With regards to sportswashing,
It's pretty clear to anybody that the Saudi state have bought nufc for that purpose, same as the golf, f1 and boxing.
Same with Qatar buying psg and getting the world cup.
Probably even Russia and China hosting Olympics, winter Olympics, the world cup.
Now to me sportswashing never seems to work. As soon as these countries become involved, straight away there is negative attention on their various problems within their respective countries. It makes you wonder why they do it? I mean since the 2021 nufc takeover saudi have had way more attention than they would have got if the PIF had carried on quietly investing in the big corporations. I've heard way more about them than before they were linked with nufc. They got a load of stick for sportswashing when they hosted Joshua v Ruiz 2.
Same as Qatar, barely on my radar then they bought PSG and I heard some rumblings of it being unethical for a state to buy a club. Once they got the World Cup there was loads of stuff coming out about workers on stadiums dying, treated like slaves.
If they'd not bothered with the world cup that would have been kept pretty quiet.
So why do they do it? I mean the money the PIF has, do they even need Newcastle? What can they gain from it? Even if they sell for a billion quid they've only made 600m, and to get the club to be worth a billion would need 20 years sustained success. They've had nowt but aggro since buying, the rest of football against them. So getting a few hundred thousand folk in the north east on board doesn't seem worth the trouble.
Has there ever been a succesful sportswashing campaign?