Russian Money’s Stain on Sport
When the USA’s only Formula 1 outfit revealed its new livery for the 2022 season a couple of weeks ago, it was a proud patriotic display of red, white and blue. For the second year running, however, the car of Haas Formula 1 Team was not decorated with American stars and stripes, but rather the white, blue and red lines of the Russian flag. To cap it off, the car was covered in the logo of Uralkali, a Russian producer of fertiliser. If you’re not quite sure what the logical link is between Russian agriculture and an American motor racing team, there isn’t one, really. This is, of course, aside from the small matter that Haas’s main sponsor is a Russian oligarch, Dmitrii Mazepin, who is incidentally also a key shareholder in Uralkali.
This is one of sport’s many associations with Russian money that has been undone in recent days in light of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, since Haas announced on Monday evening that it would no longer depict the flag or Uralkali logo on its car, many sporting teams and events have stepped up and renounced their ties with Russian sources of income. The UEFA Champions League Final has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris, German football team FC Schalke 04 have removed the logo of Gazprom - Russia’s majority state-owned gas company - from their shirts, and Formula 1 has announced the cancellation of its Russian Grand Prix.
Formula 1’s statement is particularly interesting:
‘The FIA Formula 1 World Championship visits countries all over the world with a positive vision to unite people, bringing nations together. [...] [As such,] it is impossible to hold the Russian Grand Prix in the current circumstances.’
Hmm. Was Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 a matter of ‘bringing nations together’? What about the bloody war between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government in Donbas that ensued? Or has Formula 1 only just noticed that Russia has not been a massive supporter of unity for a long time?
Here we find a paradox inherent in modern commercial sport. Not wishing to upset any fans or sponsors, organisations seem to claim a sort of apoliticicism, instead promoting wishy-washy values of ‘unity’, ‘equality’, and ‘respect’. But it is this very concept of having values that makes them inherently political. That, and their dubious sources of income.
UEFA - the central governing body of European Football - may have released a statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but its rules nonetheless do not allow its players to make political statements on the pitch. When German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was investigated for wearing a rainbow armband, eager-to-please UEFA tripped over its own rules with wooly wording, citing that the armband showed ‘support for diversity, and thus for a good cause’. Additionally UEFA is still yet to drop Russian oil company Gazprom as a sponsor. Meanwhile, Formula 1, unwilling to show direct support for Black Lives Matter, instead has encouraged kneeling in support of a ‘We Race as One’ message prior to Grands Prix.
The fact is that modern commercial sport is inextricable from politics. Perhaps when football was nothing more than working-class people kicking a leather ball around a battered pitch, it was not. But today, the 250-000-pound-a-week players and perfectly pruned grass of modern football speak to a rather different reality - that of a business built on money. Money that is often dirty.
Of course, sport is not the only industry of modern life that embodies the impossibility of the apolitical. But what makes it so sinister in this context is the fact that sports are sources of entertainment, held - quite rightly - close to the hearts of people who see them for what they should be: a wholesome distraction from the bustle of modern life.
The sudden focus on the immorality of Russian money in sport is good. But it comes too late. And it comes in the most frustrating and repulsive forms of renouncing Russian money as simply incompatible with vague values of ‘unity’ and ‘togetherness.’ As countries impose more and more sanctions against Russia and condemn its invasion of Ukraine, sport must do the same, but in the frank manner the situation deserves. It must confront its awkward history of sponsorship from sources of money that for a long time have not reflected its weak ‘apolitical’ values. Only this way can it begin a desperately necessary process of isolating Russia on the world stage.
