Sports and Power

As we all know international sports play an integral role in shaping every country’s society. Country’s and their governments around the globe participate in multiple international sporting events, like the World Cup and the Olympics, in order to promote nationalism within their nation. In addition, these sporting events are designed to help ease uneasy tensions between multiple governments. However, what happens if governments forget about the unity international sports tries so hard to do? What if governments use international sports for their own political needs and forget about the whole point of events like the World Cup and the Olympics: to have fun?

Because international sports is a big part of almost every nation’s society, there will be a time when countries will gain more political power through international sports. It is true that political officials want their nation to look presentable to other nations and promote cooperation and nationalism within the country; however, politicians will be politicians. Politicians and their governments focus a lot of their time and effort in discovering ways to acquire more wealth and political power for themselves. They believe that in order to present themselves as a powerful nation to the rest of the world, their countries must posses more wealth and power than their neighboring countries. To them, any method of gaining more power and wealth will work fine with them, even if it does mean abusing international sports.

Let’s face it, the world is still a dangerous place to live, even if it might be better than used to be.There are still talks of countries wanting to use nuclear weapons and technology, genocide is still notable in the world, and racism is still prevalent in societies. With all of these problems-and definitely more-countries are going to do everything they can to keep their citizens safe and to be a dominate force in the world. International sports is just another way to acquire this power. Eventually governments will use their teams to intimidate and threaten other countries with political or military attack. I know, this sounds pretty crazy, but think about it. Countries all over the world care how their international sport teams do, and do not want to appear weak if their teams lose. If a certain nation has an international sport team that constantly loses, then governments from different nations will see this weakness and exploit it. They will make deals, treaties, or even bets based on how well their sport teams play; and they won’t be for fun, but for land, or weapons, or control over a certain port.

However, ingenious this might be, this method of acquiring power is demoralizing not only to the players on the sport teams, but to the people of the nation’s themselves. Playing and watching international sporting events, like the World Cup and the Olympics, will not be as enjoying and exciting. Players will not play for national pride or for the expansion of cooperation amongst other nations, but for political power. They will be pressured by their governments to practice and play even harder; they will be forced to have a new level of competitiveness, one that requires them to win games because they have to. If they lose, and their country loses land or goes to war, then their government will pin the blame on them. For the fans, there will be no point in watching the games. The fans will be more scared than excited about watching their home country play, because more than just a game will be lost. They might lose some of their freedom to either their own government or to another government; they will have to follow new and possibly harsh rules.