This fall, the Barclays Center will open a new “premium, event-level hospitality space,” replacing what’s now called the Qatar Airways Club and formerly the Calvin Klein Courtside Club.
Surely it will come with a new sponsor, as do the latest spaces, known as Gallagher Terrace, Toki Row, Modelo Bridge, and JetBlue at the Key.
In doing so, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment’s principal owners, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, will be rid of a tainted sponsor they had inherited: state-owned Qatar Airways, associated with a repressive regime, which in 2018 became the official global airline partner of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center.
The sponsor, remarkably, has provoked little criticism. Still, it’s another example of #sportswashing, at one point even extending to Black History Month.
Qatar Airways VIP Entrance, Nov. 14, 2025. Photos by Norman Oder unless specified.
Tsai, while supporting social justice efforts in the United States, especially in Brooklyn, has faced criticism for his lockstep support for authoritarian China. (See the April 14, 2022, ESPN investigation, Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai is the face of NBA’s uneasy China relationship.)
That’s surely part of why his wife, Wu Tsai, now gets credit and the spotlight for their too-often-murky Social Justice Fund in Brooklyn.
Qatar’s hardly the only repressive country worthy of scrutiny. The Brooklyn Nets—and the rest of the NBA, notably the New York Knicks—also have embraced oil-rich Gulf states bent on #sportswashing. Despite limited pushback, it’s not unlikely investors from those countries may own slices of NBA teams.
For the Nets, it started in 2018, when Mikhail Prokhorov was the majority owner, the Tsais having acquired a 49% stake in 2017. “This marks the first major partnership between the airline and an NBA team or venue,” Qatar Airways announced in an Oct. 3, 2018, press release that, as far as I can tell, was not complemented by one from the arena.
“As part of the agreement, Barclays Center’s Courtside Club will become the Qatar Airways Club, and the airline will also receive branding on all courtside seats,” the airline announced. The VIP entrance, once sponsored by Calvin Klein, became the Qatar Airways VIP entrance.
Dec. 14, 2025
(NetsDaily in May 2021 pointed out that, “when the naming rights to the season ticket holders lounge went out for bid two years ago, Qatar Airways paid [arena company] BSE [Global] multiple times what Calvin Klein had.”)
“It has been an ongoing priority of the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center to expand our reach globally, and Qatar Airways helps us bring brand awareness to a dynamic new audience,” Brett Yormark, CEO of BSE Global, said in the press release.
That, of course, ignored the country’s human rights record. Remember, it’s a business.
“Qatar Airways holds an extensive global sports portfolio,” the airline noted, citing soccer teams from Germany (FC Bayern München AG), Italy (AS Roma), and Argentina (Boca Juniors), as well as a “groundbreaking sponsorship deal with FIFA,” the world governing body of “football” (aka soccer).
Since then, Qatar Airways, thanks to its sponsorship of the Nets/Barclays, gained a halo for social justice-aligned activities such as Black History Month, celebrating African American pioneers in aviation, and providing free books to further family literacy.
Qatar deserves scrutiny, as Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff put it in The Nation, June 21, 2022, The Tragic Absurdity of Qatar’s World Cup Sportswashing. The subheading summarized it: “Labor abuses, homophobia, corruption? Qatar and FIFA will use the men’s World Cup to put a happy gloss on it all.”
How Qatar Became a World Leader in Sportswashing, reported Democracy Journal in November 2022. Today, Amnesty International says of Qatar:
Migrant workers remained vulnerable to labour abuses and exploitation despite recent reforms. Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly continued to be tightly restricted. Religious minorities, women, children and LGBTI people continued to face discrimination in law and practice.
Few notice the cognitive dissonance involved in a repressive regime like Qatar sponsoring Black History Month events, as described below.
Or, perhaps, having Qatar Airways advertisements flash in the Barclays Center oculus as guests entered, on Nov. 14, 2025, for a Just Brooklyn Prize ceremony sponsored by the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund.
Notice the banner inside the arena, below the rectangular LED signage.
Note interior signage, below the central Qatar Airways sign, for the Social Justice Fund’s Just Brooklyn Prize. Nov. 14, 2025
If it’s ironic that the arena promotes Qatar while supporting social justice, well, that’s all part of being a “sports entertainment corporation.” To quote Matt Sullivan’s book on the Brooklyn Nets, there’s no “progress without profit.”
