![There Is No Smoke without [The Land of] Fire](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58931e136b8f5b21e08707fb/1491490421215-ZRX2KJZUWWCWJ6NVH7DG/Atletico-Madrid-Home-Away-Img2.jpg)
It is a known fact that football shirts are a great marketing tool, as well as significant advertising and image booster.
Players and fans become 'Live' advertisements. This kind of advertising works. In 1999, when Bayern Munich, AC Milan and Hapoel Haifa won their league's championships with the Opel logo on their shirts, the German company’s car sales increased enormously. Nowadays, we are seeing more and more non-commercial entities buying the most sought after advertising spaces in football. One of these groups is the state of Azerbaijan.
In 2013 Atletico Madrid signed a sponsorship agreement with the Ministry of Tourism of Azerbaijan, worth 12 million euros. In addition to the sponsorship printed on the club’s various shirts, the first deal, which was signed for a year and a half, included a great strategic move, which connected the club and country.
Atletico held an official visit to Baku and managed a training project to nurture young local players. Atletico's professional success last season, which ended with the Spanish Championship and a Champions League final, led to an extension of the contract and further cooperation between the parties.
This move is part of a sweep of Azeri investments in international sport. Alongside Atletico are French side RC Lens, Sheffield Wednesday from England, and starting next season, SS Lazio (transaction estimated at 40 Million Euros), playing with the slogan Azerbaijan- Land of Fire proudly displayed on their shirts. Each of these transactions involved Hafiz Mammadov, an Azeri oligarch, who also happens to own RC Lens and FC Baku, as well as being a shareholder in Atletico Madrid and Porto. At the same time, he also serves as the Chairman of Baghlan, an Azeri oil conglomerate, which gives him access to substantial financial resources, as he is responsible for brokering contracts with Azeri football clubs.
Mammadov is not alone. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, SOCAR, has been financing the Georgian Football Federation since 2012, and recently signed a deal with UEFA for a vast sponsor for all official matches. Reports indicate that SOCAR will pay UEFA 80 million Euros over four years. The more observant among you may have noticed the logo of the company that appeared in a loop every two minutes in the last matchday of the Euro 2016 Qualifiers. Russia has a similar deal with Gazprom, the sponsor of Zenit St. Petersburg, FC Schalke 04 and one of UEFA's main sponsors.
In general, Azerbaijan has decided to invest in sports dramatically and use it as a 'shadow' ambassador and a significant source of PR. They host the European Games this summer (a sort of Olympics for European countries only), in 2016, they will host the a Formula 1 Grand Prix, in 2020 the Euro quarter-final, and Azerbaijan is now working on an application to host the Olympics in Baku in 2024, after being denied twice, in 2016 and 2020.
The efforts and the amounts invested are inspiring and definitely help the sports, but when you look at the attitude of Azerbaijan towards its residents and citizens, you start to understand what these investments are trying to hide, and what they are trying to cover up.
Recently, reports have been emerging of severe restrictions on human rights and freedom of expression in the country. The organisation "Reporters Without Borders" has been campaigning against the state, under the slogan: "Do you know who Atletico Madrid's sponsor really is?".
Azerbaijan is ranked 160 out of 180 countries in terms of freedom of the press. Nearly 10 million people live in the country, but there are only five independent newspapers. Critical journalists and bloggers are sent to prison and isolation, and if that is not enough, in the past year adopted legislation which further restricts fundamental freedoms, such as a ban on freedom of association, approval of the use of torture in interrogations, executions for political reasons, ratification of almost automatic convictions enforced, and the list goes on. For the presidential election in October 2013, the incumbent President Ilham Iliev (former CEO of SOCAR, ironically) was re-elected for a third term, with 84.5 per cent of the vote. Democracy at its best.
Along with human rights violations, Azerbaijan has hostile relations with neighbouring Armenia, following a territorial dispute concerning Nagorno-Karabakh province, which has arisen since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early '90s. Azerbaijan is very jealous of the region and is not willing to cooperate and discuss the subject with Armenia.
The use of this form of sports is familiar. In 2022, the World Cup will be played in Qatar, a country in which human rights are violated daily and where workers building the stadia for the tournament are being killed at an alarming rate. Football and the World Cup should hide these facts, and Qatar, with its unlimited oil money, has paid impressive presenters (Zidane, Guardiola), and there are rumours that members of FIFA have also been bribed too. Purchases of Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and the name of Arsenal's home stadium, are other examples of the phenomenon of buying influence and improving the image of the Gulf, through football.
You have to understand the method of the Azeri "Land of Fire"campaign. Clubs like Sheffield Wednesday and Lens are classic targets for Azeri money. Both have a relatively large fan base, but also enormous debts, which makes them economically dependent on massive sponsorship agreements, like the one proposed by the Azeri Ministry of Tourism. The same is true of Atletico, which despite its recent successes, has accumulated huge debts of 84 million pounds in unpaid taxes. This alone makes the club vulnerable and a 'hot' item for the investment policy of the Azeri Oil-Sheikhs.
In July 2014, members of "Land of Fire" contacted the Argentinian and South American champions, San Lorenzo de Almagro, with a tempting offer –of support of around four million euros. The proposal was made to the Buenos Aires club during discussions regarding the transfer of one of the team's young stars, Angel Correa, to Atletico de Madrid.
San Lorenzo was preparing to take part in the Club World Cup in Morocco, and the Azeris saw this as an opportunity for global exposure for the international marketing campaign for tourism in the country. After the Azeri representatives sought to incorporate a clause, which states that "A person of Armenian origin, will not be able to take a managerial position at the club," Matthias Lammens, president of San Lorenzo, rejected the deal outright, claiming that he is of Armenian origin. Lammens is not Armenian at all, but is in fact close to the Armenian community of Buenos Aires. "I am pleased to see that San Lorenzo is a pioneer in refusing generous budget proposals, by saying that not everything has a price, and not everything is a product to be bought", he stated just after.
Like Mammadov, San Lorenzo is also not alone. After the failed talks with the Argentine club, the Azeris approached Peñarol of Uruguay. The requirement to ban people of Armenian descent from holding positions in the club was also a part of these talks. To the Azeri's bad luck, two board members of the largest club in Uruguay are of Armenian descent, leading the club to make a public statement: "No matter the size of the organisation making the offer, no one will force bigotry, racism and discrimination on the club¨. In contrast to European clubs, Peñarol and San Lorenzo showed strong values and ideology.
Football is an essential tool in Azerbaijan’s marketing effort. It uses it as an external marketing tool, to hide the human rights violations at home.
Think of a child who receives a gift of Atletico's shirt with the "Land of Fire" logo. Azerbaijan becomes a favourable country for him, a country to be visited and embraced, and more than that - it helps people all over the world and contributes to the team he loves. His father might understand the implications, but the child will grow up and life will continue, and with no protests and statements like those from Matthias Lammens and his colleagues from Montevideo, Azerbaijan will continue to use smokescreens and mask interests its territorial and interior issues in the country, through costly sports investments which blur perceptions. This is exactly how you buy influence.
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