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Qatar, Saudi Arabia: Sport is also a means to accumulate power and build control
States have long played a role in sport, sometimes in promoting participation and at other times in helping governments to achieve political ends. This role is often perceived as being positive, for instance in the way it is intended to address public health challenges.
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. [...]
