On 29 July 2020, game developer and esports tournament organiser Riot Games announced the cancellation of a sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia’s Neom megacity project announced just the day before. Under the deal, Neom was to have been a main partner of Riot’s popular League of Legends European Championship (LEC) for the rest of summer 2020. The company’s sudden turnaround followed a significant backlash among the esports community, with many fans raising concerns about Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record.
ALQST welcomes the LEC’s decision to cancel this sponsorship deal, which would have helped the Saudi authorities’ efforts to “sportswash” their human rights abuses. It calls on other companies to follow suit, particularly fellow esports company Blast Premier, which also announced a major sponsorship deal with Neom on 28 July.
Neom is a hugely expensive and technology-focused project, part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic development programme, and due to be built in Tabuk Province on the Red Sea coast of northwestern Saudi Arabia, close to the border of Jordan. Its early planning and development have already seen repeated human rights violations by the Saudi authorities, including the forced eviction and mass arrests of members of the Huwaitat tribe and the killing of tribe member Abdul-Rahim al-Huwaiti. These violations have taken place in the context of a broader crackdown on civic freedoms and peaceful dissent in Saudi Arabia since 2017.
Several global companies have been involved in the project’s planning. In June 2020, ALQST and 11 other human rights NGOs wrote an open letter to three management consulting firms believed to be providing consulting services for the project, calling on them to publicly condemn the violations being committed and reassess their involvement. Two of the companies, including McKinsey & Company, have responded, although without mentioning the violations in question or yet taking further action.
ALQST would like to remind companies that they have moral and legal responsibilities, under their own codes of conduct and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and that business dealings with the Saudi authorities risk direct or indirect involvement in grave human rights abuses.
ALQST urges all businesses, in the run-up to the G20 summit and G20 Business Summit (B20) later this year, not to turn a blind eye to the Saudi authorities’ egregious human rights violations for the sake of their commercial interests, and to place human rights at the centre of all dealings with the Saudi kingdom.
