Sportswashing and CFG

Christopher Jee

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The issue of sportswashing and reputation laundering with CFG and the UAE has been knocking about for a while, but flared up again recently with the conviction of academic Matthew Hedges.

There are many more neutral sources than the Guardian, and this is purely an opinion piece, but I figured that it best represented a fan's perspective:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...uman-rights-man-city-jailing-british-academic

Most of the time when I bring this up, it ends up being a "well nobody is clean" and "what can you do" sort of discussion, but hell, our season is over, and my judgment is not presently clouded by my fandom. Seems like a decent time to voice my discomfort with the arrangement and ponder upon my complicity. Anyone else?
 
The issue of sportswashing and reputation laundering with CFG and the UAE has been knocking about for a while, but flared up again recently with the conviction of academic Matthew Hedges.

There are many more neutral sources than the Guardian, and this is purely an opinion piece, but I figured that it best represented a fan's perspective:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...uman-rights-man-city-jailing-british-academic

Most of the time when I bring this up, it ends up being a "well nobody is clean" and "what can you do" sort of discussion, but hell, our season is over, and my judgment is not presently clouded by my fandom. Seems like a decent time to voice my discomfort with the arrangement and ponder upon my complicity. Anyone else?
I’d be more than happy to have the team sold to new owners that have an ounce of decency. It’d be a step up.
 
It's not much, but for what it's worth I've never worn a club jersey with the Etihad logo on it and never will. Even more than the club, Etihad is a direct representative of the government as a nationally owned entity. I don't know if it's the right place to draw the line, but I believed I needed to draw a line somewhere and this is where I chose.

Oh, and filed under Guardian gonna Guardian, when listing the regime's crimes they omit religious freedom. The UAE touts it's tolerance, as they allow visitors and even some permanent residents practice religions other than Islam, but there is no true freedom. Apostasy is a crime, and if the government ever considered you a Muslim and you ever subsequently decide you are not a Muslim, you are in for a world of hurt. Also, non-Muslims are forbidden from discussing their religion with those the government considers Muslim. You are not free if you cannot choose or change your mind.
 
CFG kinda makes us suck, but at the same time, without them we wouldn't be where we are. They started us up, now let's break off of them and find an ATL-esque owner who cares about the team rather than the money, and let's get on with things the way they should be going.
 
It's not much, but for what it's worth I've never worn a club jersey with the Etihad logo on it and never will. Even more than the club, Etihad is a direct representative of the government as a nationally owned entity. I don't know if it's the right place to draw the line, but I believed I needed to draw a line somewhere and this is where I chose.

Oh, and filed under Guardian gonna Guardian, when listing the regime's crimes they omit religious freedom. The UAE touts it's tolerance, as they allow visitors and even some permanent residents practice religions other than Islam, but there is no true freedom. Apostasy is a crime, and if the government ever considered you a Muslim and you ever subsequently decide you are not a Muslim, you are in for a world of hurt. Also, non-Muslims are forbidden from discussing their religion with those the government considers Muslim. You are not free if you cannot choose or change your mind.

My mother is with you on never wearing an Etihad logo, because not recognizing the State of Israel is a deal breaker.
 
CFG kinda makes us suck, but at the same time, without them we wouldn't be where we are. They started us up, now let's break off of them and find an ATL-esque owner who cares about the team rather than the money, and let's get on with things the way they should be going.

You think if it wasn’t for CFG someone else wouldn’t have purchased NY2’s expansion fee? But I’d still love for them to sell off to someone like Blank who wants to spend to win it all in NYC. Maybe even get a rebrand where people can pronounce our team name!
 
You think if it wasn’t for CFG someone else wouldn’t have purchased NY2’s expansion fee? But I’d still love for them to sell off to someone like Blank who wants to spend to win it all in NYC. Maybe even get a rebrand where people can pronounce our team name!
I definitely believe somebody else would have bought, but CFG outbid everybody with $100M (Orlando didn't have the same expansion fee, they got in for $70M) and MLS couldn't say no to the benjamins and decided to get in bed with Middle-east Natural Gas money & Etihad as a league sponsor.

My hope is after a stadium is built, or at least the land/zoning is secured with the ball rolling, that a consortium comes forward to buy the club; any group willing to do that would be fools to jump in before the stadium is confirmed, but once it is, pay a premium for the effort put forth and take control of the club and stadium. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a group of NYC-based hedge fund folk, or any other deep-pocketed individuals, that are soccer crazy or at least see the value of the team in NYC with 5 borough stadium real estate, and wouldn't be interested in owning the team. It's short-term vanity, long-term investment.
 
