![]() uses public displays of patriotism at sports events and "military traditions" at the Super Bowl and elsewhere to promote national identity and "spread American culture and American capitalism worldwide."Īnd Chadwick said that often when he travels to the Middle East he is challenged by local stakeholders to explain the difference between an Arab country investing in a European soccer team and the NBA's global promotion. Still, sports researcher Dubinsky said the deliberate use of sports for "nation-branding and public diplomacy," often referred to as "sportswashing," is something the U.S. The implicit social contract in all of this − the bargain − is: 'we'll give you (soccer star) Cristiano Ronaldo, Formula One, rock concerts, cinema, but don't challenge us." ![]() We don't want you in power anymore.' The sports investment is partly to secure the ruling families of these various countries. Far too conservative, far too religious, not enough choice. A lot of what these Gulf autocracies are afraid of is 26-year-olds with Molotov cocktails knocking on the doors and saying, 'this country hasn't changed. "They are also going through a period of sociocultural and political transformation and the origins of that date back to the Arab Spring uprisings (in 2010). "These are economies that are hugely overly dependent on one sector − oil and gas − so they have to diversify and sports is one part of their diversification plans," said Chadwick. Princess Latifa of Dubai: How the FBI played a role in her capture Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in the glitzy emirate of Dubai, whose leader kidnapped, drugged and imprisoned his own daughter. Instead, attention was drawn to Qatar's discrimination against women, LGBTQ people, journalists, migrant workers and others.) The United Arab Emirates has poured vast sums - hundreds of millions - into sponsoring at least half a dozen professional soccer teams cross Europe, as well as hosting lavish sports events from Formula One motor racing to horse-racing events. One reason Qatar, ruled by a repressive monarchy, sought to host the 2022 soccer World Cup was to exert its international credentials in a neighborhood where it is plagued by security concerns. intelligences agencies concluded authorized its operatives to ambush, strangle and dismember regime critic Jamal Khashoggi − spent billions this month in the world of golf to engineer the fusion of PGA Tour and LIV Golf. Saudi Arabia's leadership − the same government that U.S. ![]() More recently, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have used sports to paper over a questionable reputation. Much like China's #MeToo movement Ambushed, strangled, dismembered Winter Olympics: Tennis star Peng Shuai is vanishing. Years before Russia invaded Ukraine, and as Moscow sought to build a natural-gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, President Vladimir Putin attempted to gain support for the controversial project by pushing a sponsorship deal between Russian state energy company Gazprom and a soccer team that played in the Bundesliga, Germany's professional league, according to Simon Chadwick, an expert on sports and geopolitics at Skema, a France-based business school. The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games was a Nazi propaganda show.Ĭhina plowed ahead with its 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics despite intense scrutiny − in part, perhaps, because of this scrutiny to meet it head on − from Western nations and human rights groups about mass abuses against Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans and other ethnic groups − abuses which Beijing strenuously denies. At the start of the 20th century, at the same time as more than 150,000 South Africans were being held in British concentration camps, authorities in London sent cricket and rugby teams to the country to build relationships with local populations. In ancient Greece, cradle of the Olympic Games, warring kings used athletic competition as a means to explore reconciliation. ![]() 'Golf's ultimate power broker': How Jimmy Dunne helped facilitate PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the historical playbook "(It) certainly did not start in the Arab Gulf." "International sports was historically institutionalized and governed by the Western world and global North," said Yoav Dubinsky, a sports business researcher at the University of Oregon. Senate has opened an inquiry into the terms of the arrangement. The issue has come to the fore because of the PGA Tour's merger this month with Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf. The use of sports to burnish a country's reputation is not a new tactic, but the practice has been enthusiastically embraced by Arab nations intent on translating their oil wealth into another form of global influence, experts say. Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks did it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |