It’s September 2023. A small group of dissidents gathers in a room above a theater to discuss Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. But this is not Jeddah. This is not Riyadh. This is Newcastle upon Tyne, a working-class city in northern England, where the people are called “Geordies,” “canny” means good, and soccer means everything.
At least to most locals. John Hird is an exception. Hird considers Saudi Arabia’s recent purchase of his local soccer team, Newcastle United, the opposite of canny. He believes the Saudi state is using his team to launder its reputation and make the kingdom seem open and progressive, while persecuting its own citizens. “M.B.S. has paid a fortune for Newcastle, and he’s going to use it,” Hird told the audience in the room.
That’s why Hird and a few other Newcastle fans founded N.U.F.C. Fans Against Sportswashing, and why they have been trying to persuade others to join the cause. But there is little local enthusiasm. Only 25 people attended the meeting, about half a dozen of whom were journalists. To one side, a banner listed some of those who had been persecuted by the team’s new owners: Salma al-Shehab: Tweeted in solidarity with women’s rights activists; sentenced to 34 years in prison.
Loujain al-Hathloul was on the banner. She campaigned against the ban on women drivers and was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for human-rights activity. Now released, she is still banned from leaving the country. Her sister, Lina al-Hathloul, who lives in Brussels, calls her family in Saudi Arabia every day to check on them. Lina was at the meeting in Newcastle, invited to talk about her sister and the soccer team. “They can’t buy everyone’s silence with their money,” she told the audience. But maybe they could.
Newcastle is not a poor place, but nor is it rich. It is the largest city in northeast England, which is the region with the highest unemployment rate in the U.K. The city’s major industries—most famously coal production—were wound down in the last half-century. It has been neglected by the British government, its public services are starved for cash, its life expectancy trails London’s, and its role in modern Britain is unclear.
Yet one thing continues to thrive: soccer. Specifically Newcastle United, a Premier League team with a 52,305-capacity stadium, a well-stocked trophy cabinet (though it is getting a little dusty these days), and fans known for their loyalty and steadfastness. But things soured in 2007. A businessman from the south of England, Mike Ashley, who owned a chain of cheap sports shops, bought the team. That cheapness became the team’s de facto identity.
For 14 years Newcastle fans endured cheap signings, cheap merchandise, and jokes at their expense. The team suffered relegation from the top-ranking Premier League twice—in which the worst teams in the league are moved to a lower division of play—though it was promoted again both times, and the blame was put on skinflint Ashley. His failure to invest prompted stadium boycotts and protests at his shops. In a city where the mood hangs on the weekend’s results, despair took hold. “It’s a hollow and an empty football club,” the team’s former star striker Alan Shearer said on BBC Television. “There’s no hope or ambition.”
Then suddenly there was hope: In early 2020, news broke that a consortium of Saudi and British investors was trying to buy Newcastle. The Geordies were excited. Finally, Ashley would be gone. The Newcastle United Supporters Trust carried out a survey of 3,397 people. Ninety-seven percent of them backed the Saudi-led takeover. The black-and-white carpet—the team’s colors—was being rolled out.
“M.B.S. has paid a fortune for Newcastle, and he’s going to use it.”
Except the deal foundered. A broadcasting dispute in the Middle East was one snag, but there was also concern over bin Salman—the chairman of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (P.I.F.), who the C.I.A. believes ordered the brutal dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—potentially controlling one of England’s top soccer teams. Would the Saudi state submit itself to the necessary scrutiny required of all soccer-team owners by the Premier League? It seemed not. In July 2020, the P.I.F. pulled out. Newcastle fans were bereft, but just as they had been vocal in protesting against Ashley, now they were vocal in support of the Saudi takeover.
More than 100,000 signed a petition seeking an investigation into why the takeover failed. They lobbied members of Parliament. Another petition, signed by more than 21,000 people and calling for transparency from the Premier League, was presented to the House of Commons by Chi Onwurah, a Labour M.P. from Newcastle. Then Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked the Premier League for details. The Daily Mail later revealed Johnson had received a text message from bin Salman before the P.I.F. pulled out, telling him the Premier League should “correct” its decision. The fear was of damage to Saudi-Anglo relations. The Guardian revealed the U.K. government had lobbied the Premier League to approve the deal.
In October 2021, the takeover was finally approved. Footage spread of Newcastle fans outside the stadium, some of them singing, some drinking beer, some waving the Saudi flag, and some wearing tea towels as a makeshift kaffiyeh. Elsewhere in the U.K. there was disgust and revulsion. But Alex Hurst, then chair of the supporters’ trust, summed up the local mood on his popular True Faith podcast, describing his response to all the journalists inviting him to comment on Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record.
