Analyzing the $5.6 Billion Fossil Fuel Sponsorship Landscape 

The oil giant of Saudi, Aramco also signed a deal to sponsor Formula 1 and a partnership deal with Aston Martin Racing

Aramco, the Saudi Arabia’s oil giant which is also the world’s largest emitter of corporate greenhouse gases has sponsored almost $1.3 billion in order to sponsor the global sporting events. 

At $231 billion for 2023, Aramco will be the most profitable firm in the world.

Aramco is known to be the biggest and the single investor to sponsor the sports events. As per the UK based Think Tank, an estimated $757.6 million is invested in football, $495.7 million in motorsport, $56 million in cricket, and $35.9 million in golf.

When a country uses sporting events to improve a country’s reputation, the term is known as ‘sportswashing’ and Saudi Arabia is accused of doing so. In the same case Aramco is said to be using sports to distract the world from the high use of their fossil fuels. 

Sponsorship money worth $5.6 billion was invested by the fossil fuel companies into many sports like golf, football, motorsports and even snow sports. According to a new report this was done as an effort to acquire a social licence to operate. 

According to research carried out by the New Weather Institute (NWI) which has traced  over 200 deals of sponsorship between sports teams and the industry there remains no major spectator sport which is untouched by the oil and gas money. 

Many sportsmen have been recruited to spend time in the Middle East as a part of the sponsorship deal. Big sports stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua are involved in such deals. 

The 2034 FIFA World Cup is set to be hosted by Saudi Arabia. Aramco was named FIFA’s “Major Worldwide Partner” in a deal worth an estimated $100 million per year, and it also announced a sponsorship agreement with Concacaf, the governing body of football in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Aramco’s chairman, also serves as chairman of Golf Saudi, president of the Saudi Gold Federation, and chairman of Newcastle United.

The oil giant of Saudi, Aramco also signed a deal to sponsor Formula 1 and a partnership deal with Aston Martin Racing. This will benefit the company and prolong the use of fossil fuels in the involved teams engines. 

It comes as concerns rise over the fossil fuel industry’s expanding efforts to clean up its worldwide image through “sportswashing,” a strategy traditionally utilised by nation states to rehabilitate tarnished reputations by forming links with sporting events.

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman said in 2023 that if sportswashing helps in increasing their GDP even by 1% then the company will continue to do so. 

The national oil company of Saudi was the biggest sports investor identified by NWI’s Dirty Money report which handed out about $1.3 billion across 10 deals. Ineos, the petrochemical company is the second largest sponsor in sports with almost $777 million in sponsorship deals. Shell had sponsored sports to the tune of $470m; and TotalEnergies, France’s leading oil company, had $340m in deals.

NWI researchers found sponsorship transactions by combing through news articles and press releases, complemented by data from SportBusiness’ sponsorship deals tracker, a professional financial journal.

Most did not declare how much they were worth, so the researchers approximated the value of those partnerships by comparing them to similar sponsorship deals whose spending was known.

They discovered that football received the most sponsorship deals, totaling 59 for over $1 billion. However, motorsports garnered the largest investment, with $2.2 billion in oil and gas money divided across 40 agreements.

A spokesperson for Shell stated that the company invested $5.6 billion in low-carbon solutions last year, representing 23% of its total capital expenditures. This investment aims to advance various low-carbon energy initiatives, including e-mobility, low-carbon fuels, renewable energy, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage technologies.