Abstract
The Geopolitical Economy of Sport, edited by Simon Chadwick, Paul Widdop and Micheal Goldman, is a timely book which assesses key sporting issues around the world. The book takes readers on a geopolitics of sport journey across Russia and Ukraine, China, The Gulf and South Asia and Africa, followed by a focus on Football, Motorsport, and finally Peace, Diplomacy and Society. It closes with an implications chapter, focusing Gazprom, the NBA and Qatar and how it impacts sports decision makers. The book critically highlights the facts and timelines involved in some of the biggest geopolitical events around the world. This includes significant detail on the war in Ukraine and sport’s reaction to it, the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and the varied and extraordinary cases of Eileen Gu and Peng Shuai in China. However, this book is not just a discussion of the geopolitical issues in sport, but it highlights how sport can be used for peace and diplomacy. Readers of this book therefore gain significant insight into how sport is interconnected into politics and will understand these intricacies with extremely useful and detailed examples, with application of theory.
Part 1 focuses on Russia and Ukraine, addressing athlete reactions to war, sporting sanctions against Russia, but also critiquing the response from the sporting world. Across this section on Russia, there was a general assessment of the way Russia has used soft power in recent years and what that will look like going forward for President Putin and the nation (chapter 4). This involved exploring some little-known examples of Russia creating their own mini-Winter Paralympics, between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, after Russia and Belarus were expelled from the 2022 Paralympics. Understanding the Russia-Ukraine war from a sports perspective, is crucial to how sport deals with and responds to war in the future, which will hopefully provide sports organisations in the future with a precedent for dealing with such cases.
In Part 2, the varied role China plays in the geopolitics of sport is explored. Here we learn about specific cases surrounding Eileen Gu, Peng Shuai and the then Houston Rocket’s General Manager, Daryl Morey. How China has dealt with these cases and how the sporting world outside of China has reacted to them, is a strong indication on how this sporting power is treated. This part deals with these intricacies in a critical and explorative way. Furthermore, this section also has a bridging chapter to the Russia-Ukraine war, with a discussion by Postlethwaite (chapter 8) surrounding Russia’s expulsion from the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The focus of Part 3 is on The Gulf and Asia. One of the most important, and significant chapters from a consumer perspective, comes from Chadwick and Widdop, titled ‘Sport Washing and the Gulf Region: Myth or Reality’ (chapter 18). The piece addresses how we have come to use the term ‘Sports Washing’ to accuse countries, often those with poor human rights records, of changing their reputation through sport. They argue that there is little evidence regarding sports washing (motives and intended outcomes of governments using it), but also on who the target audiences are of sports washing. From a consumer behaviour perspective, an understanding of how people receive sports washing, is critical to our future understanding of the geopolitics of sport, but also in how we use such terms in sport.
In Part 4, the intricacies of geopolitics in Africa are considered. This includes a key understanding of the role African countries have played in the football ecosystem, with detail on the history of the sport within the continent. An area that I found particularly interesting was the NBA’s partnership with Rwanda (chapter 21). This has even greater focus when we consider firstly, various sporting organisations, like Arsenal FC, and their relationship with Visit Rwanda and secondly the UK’s relationship with the Rwandan government. However, the most curious element, which is evident in other areas of this book (see chapter 24), is political leaders’ interest in sport and their personal relationships with those involved in it. What is born out of this, is how this dictates a country’s sporting strategy.
Part 5 addresses the geopolitics of the football industry. Chapter 25 pits two sporting cities, Barcelona and Manchester, in relation to place branding in sport. When looked at from a consumer perspective, we gain an understanding of how football shapes tourism and investment within a city and how the teams within these cities use their places to market themselves. In a different approach, Chapter 26 discusses how the European Super League has led to massive changes within football, with pressure, according to the author, coming from media companies within team sports.
The long-standing impact of geopolitics on Motorsport is considered in Part 6. Chapter 28 makes an interesting discussion around the impact finances have on the location of Formula 1 races. It highlights Formula 1’s role in the big geopolitical events around the world (Ukraine and Russia and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi) and whether Formula 1 will have to make concessions on its morals and values for financial gain in the future, arguably one that all sporting organisations will face in the drive for revenue and growth. Within Part 6, one of the most fascinating, but most dangerous, events that occurred within recent Formula 1 history, was the missile strike from Houthi rebels at the practice event for 2022 Saudi Arabia GP discussed in chapter 29. However, the focus of this chapter was on oil, with the author beginning to shift the discussion towards a more environmentally sustainable future within motorsports.
