The realpolitik of it is that Johnson some weeks ago went to the Saudis hat in hand asking for oil after they've stopped responding to phone calls from POTUS.
Last year:
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.
The takeover of the club was of course completed shortly afterwards. As were the weapons sales.
As for the NSO, it is rather likely that the UK government itself is a client. In fact taking all of that into account it isn't unlikely that the UK government is more than just a customer and was already aware of being "hacked". But that's all I'm going to say about that.
the sale has been stalled for more than a year at that point , the league had decided arbitrarily to put a fitness check and delay(not reject) the deal. Roman, usmanov (minority holder ) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund are current owners of major clubs before Saudi Arabia .
The stalling and later approval has nothing to do with concerns of sportswashing (PL has sold out any morality they had long before then). The block and later approval was mostly because Qatar was pissed .
Qatar owns PSG , hosting 2022 World Cup and most importantly owns lucrative PL broadcast rights in Middle East.
beIN with Saudi government informal support has been streaming matches illegally. Complicating this Qatar for last 4/5 years has been pretty much isolated in Middle East and kicked out of many forums in unrelated diplomatic fights.
In the end Saudi paid 1Billion pounds to Qatar to settle that dispute before Newcastle could be bought.
Sovereign/government influence peddling and involving in sports clubs is nothing new. Real Madrid has benefited a lot over the years , west ham got a brand new stadium for nothing , even in the U.S. favorable policies , tax breaks are used heavily to attract sports teams at city /state level all the time.
Democracy or dictators sports are cheap trick to improve ratings , it has been used at least since gladiators in Rome as a tool.
My intention is not defend Saudi actions just that it is not surprising governments were involved.
I was once goaded into going to a Sunderland away game. I was somewhat surprised to hear them chanting "he s*ts where he wants" to the tune of the theme from the Addams Family.
There's quite a good series on Netflix about the club called "Sunderland 'til I die". The timing was sort of perfect, when it started Sunderland had just been relegated from the Premiership (England's top tier) and I think it was intended to be a series documenting them rebuilding the team and immediately getting promoted back. In reality thought it didn't go like that at all. The team collapsed, their wealthy owner lost interest and stopped supporting them financially, they made a few management blunders and suffered more tragedy that I will not spoil.
I don't support the team, but I still found the series quite fascinating and found myself rooting for them to succeed. I was surprised to see two of my university friends in the show - Sophie (one of the backroom staff who clashed with the management) and another friend who happened to be in the crowd and got an extreme-closeup before/after a goal in one of the match sequences.
I think Realpolitik is the reason why and that's all I'm going to say about that.