Dr. Mahfoud Amara
Beyond the myth that politics and sport should not mix, the history of modern sport is shaped by that of the nation-state.
Integrating international sport federations and the International Olympic Committee is a means to consolidate a nation’s independence and positioning on the world map.
Raising a nation’s flag in the Olympics and world championships is a symbolic moment for every nation. Sport is an important occasion to showcase a nation’s project for development, whether through the building of sport infrastructures or other networks of transportation, tourism, retail, security, and medical systems to safeguard the health of athletes, delegates, nationals, and fans alike.
Organising regional or international sport events is an occasion to showcase the country’s political and economic systems, as well as its social fabric with regards to citizenship values and a sense of unity and duty to serve the nation. It is also an occasion to promote a nation’s cultures and traditions. In times when discourse on national unity is being challenged by globalization, neoliberalism, and other reactionary sentiments, sport can serve to celebrate national unity ideally in harmony with its diversity.
The state intervenes in sport in different manners to consolidate its political ideology and historical narrative. Sport becomes a way to express the sense of being American, British, Chinese, or Iraqi, and all that it encompasses in the collective imaginary, both internally and projecting it externally. The American national anthem and the raising of the flag in the Super Bowl in the presence of US military forces in the stadium or over the screen of American soldiers deployed around the world are occasions to send implicit and explicit messages to national and international audiences about American grandeur increasingly challenged today in a more multipolar world .
Financing grassroots and elite sport by the state becomes a way to promote state citizenship values and a sense of pride and belonging to the nation.
The state intervenes in sport to offer opportunities for sport participation to all nationals, citizens, and residents of different ages, gender, and abilities, as participation in sport is a right considering its different benefits. The state, represented by different ministries such as youth and sport, education, health, urbanization, and interior, to name a few, allocates adequate resources to offer access to sport participation and sport facilities, as well as through subsidies for sport-related services.
The state intervenes to finance elite sport at different levels. Although sport is becoming more professionalised and commercialised, it still depends on the state’s funding at different levels. Elite sport, as explained earlier, is the nation’s mirror with regards to its economic development and political stability.
The state also intervenes through taxation. A portion of tax money can be reinjected to maintain sport facilities, to offer sport opportunities for those who cannot afford to subscribe to private clubs, and to fund other sport projects of public utility.
The state’s intervention in sport at different levels to guarantee access to sport and to monitor public funding of the sport sector should happen while respecting the autonomy of sport from political manipulations, turning sport into another tool of propaganda or imposing certain political agendas at the detriment of sport values.
Dr. Mahfoud Amara is an Associate Professor in Sport Social Sciences and Management at Qatar University.
