effect and bring important exposure of LGBTQ+ rights to the kingdom. He concedes it is unrealistic to expect laws to change overnight, but many will think it’s ambitious to think that they will ever change when they’re this entrenched.
United with Pride has not yet had a formal meeting with the owner. There was an informal photo with Staveley at a Newcastle United Women’s match at St James’ Park, and plenty of assurances that a meeting will be happening but nothing has been put in place yet.
Pearson-Brown is unhappy with the current situation of the group and the pressure being placed on it to become something it wasn’t intended to be. They are expected to be activists, not just football fans who wish to make the game more accessible to LGBTQ+ people.
However, football is global, Newcastle United are not the first club and definitely won’t be the last to be majority-owned by a sovereign state fund.
The game goes beyond serving local communities. It will mine those communities for validity, support and authenticity but it’s looking to international television rights, sponsorship deals and international funders for success.
United with Pride is optimistic about a positive future, but few have that same optimism.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