In the wider context of the world, part 7 on Peace, Diplomacy and Society will become significant in the coming months and years. As Jarvie (2023: 253) says in chapter 30, “the global picture remains messy”. However, the author puts forward areas where sport can contribute to the peace process and in areas of fragility, including economic, environmental, political, security and societal. Bauer in chapter 33 discusses the contentious topic, in which everyone seems to want to put their viewpoint across upon, transgender athletes. The author puts across a nuanced and considered viewpoint of various members of the sporting ecosystem, highlighting how we got to the point we have now and where sport can go in the future.
Finally, two of the book’s editors give us an understanding of the implications of the geopolitical economy of sport where decision makers within the sporting world can go next, using the examples of Gazprom and UEFA, the NBA and China and Qatar and the FIFA World Cup. It is beneficial for those who work, or want to work, within the industry in attempting to learn from the mistakes of previous significant geopolitical events, but also benefits researchers in how we venture into academic land of the geopolitical sporting economy.
The book’s central argument and intent align effectively with its structure, with each chapter complementing the others to persuasively illustrate how sport and politics is extrinsically linked, despite politicians’ assertion that it is not. Looking ahead, future research in this field should acknowledge that while this book offers a remarkably broad coverage of topics, it does not exhaustively encompass all aspects of geopolitics and sport. Furthermore, as I read the book, one critique consistently emerged. The Geopolitical Economy of Sport, from its release, feels like it could be extended and is outdated, yet this is a fault however that cannot be laid at the door of the authors and its contributors, but one laid at the ever-changing world, both in a political and sporting context. For instance, we’re now entering a time where there are ongoing discussions surrounding the reintroduction of Russian and Belarusian athletes and teams back into the sporting space, with football facing these discussions first (Roush, 2023). The war between Israel and Hamas could bring synergies with the war between Ukraine and Russia from an athlete response perspective. However, as footballer Anwar El Ghazi experienced when they voiced their support for Palestine civilians and then had their contract terminated (Zirin, 2023), there has been a very different reaction from the sporting world for voicing their support. The significant spending in Saudi Arabia on traditional sports, including football and F1 and now into esports has seen a wide range of responses from athletes and consumers. This demonstrates a need to understand how target audiences receive investment from such countries in sports and esports. Finally, as chapter 29 highlighted, the move for sport to become more sustainable will challenge the geopolitics of sport, alongside its economic sustainability.
A critique from a consumer behaviour perspective, is that our understanding of how consumers respond to geopolitics and sport (soft power, sports washing and sports diplomacy) is lacking in the literature. In the case of The Geopolitical Economy of Sport, it does not fully address this either, except for chapter 18, which addresses the need to “create and test the validity of models that seek to explain sport washing and how it works” (Chadwick and Widdop, 2023: 152). The consumer perspective is particularly apt as countries and organisations should want to understand how the target audience reacts to such endeavours. For instance, do consumers react with cynicism, sympathy or outright content for nations who use soft power or sports wash? Perhaps it is due to the lack of understanding of terms from a scientific perspective, as Chadwick and Widdop highlight in chapter 18, that means we are not yet able to understand how consumers react to these terms.
Ultimately, The Geopolitical Economy of Sport provides an analytical view of the geopolitics of sport across Russia and Ukraine, China, The Gulf and South Asia and Africa, across a variety of sports. This book highlights several key concepts for those studying and researching sports governance and politics, such as soft power, sports washing, sports diplomacy and place branding, with each chapter providing us with an applied understanding of these complex concepts. Therefore, for students who are studying or researching these areas, The Geopolitical Economy of Sport is a useful tool to gain a key understanding of these concepts in action. More broadly, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the geopolitics of sport, including war, mega-events, international relations, or how countries and how sport can be used for peace and development, whether this is from a research or teaching perspective. Fundamentally, I believe this edited book provides a clear picture of the geopolitical nature of sport across the world. It is clear, that as academics, we need to pay more attention to the geopolitics of sport. This is not just from countries where the media chooses to call out countries for sports washing like the Middle East, China, but from Europe, South America and, as Beissel discusses in chapter 23 surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup, America.
To briefly conclude, the editors and contributors of this book provide exceptionally insightful learnings on the geopolitical sporting nexus, applying key concepts from the field to various countries, regions and live examples from the world of sport and politics to be used by researchers and students alike. This provides readers the opportunity to contextualise future changes within the sports industry.