COLUMN: Sportwashing 101: How Taylor Townsend unwittingly became the Poster Child for Saudi Arabia’s PR machine

I’ve written in depth about sportwashing before, but only today—when I read the Taylor Townsend story—did I realize I forgot the best part.

Let’s back up a sec.
Taylor Townsend is a tennis player on the women’s WTA Tour. She’s a very good one, currently ranked 142nd in the world (and rising, after an injury-filled year) in singles and…wait for it…a well-deserved number 1 in the world in doubles. So she’s the real deal. And I’ll freely admit that I like her as a player. I like watching her. I think it’s very cool that she’s achieved her greatest wins over the past few years as a young mom. All good stuff. Enter Townsend’s trip to Saudi Arabia for last year’s WTA Tour Finals.

This week in Clay, an interview was published in which Townsend claimed that, nah, women in Saudi Arabia aren’t treated badly. In fact, she said, it’s pretty sweet there for them.

From the piece:

This is a load of horsecrap, to use a technical legal term.

Here are the realities of life for women in Saudi Arabia: women cannot marry, travel, or sometimes even leave prison without the permission of a male guardian. They are still subject to discriminatory laws in matters of divorce, inheritance, and child custody. Public space is policed—literally—by religious authorities. “Guardianship” isn’t a quaint cultural practice; it’s state-sanctioned control over adult women’s lives. And while some reforms have been made in recent years—yes, women can now drive—those freedoms exist in a system where dissent can mean jail time, and where those who speak out, especially women’s rights activists, have been imprisoned or tortured.

As to the Saudi-funded WTA programs Townsend mentions, sure, they’re excellent. Paid maternity leave for tennis players? Fertility treatments? That’s progressive by any sporting body’s standards.

But (*cradles skull*) this is the entire point of sportwashing. It, by definition, washes. What it washes away are societal evils through high-visibility, high-dollar investment. So, if we dismember a journalist, we pay a soccer star a lot of money and it’s all good.

If we execute dissidents, we host a Formula One Grand Prix, a heavyweight boxing match, or the FIFA World Cup. We buy the prestige, and in return, the headlines shift. The ugly truth becomes a pleasant tourist brochure. The most disturbing and dangerous part of the Taylor Townsend situation is twofold:

First, she has no idea she’s being used as a Saudi pawn. That’s understandable—entirely not her fault. She gets to go to Saudi to play in a major year-end championship. And much as anyone hitting the streets of Pyongyang on an Air Koryo tour, you see what you see—you see? The hotels are spotless, the security is friendly, the events are lavish. No one is showing you the political prisons or the courtrooms where women are sentenced for protesting.

Second—and far more importantly—this is the real danger of sportwashing. It’s not just the WTA holding out to the world that the people behind the Saudi Public Investment Fund are so great. It’s when the players themselves become the mouthpieces.

No one who follows tennis closely believes a word WTA leadership says about “values” or “principles” or pretty much anything anymore (thanks Steve Simon!). They know the WTA will sell the Finals to the highest bidder, even if that bidder’s human rights record is on fire. But fans? Aspiring young players? Some media outlets? They listen to what the top athletes in the game say. Which, again, is the entire point of all of this.

Because here’s the magic trick: a governing body defending its Saudi payday sounds like business. A world-class player gushing about how wonderful life is for women in Saudi Arabia sounds like the truth.

And it’s not just tennis. The LIV Golf tour’s creation and merger with the PGA? Same playbook. Cristiano Ronaldo’s Saudi Pro League deal? Same playbook. WWE wrestling in Jeddah? Same playbook. Each time, you bring in an admired athlete or performer, you wrap them in luxury, you capture the soundbite—and you broadcast it to the world.

What we’re watching is not a tennis match or a golf tournament. It’s a billion-dollar PR campaign dressed up as sport.

Townsend’s comments aren’t just her personal opinion—they’re an asset, the kind that money can’t buy directly. (Although, if you pay for the tournament and the maternity program, you can get it indirectly.)

And here’s the thing: I believe her when she says she didn’t see anything negative. That’s how these trips work. You don’t walk past a women’s rights protest. You don’t get invited to a prison visit. You’re not going to overhear a conversation about a dissident’s trial while sipping your latte in the player lounge.

But when a country’s government is spending hundreds of millions to rehabilitate its global image through sport, you have to ask: rehabilitate it from what?

The answer is: from the realities they work very hard to keep you from seeing.

The tragedy here isn’t just that the WTA leadership took the money. It’s that now, through the words of one of the most watchable and likable players in the game, that money is paying real dividends. The image is shifting. The whitewash is setting.

Taylor Townsend’s backhand may be her weapon on court, but off court she just handed Saudi Arabia a gift-wrapped PR victory. Not because she’s malicious—because she’s human, and humans believe what they see. But what she saw was a stage set, and what she didn’t see is the point. Sportwashing doesn’t need you to lie; it just needs you to repeat the part of the story you were shown. And in this game, the scoreboard isn’t about sets or titles—it’s about who controls the narrative.