If there was ever any doubt that the fortunes of professional sport were increasingly tied in to the general fortunes of the world economy, last week’s financial news from Dubai should settle those doubts once and for all. ‘Dubai’s attempt to become a financial and entertainment metropolis, with a special emphasis on hosting elite sporting events took a dramatic backward step as news of the state owned leisure company, Dubai World pleaded for a ‘repayment holiday’ on its $80 billion debt package.

Needless to say the world money markets were not impressed. Whether this is good news or bad news for sport and for the world economy generally is open for debate. One definitely needs one’s dialectical thinking cap on to decide whether the hugely ambitious building projects, (more than 400 projects worth more than $300 billion) is a step forward for the human race or a step back. ‘There is no doubting that the projects completed and those currently stalled, are brash monuments to global capitalism in its worst manifestation. The mega infrastructure plans are all about Dubai becoming a centre of world finance capital to match that of Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and perhaps one day the old established centres of London, New York and Frankfurt. ‘

Owen Gibson describes in the Saturday Guardian 28/11/09 just how ambitious the ruling sheikhs in Dubai have become.

“Just this year, the world class 25,000 capacity Dubai Sports city cricket stadium was opened with great fanfare, the latest stage in a drive to attract the world’s best cricket teams to the region. The sport’s governing body, the ICC, was persuaded to move there from the historic environs of Lord’s in 2005 by the favourable tax rates on offer, in a move that at the time seemed to embody the shifting sands of the global sports world.”

The chickens may be about to come home to roost! Gibson continues…

“It was further envisaged as the first of four stadiums to be completed as part of the wider Dubai Sports City development , with a 60,000 capacity football stadium, a 5,000 capacity hockey ground and an indoor arena for 10,000 to follow. Needless to say, all these grandiose constructions were being put up by very poorly paid Asian workers who shared none of the high living of the permanent residents of Dubai and the other Gulf Emirates. Guest workers would better be described as slave workers. It might also be added that Dubai women remain very much in the shadows of this new Las Vegas come Disneyland.”

Gibson concludes:

“the development companies, including the now embattled government funded Nakheel property group, recognised that celebrities and sport stars were a short-cut to global recognition as it sought to attract global investors for grand building projects and turbo charge its transformation into a tourism and business hotspot.”

As well as cricket, Dubai has been targeting golf, tennis, horse racing and football. And as an added incentive to the world’s sporting elites, the top sporting stars get knockdown prices on flashy accommodation so long as they promote the new developments to their mates. It all sounds very tacky and OTT. Anything that attracts the Beckham’s and Co just has to be suspect.

But before we get all snobby and traditional about how we want our premier sporting events delivered, it is worth considering the bigger picture. We need a sense of historical perspective when trying to get our dizzy heads around what Dubai is all about. Yes, it’s crass and shallow and represents everything that the world does not need right now – yet more Hollywood fantasy built on a mountain of debt. Yet it does also represent a profoundly secular development. Mammon triumphing over Mohammed. Dubai is unrestrained capitalism and as such, cuts like a knife through centuries of feudal obscurantism that to this day clings on in far too many capitals of the region.

Along with the fantasy hotels and pleasure islands, might also come schools, universities and critical thinking. Beyond the shiny towers and playgrounds for the nouveaux riche, can come a reawakening of the ‘golden age’ of an Arabia where Arabic scholars led the world in many fields including mathematics, science, architecture and the arts; an Arabia that pioneered algebra while Europe languished in disease ridden mud huts. The Arabs are not ‘the other’ the West likes to portray them as, but very much a part of the human story, and if Dubai and the other Emirates represent the first stirrings towards reconnecting with their grand history then it should be welcomed rather than despised.

The greatest critic of capitalism, Marx himself, understood very clearly the revolutionary nature of capitalism, with its propensity to cut through centuries of feudal traditions, and if the Middle East is in need of anything, it is the need to sweep away the dead weight of the past. Mullahs and sheikhs will vehemently disagree. Dubai is not out of the woods yet. But if it recovers, and pursues its dream of a sporting mecca, then we will have to learn to put away our Euro-centrism and accept it as just another piece of the global capitalist jigsaw. We can only hope that when all parts of the planet have shaken off their feudal chains and are fully locked into the rapacious capitalist juggernaut, that something more rational than corporate casino capitalism will emerge. Until that bright dawn, it’s forward to a hundred Dubai’s!