“Investing in sports is part of Qatar’s strategic power interests,” stated a Dec. 22, 2022, article, A global map of Qatar’s sponsorships in sports, from Play the Game, an initiative run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies that promotes democratic values in world sports.
The scale, said Play the Game, “is staggering,” citing “a clear strategy on the part of the Qatari regime to secure the autocratic state’s future by diversifying their economy and developing diplomatic relations, international trade agreements and generally strengthen their international networks.”
Beyond Qatar Airways, other state-owned entities involved in sponsorships are the telecommunications company Ooredoo and Qatar National Bank.
Qatar Airways’ investments have been mainly in Europe, as shown in the graphic below, and otherwise outside of North America. So the sponsorships involving the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center suggest a brand extension.
From Play the Game
Play the Game senior analyst Stanis Elsborg called Qatar’s sports investments not just a political strategy, but “also a practice of image laundering to gloss over an appalling human rights record.”
Surely those enjoying the Qatar Airways Club pay little mind to those issues.
From the Brooklyn Nets:
The Qatar Airways Club sets the new standard of luxury, from the wall-mounted flat-screen television to the elegant dining experience and sleek bars.
Barclays Center’s premier hospitality area gives fans an up-close view of the Brooklyn Nets on the arena’s exclusive event level….
Your experience begins with access to the Qatar Airways VIP Entrance, followed by a private elevator ride down to the event level. Enjoy cocktails at the bar and Barclays Center’s finest, all-inclusive culinary options, including a dessert bar and snacks for the game.
Michael Mudd, a former executive vice president of global corporate affairs for Kraft Foods, in a March 16, 2013, essay for the New York Times, wrote trenchantly about the sponsorship business:
Next time you hear of a big food or beverage company sponsoring an after-school physical activity program in your community, you can be sure they’ll say it’s to show “our company’s concern for our kids’ health.” But the real intent is to look angelic while making consumers feel good about the brand and drawing attention away from the unhealthful nature of the company’s products. “Posing for holy cards,” as one of my colleagues used to put it.
Dec. 8, 2025
Soon after the sponsorship began, the Nets—astoundingly, but not so astutely—let Qatar Airways piggyback on Black history. Brooklyn Nets Celebrate Black History Month With New Content Series The Untold, the team announced Feb. 1, 2019.
(That, again, was when Prokhorov was the main owner.)
One game with specific Black History Month elements would be “presented by Qatar Airways, the Official Global Airline Partner of the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center, who will highlight stories of seven Black aviation pioneers during the night.”
For $5 (or best offer), you can even buy a Brooklyn Nets Black History Month towel, with the Qatar Airways sponsorship, on eBay.
Qatar Airways and the Brooklyn Nets Partner to Throw “Back to School” Party at Barclays Center, the Nets announced Sept. 30, 2019:
On Saturday, September 21, Qatar Airways and the Brooklyn Nets held a back-to-school party at Barclays Center for approximately 100 children from MS 354. The elementary school-aged children from Brooklyn were joined by Brooklyn Nets players Spencer Dinwiddie, Dzanan Musa and Theo Pinson. As the Official Global Airline Partner of the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center, Qatar Airways is thrilled to be giving back to the children of its host community.
In 2021, Qatar Airways, as shown in the photo below, was still sponsoring the Black History Month celebration. That was relatively early in the Tsais’ full ownership, which they completed in September 2019, shortly before the pandemic, but after the announcement of the Social Justice Fund.
Photo from Brooklyn Nets website. Note Qatar Airways logo bottom left.
According to the 2021 Aviation Pioneer Spotlight Presented by Qatar Airways, the sponsor partnered with the Nets “to highlight African American pioneers in aviation and space.” Below is an excerpt.
Apparently, the airline is no longer involved.
More recently, the Nets wisely worked with The Lay Out, a more local and authentic partner focused on Black Brooklyn, to bring “its signature family reunion vibes” (to quote BK MAG (owned by Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment) to honor Black History Month.