My mother is with you on never wearing an Etihad logo, because not recognizing the State of Israel is a deal breaker.
Israel and the UAE are actually really close right now. The whole recognition thing is more of a matter of pissing off almost everyone else in the country.
 
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I definitely believe somebody else would have bought, but CFG outbid everybody with $100M (Orlando didn't have the same expansion fee, they got in for $70M) and MLS couldn't say no to the benjamins and decided to get in bed with Middle-east Natural Gas money & Etihad as a league sponsor.

My hope is after a stadium is built, or at least the land/zoning is secured with the ball rolling, that a consortium comes forward to buy the club; any group willing to do that would be fools to jump in before the stadium is confirmed, but once it is, pay a premium for the effort put forth and take control of the club and stadium. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a group of NYC-based hedge fund folk, or any other deep-pocketed individuals, that are soccer crazy or at least see the value of the team in NYC with 5 borough stadium real estate, and wouldn't be interested in owning the team. It's short-term vanity, long-term investment.

But why would CFG sell? Why would they create a team, finally succeed at building a stadium, expand their brand into the US and New York, then walk away? There's no price that can make them say, "that's more money than I ever dreamed of, now I can finally have fuck you money." At worst, MLS has turned out to be harder to win then they thought but I don't see them admitting they're over their heads and giving up. They believe they can win here and will continue to try.
 
But why would CFG sell? Why would they create a team, finally succeed at building a stadium, expand their brand into the US and New York, then walk away? There's no price that can make them say, "that's more money than I ever dreamed of, now I can finally have fuck you money." At worst, MLS has turned out to be harder to win then they thought but I don't see them admitting they're over their heads and giving up. They believe they can win here and will continue to try.
I never said they would sell, only that I hoped they would.
 
Seems like a decent time to voice my discomfort with the arrangement and ponder upon my complicity.
tl;dr is pick your battles. Longer version:

The questions I ask are,
  1. Can I fight every battle?
  2. Which entities (companies, products, countries, etc) do the most damage and/or are most offensive?
  3. Which actions of mine would have greatest effect?
#1 is s no as I have not yet decided to become an ascetic monk.

For me, for #2, UAE is despicable in terms of offensiveness, but the damage they inflict is pretty localized. They aren't destroying the global environment or undermining democracy and human rights in other countries around the world. They are deplorable in a small and local way.

#3 actually refers to effects on the entity and effects on myself. When my 9 and 8 year old daughters gave up chocolate because of child slavery in the cocoa industry, I knew giving up chocolate wouldn't change Nestles, but I also knew I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I went on eating Snickers bars. Bye, bye chocolate for 6 years now and running. To have any real effect on the entity of the chocolate industry we would need to speak up, organize or in some way spread the boycott. And even then, it takes enormous effort and generally a very long time to shift entrenched interests.

So I haven't eaten non-fair trade chocolate in a long time. And I'm deleting my Facebook account next Sunday. I try to buy local and I drive a hybrid. But I'm still shopping Amazon and Apple and 500 other places that are certainly worth boycotting.

For now, I'm going to keep my tickets. And like mgarbowski mgarbowski I'll don't wear anything with Etihad except my one jersey on game days. Those are the battles I've chosen. For now.
 
For me, for #2, UAE is despicable in terms of offensiveness, but the damage they inflict is pretty localized. They aren't destroying the global environment or undermining democracy and human rights in other countries around the world. They are deplorable in a small and local way.

I would much rather focus on the issues that affect my daily life and well being, as an individual and as a collective, right here in 'Murica.
 
The important thing is, we are not owned by a nasty soft drink which probably causes widespread health problems across America and the world!
 
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The issue of sportswashing and reputation laundering with CFG and the UAE has been knocking about for a while, but flared up again recently with the conviction of academic Matthew Hedges.

There are many more neutral sources than the Guardian, and this is purely an opinion piece, but I figured that it best represented a fan's perspective:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...uman-rights-man-city-jailing-british-academic

Most of the time when I bring this up, it ends up being a "well nobody is clean" and "what can you do" sort of discussion, but hell, our season is over, and my judgment is not presently clouded by my fandom. Seems like a decent time to voice my discomfort with the arrangement and ponder upon my complicity. Anyone else?

