A recent Financial Times cover story highlighted local Saudi Arabian success stories—baker chains such as Dopamine, mango farms in Jazan—and presented them as proof that Vision 2030 is paying off. Entrepreneurs, the report continues, now enjoy immediate permits, digital platforms, and better logistics. For many viewers, this is the sign that Saudi Arabia is modernizing and diversifying away from oil.
But under these congratulatory headlines is another reality: these corporate tales are all part of a pre-planned public relations campaign to present a vision of forward momentum. This well-articulated story has the effect of hiding the harsh reality, continuing human rights violations, structural repression, and the kingdom’s increased dependence on sportswashing to clean its global image.
As the world anticipates the 2034 FIFA World Cup, granted to Saudi Arabia in November 2024, it is essential to recognize these positive business profiles for what they are: a smoke screen. Fans of football, human rights activists, and the global community must not let bakeries and mango farms overshadow executions, border shootings, and suppression of dissent.
The PR Playbook: From Small Businesses to Stadiums
The FT article is in line with the wider Saudi strategy: overwhelm the international narrative with tales of triumph. In highlighting small businesses growing across the country, the kingdom positions itself as reforming, modern, and open. This is no coincidence—it is the same logic applied to sportswashing, in which big-ticket items such as Formula One, golf tournaments, and now the 2034 FIFA World Cup are used to reposition Saudi Arabia as progressive.
The kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which finances both domestic economic diversification and international sporting ventures, is at the center of such image-building. The same organization that puts billions into bakeries and logistics also controls Newcastle United, sponsors LIV Golf, and is investing heavily to ready Saudi Arabia for the World Cup. This is not development for its own sake—it is branding.
Repression Behind the Façade
For every bakery that opens up in Al-Ahsa, there are closed courtrooms where activists receive sentences without due process. For every mango farm expansion in Jazan, there are border regions where migrant workers are gunned down. Saudi Arabia’s cosmetic reforms cannot erase these abuses:
Mass Executions:
In 2024 and the first half of 2025, Saudi Arabia executed over 240 people, many for drug-related offences. According to Amnesty International, nearly 75% of those executed were foreign nationals, denied legal representation or consular support
Brutal Killings on the Border:
Human Rights Watch has found Saudi border guards killing hundreds of Ethiopian migrants. Survivors reported guards shooting at close range, at times querying victims which part of their body they would like to be shot.
Repression of Women’s Rights Activists:
Even with promises of reform, women who advocated for the right to drive and increased freedoms were arrested, tortured, and some are still under restrictions today.
Fatal Megaprojects:
Saudi Arabia’s signature Vision 2030 project, Neom, came at a catastrophic human toll. Human rights organisations put the estimated number of migrant workers who have died since the start of construction in 2017 at approximately 21,000, many under extreme temperatures and hazardous labor conditions.
The abuses reveal the emptiness of assertions that Vision 2030 is actual progress. Economic reforms exist, but they are for the regime’s power, not the people’s freedom.
FIFA’s Role in the Whitewash
In December 2024, FIFA officially confirmed Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 World Cup following a one-horse bidding process that brought instant outrage. Human rights groups branded the decision “reckless,” citing the threat of worker fatalities and curtailment of freedoms around the event (AP News).
Players themselves have spoken out. In October 2024, over 130 professional women players signed an open letter calling for FIFA to cancel its sponsorship contract with Saudi oil major Aramco, noting the kingdom’s record of repression and warning that global football was being used to prop up authoritarian branding.
The same contradictions resound loudly: FIFA boasts to be an advocate for inclusivity, sustainability, and equality. But in reality, it has rewarded a government that systematically kills foreigners, represses women, and accelerates the global climate emergency.
The Illusion of Progress
The FT article presents Saudi Arabia as an emerging country: small-town bakeries rising to greater national chains, local farmers cashing in on e-commerce, and SMEs aided by more streamlined regulations. These are real changes—but they are not the entire picture.
Progress for small businesses does not mean progress for small freedoms. Saudi Arabia can simplify business licenses in a single night, but it will not simplify legal safeguards, free speech, or equality before the law. It can fund logistics infrastructure, but won’t fund protecting migrant workers from lethal exploitation. It can make optimistic gestures about bakeries while carrying out hundreds in silence.
The selective modernization of Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with democracy; it is a matter of control. And the World Cup will be its crowning jewel, broadcast into billions of homes as evidence of a “new” Saudi Arabia.
Why Boycotting Matters?
The Saudi 2034 World Cup is not merely another sports event. It is a stage for the world on which the kingdom intends to wash its reputation, deflecting repression through spectacle. Boycotting is not about denying football; it is about refusing to allow the game to be used as propaganda.
Each supporter, each player, and each sponsor who boycotts Saudi Arabia 2034 is saying a word: football must bring people together in happiness and equality, not justify dictatorship and violence.
Be part of the Movement: Reject Saudi 2034
The mango farm and the bakery stories are not innocuous, happy stories. They are among the gloss that is used to deceive the world into believing that all is well, while repression increases. The World Cup hosting rights being awarded to Saudi Arabia in 2034 is the ultimate expression of this gloss, sportswashing on a mass level.
As supporters, activists, and world citizens, we can resist. Boycott the games. Pressure FIFA. Hold sponsors to account. Refuse to allow football to be hijacked by authoritarian image-making. Join the call: Reject Saudi 2034. Demand a World Cup that embodies the true spirit of football, freedom, fairness, and humanity.