A somewhat promotional March 28, 2026, article in Andscape, How Nets Unite turns Barclays Center into a reflection of Brooklyn, suggested that new promotions, under the Nets Unite platform, help fans feel seen:
“Nets Unite is our platform that celebrates the rich culture, heritage and diversity of Brooklyn,” Jackie Wilson, senior vice president of social impact at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, told Andscape. “The goal is to make sure every resident of Brooklyn sees themselves in our programming, our people and our initiatives.”
Wilson said Nets Unite connects the team’s community-themed nights throughout the season — from Black History Month and AAPI Heritage Games to Pride, each designed to spotlight what makes Brooklyn unique.
Well, if they can afford the ever-rising ticket prices. “However people come to Barclays Center is fine,” a Nets Unite spokesperson, somehow granted anonymity for a self-promotional quote, told Andscape. “They might come for the basketball. They might come for [New York Liberty mascot] Ellie [the Elephant]. But it’s that community vibe that keeps them coming back.”
Well, a good number were coming even when Qatar Airways was behind it, so maybe scarce opportunities for sports entertainment have their own gravity.
Relatedly, Nets Unite recently organized an HBCU Homecoming event honoring Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Note how it was presented by the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company of New York. Again, no progress without profit.
Qatar Airways has also sponsored Read Across Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Nets’ literacy initiative, which “brings engaging, community-based reading experiences to neighborhoods across Brooklyn, highlighting the importance of literacy, reading, and equitable access to books for all children and families.”
Events in the 2024-25 school year included partnerships with the Bedford-Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center, the Read Alliance (in Bushwick), World Read Aloud Day (in Sunset Park), and a Book Fair at BSE Global’s Give Back Day, with 600 books donated.
Qatar Airways also sponsored Read Across Brooklyn in 2023.
Brooklyn Nets and Qatar Airways Surprise Fans at JFK, a Jan. 24, 2019, press release announced, regarding a charitable/promotional event a month earlier:
As part of the Nets’ annual “Season of Giving” initiative, players Caris LeVert and Ed Davis were on hand to greet travelers in the Qatar Airways terminal at JFK. The players posed for pictures and signed autographs as 300 co-branded Qatar Airways and Brooklyn Nets basketballs and drawstring bags were distributed.
Similarly, a Dec. 30, 2019, press release, Qatar Airways & the Brooklyn Nets Partner to Spread Holiday Cheer at JFK, this one involving different players, and the gifting of over 300 co-branded teddy bears and co-branded winter beanies.
Qatar Airways has also sponsored most, but not all, of the episodes of “From ___ to Brooklyn,” a mini-documentary series about various players’ origin stories, with the blank filled in by their hometowns.
(While the second most recent episode, regarding Noah Clowney, is sponsored by Qatar Airways, the most recent one, on Coach Jordi Fernandez, is not.)
They’re pretty well done, though, of course, promotional.
Then again, the market surely has diminished for the origin stories of players like Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith, Dennis Schroder, Cam Thomas, and Royce O’Neale, because they’re no longer on the Nets.
The N.B.A. Is Partnering With a Repressive Regime, Play the Game’s Elborg wrote Sept. 25, 2024, in the New York Times, pointing out how the league’s embrace of social justice “starkly contrasts with its recent partnership with Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates — a nation accused of human rights violations.”
Not only were two preseason games held that October, but the NBA also has a partnership with the flagship airline Emirates, which sponsors the in-season tournament, now called the Emirates NBA Cup. Now, referees in the NBA, WNBA, and G-League wear an Emirates patch on their jerseys.
The United Arab Emirates, Elborg noted, was even worse than the much-criticized Qatar, ranking just 18 out of 100 on a Freedom House Index, with Qatar at 25, also very low. (China gets a score of 9.)
Like Qatar, the UAE and its companies sponsor major sports worldwide, including the FIFA World Cup, soccer teams, the four Grand Slams in tennis, and more. Ever seen the Experience Abu Dhabi (the UAE capital) patch on the New York Knicks’ uniforms?
In a Nov. 19, 2024, posting, The NBA Risks ‘Sportswashing’ UAE Violations, Human Rights Watch’s Leila Saad wrote:
The Emirates NBA Cup held its first game on November 12 in the US city of Detroit after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosted two preseason games in October 2024 in Abu Dhabi. These games are part of the Emirati government’s efforts to distract from the many human rights violations it is committing at home and abroad, including its alleged supply of weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.