I'm on the high end of trying to always make ethical consumption decisions and the UAE connection has bothered me from the start. I’m in the process of moving to Melbourne, my reason for not renewing for 2019, and as that’s taken shape I’d had the sense that I’d switch over to Melbourne City to have a little bit of synergy with my time as a supporter here. But four years of the CFG experience have convinced me that I definitely want to start fresh.

The discomfort with the UAE was always counterbalanced by the joy of watching live football en masse with my fellow New Yorkers. The story I told myself was that the relatively minor sums I paid to CFG were so diffused into helping pay for the local staff, the stadium employees, the players, and boosting the value of the MLS collective, that my impact was extremely minimal. If I was staying, I'd probably have stuck to that story and felt okay supporting the club for next year, but as the various 'gates have continued to crop up and the value of season tickets became masochistic, I think I still would have canceled the membership and used the secondary market or the club's fire sales to get tickets.
 
I'm on the high end of trying to always make ethical consumption decisions and the UAE connection has bothered me from the start. I’m in the process of moving to Melbourne, my reason for not renewing for 2019, and as that’s taken shape I’d had the sense that I’d switch over to Melbourne City to have a little bit of synergy with my time as a supporter here. But four years of the CFG experience have convinced me that I definitely want to start fresh.

The discomfort with the UAE was always counterbalanced by the joy of watching live football en masse with my fellow New Yorkers. The story I told myself was that the relatively minor sums I paid to CFG were so diffused into helping pay for the local staff, the stadium employees, the players, and boosting the value of the MLS collective, that my impact was extremely minimal. If I was staying, I'd probably have stuck to that story and felt okay supporting the club for next year, but as the various 'gates have continued to crop up and the value of season tickets became masochistic, I think I still would have canceled the membership and used the secondary market or the club's fire sales to get tickets.
Enjoy the change of scenery and lifestyle down under!!!

Please post a video of the direction the water in a toilet flushes in Australia.... and please only do so with a clean toilet flushing only clean water.

Don’t @ me with any quips about that mandatory parameter.
 
CFG kinda makes us suck, but at the same time, without them we wouldn't be where we are. They started us up, now let's break off of them and find an ATL-esque owner who cares about the team rather than the money, and let's get on with things the way they should be going.
bro thats some battered wife syndrome you got there. We can leave a shitty relationship anytime.

We, the fans, are NYC. We support the club because they represent our town. Just cause these scumbags dropped the biggest briefcase of cash on the table doesn't mean we owe them a dime of loyalty. They just put themselves at the front of the line, they didn't make us because no one else would. We could have had a decent owner. On the other hand maybe we could have had an even scummier owner. Point is they didn't make us, we were happening without them.

Hell if they would let us incorporate like the packers I'm sure we could have scrapped together the 100mm franchise fee from people willing to "donate" (pipe dream, I know). We'd have zero infrastructure and have a hard time for a long long while. But it would have been organic growth to be proud of. Now we have to hold out noses and look the other way at who owns us for the sake of getting stuff done. But I cannot wait for the day they are sold to someone else (if it ever comes). These promises of shiny DP signings are just deals with the devil. I would much rather be like NJ and develop kids from the academy.
 
bro thats some battered wife syndrome you got there. We can leave a shitty relationship anytime.

We, the fans, are NYC. We support the club because they represent our town. Just cause these scumbags dropped the biggest briefcase of cash on the table doesn't mean we owe them a dime of loyalty. They just put themselves at the front of the line, they didn't make us because no one else would. We could have had a decent owner. On the other hand maybe we could have had an even scummier owner. Point is they didn't make us, we were happening without them.

Hell if they would let us incorporate like the packers I'm sure we could have scrapped together the 100mm franchise fee from people willing to "donate" (pipe dream, I know). We'd have zero infrastructure and have a hard time for a long long while. But it would have been organic growth to be proud of. Now we have to hold out noses and look the other way at who owns us for the sake of getting stuff done. But I cannot wait for the day they are sold to someone else (if it ever comes). These promises of shiny DP signings are just deals with the devil. I would much rather be like NJ and develop kids from the academy.

You're right, but I never said we can't leave- in fact I did say the opposite. However, they did give us this starting point, so what I'm saying is to at least give them credit for the first few years where we were successful (in a way) until recently.

I, too, would prefer a "started from the bottom" approach without this situation, but it's already happened so you can't really do anything about it post facto, except leave them.