Blood on the Basketball: NBA, UAE and Sudan Genocide

[John Ashworth]

Blood on the Basketball: The NBA Must End Its Deal With the UAE as the
Sudan Genocide Worsens

The UAE has been accused of supporting the Rapid Support Forces
paramilitary, which has committed some of the worst atrocities in
Sudan's three-year civil war.

Omer Ismail and John Prendergast
Jun 02, 2026
Zeteo

As the National Basketball Association (NBA) finals get underway, the
league faces several vexing problems, including how to stop teams from
tanking and players from betting. These issues pale in comparison,
however, to the commercial branding deal the league has forged with a
government – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – accused of supporting a
Sudanese militia committing some of the 21st century’s most heinous
race- and ethnicity-based human rights crimes.

Ironically, many NBA players have been civil and human rights leaders
for decades. During the Jim Crow era in the US, basketball players
like Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stood up
against the gross injustices of that time and advocated for civil
rights. More recently, NBA and WNBA players, including Maya Moore,
LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Jaylen Brown, advocated for racial
justice in America. Others have spoken out about the brutal tactics of
ICE agents.

The NBA and WNBA are now one degree of separation from one of the
worst cases of racial injustice in the world due to the largest
branding deal ever signed with a government by the two leagues. The
multi-year deal, announced in 2024, will reportedly generate an
estimated $500 million in ad revenue around the following components:
the mid-season basketball tournament named the Emirates NBA Cup, the
Emirates Air logo on a patch on jerseys of all NBA and WNBA referees,
and virtual Emirates branding projected onto the court during every
nationally televised NBA game. The New York Knicks, which will play in
the finals, have their own $30 million deal, resulting in Experience
Abu Dhabi patches on the team jerseys and warm-up jackets.

With their history of human rights advocacy, the dark side of this
partnership is one that most players probably don’t know about. While
the UAE consistently issues blanket denials of allegations that it
supports the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), there is
ample evidence from human rights groups, news organizations, and
others to the contrary.

It’s unlikely that Steph Curry knows that the UAE provides arms and
other support to a militia in Sudan that the United Nations says is
committing genocide. Genocide is a very specific crime. It is invoked
only when acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a group based on their nationality, ethnicity, race, or
religion. In the Sudanese case, it is racial and ethnic identity.

Angel Reese is probably not aware that, largely because of UAE
support, the war in Sudan has displaced nearly 14 million Sudanese
people, the largest number in the world. That means 14 million people
are homeless in part because of the drones, artillery, mortars, and
missiles that the UAE reportedly provides to its Sudanese militia
partner, which attacks targets often based on their racial and ethnic
backgrounds.

LeBron James would probably not have heard that in October 2025, as
the NBA Emirates Cup games were underway, the RSF, supported by the
UAE, overran the Sudanese city of El Fasher and killed somewhere
between 60,000 and 100,000 Sudanese civilians, including burning
people alive, again on the basis of their racial or ethnic identity.
And that it didn’t just happen overnight; the militia had laid siege
to the city for 500 days, attempting to starve the residents, while
the world looked on.

Caitlin Clark surely couldn’t have known that the United Nations says
that sexual violence in Sudan is “pervasive” and “systematic,” and
that the war there is the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis for women
and girls.”

Jaylen Brown is unlikely to have come across the fact that children
are extensively recruited and used as soldiers in Sudan’s civil war,
and that the primary perpetrator of child soldier recruitment is the
militia supported by the UAE.

NBA and WNBA players might be disincentivized to speak out about the
UAE’s role in these atrocities as they could be fined for conduct
detrimental to the league’s commercial interests.

But this is genocide, the world’s most heinous crime, one rooted in
racial domination and extermination. Players could at least raise
awareness of the plight of the Sudanese people. Some players might
even be willing to incur a financial penalty by calling on the UAE to
stop supporting the genocidal militia in Sudan.

Meanwhile, sports fans and others concerned with this outrage can
raise their voices and call on the NBA, WNBA, and New York Knicks to
end their brand relationships with the UAE, and demand that the UAE
end its military support for that genocidal militia in Sudan, a link
that is deeply antithetical to everything the players and leagues
stand for. Money not tainted with so much blood can come from other
sponsors.

Millions of Sudanese lives are at stake, and silence simply encourages
those responsible.

https://zeteo.com/p/blood-on-the-basketball-the-nba-must

END
______________________
John Ashworth

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+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)

PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya