Doping row hits Paris countdown

This week marked another important milestone in Fifa’s love affair with Saudi Arabia. On Thursday, football’s global governing body announced that Aramco, the kingdom’s state oil company, had signed up to become a “major global partner” for the next four years.

Aramco joins the top table of Fifa sponsors, alongside long-term partners Adidas and Coca-Cola, and more recent addition Qatar Airways. The deal only runs to 2027, but with the men’s World Cup heading to Saudi Arabia in 2034, it seems safe to assume that the relationship is likely to last well into the next decade.

It comes just a week after the country’s sovereign wealth fund agreed to sponsor the Madrid Open, the Gulf state’s latest foray into tennis.

After Saudi Arabia’s aggressive (and expensive) attempt to disrupt the world of golf by building a new rival to the sport’s existing power structures, perhaps decision makers in the country have decided that it is easier — and cheaper — to work within the system rather than outside.

This week we’re looking at the crisis engulfing the sports world’s top anti-doping body, and the latest plans for the Chicago Bears new stadium mega-project. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

Chinese swimming row throws Wada into crisis

It’s been a bruising week for the World Anti-Doping Agency, better known as Wada. The Montreal-based body has been under fire since last weekend, when the New York Times and German TV channel ARD revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned drug in early 2020, but were then cleared to compete. Some went on to win medals at the Tokyo Olympics a year later.

China’s own anti-doping agency reported the results to Wada, but said they had been caused by accidental exposure. Public health officials say they found traces of the heart medication trimetazidine, which increases blood flow, in a spice jar in a hotel kitchen. Pandemic lockdowns made independent investigations impossible.

Witold Bańka, Wada president, told reporters this week there was “no credible way to dispute the contamination theory”, and that the agency had “interrogated every piece of evidence”. Wada’s legal and scientific experts then lined up to explain why the test results were consistent with accidental exposure, why athletes were not given automatic suspensions, and why any attempted legal challenge would have been doomed to fail.

China’s foreign ministry said this week it has a “zero tolerance” approach to doping, and blamed “inaccurate reporting”.

However, the incident has sparked outrage in some quarters. The US Anti-Doping Agency — commonly referred to as USADA — has led the charge, calling for Wada to be overhauled, while several Olympians have complained of double standards in the application of Wada’s own rules.

On Thursday, Wada bowed to pressure and brought in an independent prosecutor to examine the agency’s handling of the case. The probe is expected to last for two months.

But the move did nothing to placate USADA, which swiftly accused Wada of handpicking its own lawyer in a “circle the wagons exercise”. “By calling this an ‘independent’ investigation, Wada leadership is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” USADA said.

Trimetazidine has been in the headlines before, most notably when then 15-year old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for the substance during the 2022 Winter Games. She blamed a chopping board used by her grandfather to crush his medications, but was given a lengthy ban. Chinese swimmer Sun Yang was also given a brief suspension for taking the same drug, although his team doctor said it had been prescribed to treat a heart condition. He was later banned for several years for a separate doping violation.

All this comes just three months before the opening ceremony for Paris 2024. The city’s new aquatic centre is the only venue to be purpose built for this summer’s games. It already looks likely to have another accolade — as the focal point of an increasingly bitter global row over fairness in sport that is set to run and run.

Chicago Bears make $5bn pitch to the taxpayer

This week, the NFL’s Chicago Bears and the mayor of Chicago unveiled a stunning, roughly $5bn proposal for a new gridiron football stadium on the city’s banks of Lake Michigan. The plans are extensive, those behind them claim the city will get an $8bn economic boost through construction, while the completed project could generate another $456mn, annually, for the local economy.

The so-called Burnham Park Project, featuring a mix of green space and transit infrastructure, is the second big headline for the Bears this week. With the first pick in the 2024 NFL draft, the team nabbed the much-touted Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from the University of Southern California, Caleb Williams. 

The proposal has been met with scepticism by other government officials, including the state senate president and the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker. “I wonder if it’s a good deal for the taxpayers”, Pritzker told local media.  

To that end, the Bears have pledged to cover “more than $2bn” of the stadium costs, estimated to be about $3.2bn of the total sticker price of the project, and the team will apply for a $300mn loan from the NFL.

That leaves taxpayers covering roughly half of the total cost. The club is asking the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority for an additional $900mn in funding, which it says can be covered using an existing 2 per cent hotel tax, and public funding for the infrastructure improvements.

The Chicago proposal comes just a few weeks after Missouri residents voted down a sales tax measure that would have funded improvements to the home bases of the Kansas City Royals MLB club and the Super Bowl champions, Kansas City Chiefs. In that proposal, teams’ owners pledged a combined $1.3bn in private funds towards the estimated $2bn project.

Huge public-private stadium projects are considered both necessary and risky. For team owners — especially in the US where clubs are “franchises” that historically have moved from city to city — developing a new stadium is a means for developing more lavish hospitality. Benefits also include luring big-ticket events like the Super Bowl and World Cup (and the Eras Tours of the world), all generating more revenue. They’re also a sotto voce promise to keep a franchise in town, if all is approved.

One private equity executive who spoke with Scoreboard this week about the modern sports landscape, explained one reason for the venue improvement argument. The “in-home” experience — with high definition television and modern camera angles — “is getting better and better . .. so in-game has to get better and better”, they said.

On the other hand, the taxpayers may just say no.

Highlights

• For investors, North America is still the place to be, according to the co-founder of specialist fund Arctos. Ian Charles says that the predictable media income from the NFL, NBA and rival sports is more attractive than the bumpy, performance based revenue on offer in European football.

• DAZN is set to take legal action against the German football league over its handling of the current broadcast rights auction. The sports streamer has accused the DFL of awarding the best package of football matches to a rival who made a lower bid. DFL rejects the claims.

• Apple is the frontrunner to snap up streaming rights for Fifa’s revamped Club World Cup, which launches in the US next summer. According to the New York Times, traditional broadcasters have balked at Fifa’s asking price to show the new tournament.

• La Liga chief Javier Tebas wants to start staging Spanish football league matches in the US as soon as the 2025/26 season, he told Expansion newspaper.

Final Whistle

Americans sing the US national anthem before every single sporting event, which is quirky but let’s leave that aside for a moment. The important thing to discuss is that at this week’s first round NBA playoff game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Phoenix Suns, the R&B artist Sisqó did the honours of belting The Star-Spangled Banner. Did we know we needed a Sisqó version of the national anthem? Did we know he’s been living it up in Minneapolis? Did we further know that “The Thong Song” is in fact older than half the Wolves’ roster? Now we know.