Tom Brady Adds Sportswashing To His Impressive Résumé

Who says Tom Brady can't have it all? On top of the conflict of interest that comes with being both a part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders and a Fox Sports commentator, and in between his duties as "guy who says fuck and denigrates Birmingham City, the soccer club he co-owns," Brady has now signed up to do some good old fashioned sportswashing. On Monday, Brady announced that he will return to the football field for the—ugh—Fanatics Flag Football Classic, a three-team tournament set to be held in March of 2026 in Saudi Arabia.

That unholy trinity was announced during the Raiders' 20-9 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday Night Football, a game Brady attended as part of his ownership of the Raiders. Joining him in the announcement was Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority, whose stated mission is to promote and grow the country's entertainment sector, while its unstated mission is to make everyone associate Saudi Arabia with the pinnacle of sports and not with a whole lot of human rights abuses. So far, it appears that the GEA has been mostly successful, if the caliber of willing partners is to be believed: Brady and Co. join a luminary group that also features WWE, golf, tennis, and soccer. (Alalshikh was conveniently already in Las Vegas for this announcement, given that he was overseeing the Canelo Álvarez-Terence Crawford fight on Saturday as one of the fight's promoters, so we can add boxing to the list.)

The tournament will consist of three teams, coached by Pete Carroll, Sean Payton, and Kyle Shanahan, playing a round-robin group stage followed by a championship match. Joining Brady on the field will be serial bag-getter Saquon Barkley; Rob Gronkowski, the Scrappy-Doo to our fancy dog's Scooby; and a slew of other NFL players: CeeDee Lamb, Christian McCaffrey, Sauce Gardner, Myles Garrett, Brock Bowers, Maxx Crosby, Tyreek Hill, and Odell Beckham Jr. The announcement also revealed that athletes from other sports, as well as unnamed celebrities, will take part as well.

Speaking like a normal person and certainly not a newly minted ambassador for the Saudi regime, Brady said that he's "always admired the power of flag football, the fastest-growing sport in the world, and how it connects fans of all ages," and that "it felt like the perfect time for me to hit the field again and get my competitive juices flowing." While I do believe that Brady has been going nuts not playing in the NFL, I would love to hear how big his payout is for this stunt before I believe that he's doing it for the love of the game.

Given football's all-consuming greed, it's not exactly a surprise that it would eventually cozy up to Saudi Arabia, and flag football makes for a perfect segue into further partnership. The sport is joining the Olympics for the 2028 Los Angeles clusterfuck, and the lack of contact will allow for bigger names to participate in the offseason or, in Brady and Gronkowski's case, for retired stars to come back into the fray for a buck. To do some speculation, a successful event here could lead the GEA and the Public Investment Fund toward hosting an NFL regular-season game, given the league's expansion of that program to London, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Madrid, and Dublin. Beyond that, who knows? WWE just announced that WrestleMania 43 will take place in Riyadh, and the 2034 World Cup will take place in the country as well. Could a Super Bowl be far behind? That might be a bridge too far, but given the perfect chemistry of greed and self-interest in play here, it wouldn't be particularly shocking to see it within the next 10 or 15 years. If there's one thing that sports fans should bet on, it's Saudi Arabia's ever-encroaching efforts to associate itself with the pinnacle of sports, and not with dead journalists.