…The NBA should be aware that the UAE hosts high profile sporting, entertainment, and cultural events to promote a public image of openness and tolerance at odds with the government’s rampant systemic human rights violations.
Inside the Barclays Center, Dec. 8, 2025
Rwanda is ruled by a brutal dictator who has had some policy successes and the most incredible PR. For whatever reason, Paul Kagame has been particularly embraced by the NBA.
The Clippers’ reported $300 million jersey patch deal was negotiated by a team based in the United Arab Emirates, a country which has its own logo on the NBA referees’ shirts. The UAE is a global crossroads of money laundering, arms deals, and offshore Russian money, with a history steeped in sex trafficking and BCCI.
In a Nov. 6, 2025, New York Times essay, Sudan Is in Free Fall, three authors lamented the massacres there and suggested that pressure on the United Arab Emirates could end the carnage in Sudan, suggesting it come from “American leaders… and behemoth companies like the N.B.A. and Disney, both of which have business partnerships with the Emirates.”
After all, the UAE is—though it denies it— “a key supplier of arms to the paramilitary forces,” the authors said, adding:
Likely no organization holds more potential sway than the National Basketball Association. The league’s partnership with the Emirates includes preseason games in Abu Dhabi and an in-season basketball tournament, the Emirates N.B.A. Cup… The league should make clear this will be the last Emirates N.B.A. Cup unless the country stops supporting the militants.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, in a July 11 column headlined Let’s Name the Country That’s Financing Mass Murder, called Sudan “probably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis right now.”
“But what American, European and United Nations officials won’t say openly is that the power behind the R.S.F. is the United Arab Emirates,” he wrote, noting that a firm tied to UAE also has invested in the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
While Kristof didn’t mention the NBA, some commenters did. One wrote:
I have had the peculiarly American experience of watching an NBA Basketball game featuring the Portland Trail Blazers and their star small forward, Deni Avdija. Avdija is a terrific player, born in Israel to an Israeli Jewish mother and an Israeli Muslim father. People were booing Avdija, because he represents Israel to them, I guess, and because that’s the trendy thing to do these days. Meanwhile, advertisements for “Emirates” were all over the court, as they are for almost any sporting event you can find in the USA.
Another cited the cognitive dissonance between the NBA, with a majority of Black American players, and its partnership with the UAE, involving sponsorships, patches, and promotions:
Is league commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA players association aware of the connection between the Emirate government and the deadly violence against Black Africans in Sudan?
And another, in response to the suggestion to “Start with pressuring [European] soccer teams to drop ‘Emirates’ from their shirts,” wrote: “Also Knicks and NBA.”
In an Oct. 16, 2025, article headlined Inside the billion-dollar Middle East race to control the future of basketball, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst noted that Knicks owner James Dolan and NBA commissioner Adam Silver had been brought together by “His Excellency Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who has spent the past decade developing relationships and directing growing investment dollars to bring top stakeholders in the sport to Abu Dhabi.”
Not only are teams looking for new worldwide fans, but they’re also seeking new minority partners—so-called sovereign wealth funds looking for investment opportunities.
Guess what: Abu Dhabi made a deal with Dolan’s Sphere Entertainment to build and operate a new venue, inspired by the Las Vegas Sphere, for a new venue in the UAE, and maybe more in the Middle East and North Africa.
More NBA deals are in process and, perhaps, an investment in the planned NBA-branded European league.
The article did note that the NBA has been criticized for partnering with repressive regimes, while the NBA relies on narrow defenses and rhetoric about “the power of sport.”
Those sovereign wealth funds are getting into the game. Mubadala Capital, part of Abu Dhabi’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has an investment from the private equity firm TWG Global, which later bought a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers at an astounding $10 billion valuation.
Photo by Norman Oder, Dec. 8, 2025
Qatar actually came first. In 2023, the Qatar Investment Authority bought 5% of Monumental Sports, the parent of the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals.
Will D.C. lead the league in ‘sportswashing’?, the Washington Post asked in a July 7, 2023, editorial. After the NBA’s Silver said investments were permitted, but not influence, the editorial board scoffed:
That distinction might be meaningful to Mr. Silver, but Qatar probably doesn’t want a say in the Wizards’ draft choices; it likely wants the goodwill rub-off factor – in proximity to all the powerful people in Washington – that comes with a Monumental alliance.
