AT SOME point in time we have likely all heard the statement that we should ‘keep politics out of sport’.
From it pundits expressing their opinion of governmental rhetoric, athletes taking the knee in a show of racial solidarity or point blank political statements using their platform, there is a significant number of people who believe the two do not and should not mix.
However, the issue in that train of thought is that one is an opinion and the other is a misconception. The argument over whether there should be an intersection of sports and politics is futile because the fact is they do; they always have and they always will.
That final bullet point is important, sports and politics have always been intertwined. The belief that this is a contemporary issue is misguided at best and ignorant at worse, with the relationship dating back as far as Ancient Greece. The Ancient Olympics was an occasion for Greek city-states to gather and discuss political issues away from the events and even to form alliances. They have been joined at the hip for millennia.
Politics can have a great affect on the sports industry and vice versa. There are countless examples of athletes and even entire countries boycotting famous sporting events due to the political motivations of hosts. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was a topic of great debate at the time following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Nazi Germany and many athletes refused to compete. In 1980, 65 countries boycotted the Moscow games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This not only damages the political reputation of said nation but also calls into question the legitimacy of their sporting industry, which can in turn lead to the defunding of the industry.
Sport can be incredibly important to a nation’s culture and identity. The ability to stand tall over other nations in a particular sport is in itself a perfect tool for politicians to rally behind to paint a picture of a prospering nation. For example, the US have for a long time produced the greatest basketball players in the world, dominating on the world stage in the Olympics. All of this means that the US government will continue to fund the sport which requires finance at the ground level for facilities, every day running costs, training facilities, academies etc. This is part of the reason why the NBA continues to be one of the most exciting leagues in the world with odds for the NBA championships tightening as we reach the climax of the season.
However, should the government see sport as a less important tool or, even more so, see it as painting the nation in a negative light, that funding is likely to be cut. For example, in 2017 the US Government proposed a bill that would force NFL teams to put up more of their own money to fund stadium construction. This plan came at the time of the kneeling controversy, in which many players would take a knee during the national anthem before games in protest of police brutality against black citizens. Whilst the motivations of this move are conjecture, many have reason to believe that this was due to then-president Donald Trump taking umbrage with the league’s stringency on what he believed to be a show of dispatriotism from the players and in turn the NFL.
Whilst the intersection is certainly not contemporary, it has got noticeably stronger in recent times. The use of sports as a platform for social justice and political activism is not new, with former African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ ‘Black Power’ salute at the 1968 Olympics at the height of the Civil Rights movement being one of the most powerful political statements and images in history. But athletes in the 21st century seem more inclined to use their platform to encourage change and progress in their country than they were previously.
Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem in 2016 was one that opened a dialogue on the treatment of African-Americans by the police and is a declaration of solidarity that is still being evidenced today.
Athletes are also using their voices off the field more often via social media and by recognizing their positions as public figures are shedding light on issues that perhaps would not have been seen or thought about by their audience previously.
Through this all, we have seen politicians become more inclined to speak on said issues when questioned because of the dialogue that athletes have aided in opening.
The intersection of sports and politics runs deep and has so for centuries. The affect that one has on the other is clear for all to see and it is extremely unlikely that we see that stop any time soon. Whilst there are of course examples of sport as an insidious political tool, there is no doubt that athletes using this intersectionality to further social and political justice for normal people is a good thing.