“You don’t need to ring me to, like, moralize about shit,” he said. “Look at the news, look at Twitter, look at the scenes in the city. Not everyone listening to this will be delighted about this takeover, but 99 percent of you will. And I’m not discounting the other one percent, I’m not saying you don’t matter. But from a media point of view, just fuck off.”
Judging from the turnout at the theater meeting two years later, he may have been too conservative in his estimation. “I think I’ve been proved right by saying 99 percent of fans just don’t care,” Hurst says. “It’s not even like a conscious thing, I think. It’s too far removed from people’s lives for them to notice.” The truth is that most Newcastle fans, even those with initial unease, have loved the Saudi era. Really loved it.
With Ashley out, a new manager, Eddie Howe, was hired. He steered them away from relegation toward the top of the Premier League. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on new players—England’s Kieran Trippier, Brazilian midfielder Bruno Guimarães, Dutch defender Sven Botman, Sweden’s Alexander Isak. The team qualified for the Champions League, Europe’s elite competition, and played against A.C. Milan and Paris Saint-Germain. While the rest of the country tutted, Newcastle fans rejoiced. There was no boycott.
The opposite, in fact. When the team changed its third-choice uniform to match the Saudi national colors—green and white—fans bought it. When a Saudi sponsor appeared on the home uniform, fans bought it. The team held a training camp in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi national team played a match at St. James’ Park, Newcastle’s stadium. Some fans sang, “1–0 to the Saudi Boys.” Others preferred not to, uneasy with what was being signaled. Andrew Page, a member of N.U.F.C. Fans Against Sportswashing, said, “We were never going to change them. They were going to change us.”
Lina al-Hathloul, speaking last month, was not surprised that the anti-sportswashing movement failed to attract greater support. “People living in liberty and in freedom do not realize what it is to be under an authoritarian regime. So for them it’s something that is far, it’s something that they don’t necessarily feel might come one day.
“We were never going to change them. They were going to change us.”
“For us the most important thing is to plant the seeds now, to tell them, look, it starts with sports, but it will go much further, and if you’re not careful about what the Saudis are doing, you will be the next victim. Being a U.K. citizen or being in the U.K. protects you now, but the more you’re reluctant to hear Saudi activists, the less you will be protected by your democracy.”
A crack appeared in that democracy in October of last year, a month after the meeting above the theater. A Newcastle supporter named Linzi Smith received an e-mail from Newcastle United saying she was “under investigation by Northumbria Police” and was temporarily banned from the stadium due to her tweets. Was this the influence of the new owners? Had she offended the crown prince?
No—she had engaged in Britain’s culture wars, which is risky enough. It turned out another supporter had contacted Newcastle United to report her posts on X as “transphobic.” Using an account on which her support for Newcastle was also visible, Smith had responded to an online argument about a transgender legal case, asking, “The rest of us should change how we live to accommodate their mental illness?” And, after being abused for her comments, she had tweeted that “trans ideology is based off a Nazi, right?” The team asked the Premier League to investigate, and it compiled a report including information about where she lives, where she works, where she walks her dog. “I was mortified at the lengths they’d gone to, digging into my life,” she says. The team later sent the report to the police.
Three months after the first complaint, the team received another, from someone saying they had reported the tweets to Northumbria Police as “a hate incident.” The team e-mailed Smith to tell her that she was being investigated by police “for a possible Hate Crime offence” and that her membership was suspended. Smith says she was “terrified.” The police then knocked on her door, and she was interviewed at a police station. They decided to take no further action.
The team eventually banned her from attending matches for three years, the sort of punishment usually given to fans found guilty by a court of racial abuse. On the same day she was banned, the Free Speech Union (F.S.U.)—a libertarian pressure group formed to give legal assistance to “anyone who feels their speech rights are under threat”—wrote to Newcastle’s C.E.O. to argue Smith’s case. They got no reply. When the team’s press office was asked if anyone from the P.I.F. was involved in the decision to ban Smith, there was no response, though Smith believes her case has not been discussed at that level, or at least not the details of it. Newcastle United did not respond to Air Mail’s multiple requests for comment.
Smith appealed the ban, assisted by the F.S.U., saying her beliefs were protected by law. The ban was upheld. Now she is taking legal action against Newcastle United, claiming she was discriminated against. Her claim has been filed in court: a Geordie woman fighting her Saudi-owned local soccer team for the right to tweet what she wants without fear of being banned or arrested.
Andrew Hankinson is a freelance writer and the author of Don’t Applaud. Either Laugh or Don’t. (At the Comedy Cellar)