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel led to a new focus on Qatar,
In a Nov. 28, 2023, article in the right-leaning Tablet, What Yale Has in Common With Hamas, Armin Rosen suggested that “Qatar is buying the Ivy League, along with every other institutional bauble in America, from the Brookings Institution, to Foreign Policy magazine, to the NHL and the NBA.”
Qatar Airways VIP Entrance, Barclays Center
Qatar, as MidEast Journal pointed out on March 30, 2025, plays a complicated role.
It’s a security partner with the United States, it has financed Hamas-run Gaza (under the encouragement of the Israeli government, as the New York Times reported), and it harbors various financiers of terrorism and has been accused of directly funding terrorist groups. Yet it has also been a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas.
Though Rosen’s Tablet article focused on higher education, he offered a perplexing account of the Wizards’ investment:
In the weeks after Oct. 7, it was oddly difficult to get anyone from the NBA, NHL, or Monumental itself to confirm that the deal had closed—the leagues and Monumental either had nagging doubts about their controversial new business partners, or else they didn’t want to provide an opening for outside actors who might attempt to stop the sale.
So, #sportswashing by default?
It was a tricky time. As David Rubenstein wrote Aug. 7, 2025, Qatar Told Hamas to Keep the Hostages: “on the afternoon of October 7, 2023, while Hamas’s massacre was ongoing, Qatar condemned Israel,” saying it was “solely responsible for the ongoing escalation.”
Regarding investment in DC, Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) tried to press the issue. In a Jan. 3, 2024, Washington Times essay headlined Monumental antisemitism: Qatar and DC sports, he criticized the investment:
If a regime responsible for funding Hamas is allowed to profit from professional sports in the United States, then the organizations that allow it — the NHL, the NBA, Monumental — are complicit in funding terrorism and making their fans complicit as well.
Here’s Bergman’s Oct. 27, 2023, letter to Leonsis about the Qataris’ goals, Monumental’s Oct. 30, 2023, response, and the NBA’s Oct. 30, 2023, response to Bergman, stating “we do not agree with or endorse every political system, law, or policy in the more than 200 countries and territories where we operate or engage with NBA fans.”
Bergman, in his response, charged the league with hypocrisy:
For starters, the NBA has chosen to make conspicuous political statements in recent years—including on players’ jerseys—and the league has been quite vocal about its commitments to social justice. How does that square with the decision to welcome into the NBA’s ownership ranks a country where homosexuality is illegal, where statements critical of Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani are also punishable with prison time, where foreign journalists have been detained on mere suspicion of negative coverage, and tens of thousands of migrant workers died while working in searing heat and unsafe conditions to help the wealthy emirate build stadiums for the World Cup?
Interestingly enough, today Qatar is something of a U.S. ally, or, at least, seen by Iran as an antagonist.
Could a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund invest in the Brooklyn Nets and Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, or the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden? We shouldn’t rule it out.
After all, Madison Square Garden Sports is considering spinning off the Knicks and the New York Rangers to “further create long-term value for shareholders.”
As NetsDaily writer Net Income (aka Bob Windrem) snarked in June, “After the Knicks are spun off from the rest of MSG in the next couple of months, [owner James Dolan will] sell a piece to a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund. Watch.”
“You’ll see,” Leonsis told the Washington Post on Nov. 8, 2023. “I believe other teams and other leagues will all be embracing pension funds, college endowments, university endowments, and sovereign wealth funds as investors, as a part of the tapestry of their investment base.”
They need the bucks, and a minority owner lets them do what they want, gaining benefits and a halo from association.
Note the Qatar Airways wrap on the in-house video screen at the Barclays Center,
In Brooklyn, after all, a 15% investment from the Koch family—notorious right-wing funders whose late patriarch fought climate change, diminished health care, supported tax cuts for the rich, and hobbled unions—made barely a ripple.
Yes, I argued that it was a distinction merely in degree, given that #sportswashing began long ago, with past owners.
Investment from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the United Arab Emirates might seem more fraught, but the NBA has already been softened up with the Qatar Airways Club and the Experience Abu Dhabi patch.
After all, to quote one observer after the Koch investment surfaced: “And what is the spirit of the Nets, other than making lots and lots of money?”
