The BBC is taking advertising revenue from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which recently acquired an 80 per cent stake in Newcastle United.
The UK public service broadcaster’s journalists have extensively covered the moral questions surrounding the takeover but its international arm has accepted significant income from the same Saudi fund that bought Newcastle.
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PIF, chaired by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS, pictured above), also features six Saudi government ministers on its board in addition to a royal court advisor and its governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who chairs Newcastle United and the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco.
PIF and the Premier League insist that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not control the fund, despite the composition of its board.
The Premier League has received substantial criticism for sanctioning the takeover of Newcastle United owing to various alleged human rights violations associated with the Saudi regime led by MBS.
This followed a report by the US office of the director of national intelligence, which assessed that MBS had approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia described the findings as “negative, false and unacceptable”.
The Saudi government, led by MBS, has also been accused of mistreating the LGBT+ community in Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International, the leading human rights organisation, has since requested a meeting with the Premier League with a view to including “human rights issues” in the owners’ and directors’ test in the English top-flight but it has not yet taken place.
This week, PIF was promoted online on a BBC Sport story — which was not viewable in the UK — about Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford. Sources say the advertising campaign has been present across other global media organisations.
The screenshot below demonstrates how viewers of BBC content outside of the UK saw the adverts for PIF’s Human Futures campaign, which highlights the fund’s work in “making every human difference possible in the tomorrows of our people”.
The adverts are not visible to a British audience, as the domestic service is funded by UK licence payers, but the international BBC news and sport website is a commercial operation paid for via advertising.
A BBC spokesperson told The Athletic: “This allows us to invest in our world-class journalism and bring it to a global audience. All commercial content must adhere to our advertising and sponsorship guidelines, which are publicly available.”
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Nicholas McGeehan, a human rights expert at FairSquare, told The Athletic that the BBC had betrayed the thousands of journalists it employs by accepting advertising revenue from a fund chaired by MBS.
McGeehan argued: “PIF is more than a sovereign investment fund, it appears to now be playing a key role in the rehabilitation of the reputation of its chairman, MBS. It’s a betrayal of public service broadcasting for the BBC to be assisting him in this endeavour.
“MBS has been accused of approving the murder of a journalist and others who have criticised his rule currently live in fear of their lives. It’s a betrayal of journalism and of the thousands of journalists they employ.”
The BBC did not respond to this allegation.
The BBC and the Premier League are the latest in a string of high-profile organisations associated with PIF. The fund has previously purchased stakes in companies including Facebook, Disney, Boeing, Starbucks, Pfizer, Bank of America, Shell, Marriott and Citigroup, before ditching their shares in those companies over a year ago. They do retain substantial stakes in well-known companies such as car-hailing service Uber and the entertainment company Live Nation.
Closer scrutiny of the BBC’s advertising guidelines indicates that any promotions “must not bring the BBC into disrepute or jeopardise the value of the BBC brand”. It adds that adverts must “meet consumer expectations of the BBC brand” and “not compromise the BBC’s impartiality, editorial integrity and independence”.
In addition, the guidelines say that advertising by investment boards or political advertising is only permitted where approval has been given by the Advertising Governance Committee and the Advertising Standards Guardian.
The BBC did not respond when asked whether the relevant committees had approved the Saudi advertisements or whether the adverts would meet consumer expectations of the BBC brand.
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A BBC source insisted that editorial teams are completely separate from the commercial department and pointed to their extensive coverage of the takeover.
PIF acquired 80 per cent of Newcastle in October, while Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners and the Reuben brothers equally share the remaining 20 per cent.
The Premier League says it “received legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United” while Staveley insisted that the Saudi PIF is an “autonomous commercially driven investment fund”.
PIF declined to comment.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
