Though states’ engagement with sport can be for malign reasons, indeed there are many examples of sport being deployed for propaganda purposes. Such is the potential for states to exert their influence over and through sport that, for example, football’s governing body FIFA explicitly prohibits states from intervening in national associations.
The many facets of sport
A contemporary history of European sport indicates that state interventions have typically had socio-cultural foundations. Today, this remains evident in European Union sport policy, which accentuates the significance of sport as a health and lifestyle intervention. Globally however, last quarter twentieth century sport was dominated by North American influences, which resulted in the commercialization, industrialization and marketisation of sport. As such, the likes of sponsorship, merchandising, and private equity investment have become significant features of the sport ecosystem.
Yet as the first quarter of the twenty-first century concludes, the role of the state has become resurgent in sport. Partly, this is an outcome of a pivot in economic and political power from the Global North to the Global South and is associated with countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. In such instances, states are playing a fundamental role in two ways: firstly, in the way that government shapes sport policy and strategy; and secondly, in the way that sport is used to generate outcomes that extend far beyond socio-cultural or commercial considerations. [...]
Sport as a way to address challenges
Extensive reference here of Qatar is not intended to suggest that oil and gas money alone is a necessary pre-requisite for the scale or effectiveness of sports investments that countries may make. Rather, it serves to highlight the importance that sport now serves geopolitically and economically. Promoting health and well-being or social cohesion is a role that sport has played for centuries and will probably continue to do so in the future. [...]
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