With Qatari wealth fund buying into DC sports conglomerate, will other NBA teams (Nets?) sell minority stakes? Sportswashing comes slowly.

From The Athletic, 6/22/23, Qatari Investment Authority close to buying stake in Wizards, Capitals, Mystics: Sources:

The NBA, NHL and WNBA are on the precipice of being the first North American professional sports leagues to receive an investment from a sovereign wealth fund. The Qatari Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is close to buying a stake in Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the parent company of the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, and Washington Mystics, sources briefed on the deal told The Athletic.

A "small stake," even just 5%, would represent $200 million of a $4 billion portfolio, which includes Capital One Arena and Monumental Sports Network. By contrast, the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center operating company are worth $3.86 billion, Sportico estimated last December.

From the article:

“In November 2022, the NBA Board of Governors decided to permit passive, non-controlling, minority investments in NBA teams by institutional investors, including university endowments, foreign and domestic pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds, subject to a set of policy guidelines adopted at that time,” NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said in a statement to The Athletic. “All such investments require league review, NBA Board approval and compliance with the policy.

That means that the investors would not have power in operations and decisionmaking.

This is surely attractive to team owners like, say, the Nets' Joe Tsai, who've seen the value-on-paper of their team--based on its rare location and the likelihood of future revenue--skyrocket, without commensurate revenues.

But there's a big difference between, say, a union pension fund and a wealth fund for a country like Qatar, which experts have called a "tribal society with an autocratic regime."

Ethics, shmethics

Then again, the NBA welcomed Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, whose ascension to wealth was quite sketchy, when Bruce Ratner needed money and could offload the New Jersey Nets to an eager investor. 

And the NBA had no qualms about Tsai and his lockstep defense of China, where Alibaba, the company he helped found, made him a billionaire. In fact, as ESPN put it, Tsai is the "face of NBA's uneasy China relationship."

Moreover, virtually no one (but me) has criticized the embrace of sponsors like Barclays, a corporate felon that has paid massive fines for price fixing, and should have--according to my reading of project contracts--lost the naming rights to the Brooklyn arena.

The Athletic quoted NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was asked on a broadcast about Saudi Arabia's investment in pro golf. “I hear the comments about sportswashing. On the other hand, you’re talking about it, others are talking about it. … In the same way, the World Cup — the football World Cup, soccer World Cup — brought enormous attention to Qatar. I think people learn about these countries, learn about what’s happening in the world in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. So I think the media does its job."

Well, that word salad referred to some serious issues, as The Athletic dutifully reported:

The 2022 World Cup was held in Qatar last winter. The competition was run amidst controversy as FIFA held the event in a country with prominent human rights issues, where homosexuality is illegal, and in which migrant labor was used to build its stadium. At least 500 workers have died since 2014 in accidents at construction sites for the World Cup.

Well, as has been said before, money cleanses.

Sportswashing takes time

Sportswashing isn’t what we say now. It’s what we won’t be saying later., Washington Post Sports columnist Candace Buckner wrote 6/24/23:

The Qatari Investment Authority’s bid to buy a stake in the parent company that owns the Washington Capitals, Mystics and Wizards — while also buying a better narrative for its country — launches a new standard in American team sports. But the possible relationship between Qatar and Monumental Sports & Entertainment is not unique. It’s following a troubling pattern set in motion by LIV Golf and FIFA with the 2022 World Cup. It’s the same game plan, and it knows that over time, we will just stop caring.

...Sportswashing is a slow play, an erosion of ethics that takes its time to absorb the blows, weather the pushback and wait out the howls of disgust until they become quieter and quieter. When all that remains is a whimper and maybe even a shrug, then those countries have won. And they are winning now because we’re losing our outrage.

She suggests that, over time, "the indignation softens a little," with less recognition of the treatment of women, migrant workers, and sexual minorities in Qatar.

Indeed, the indignation softened for Prokhorov and Tsai regarding the blots on their respective resumes.