Sport and Understanding the Promise and Pitfalls of Globalization

SPORT AND UNDERSTANDING THE PROMISE AND/OR PITFALLS OF GLOBALISATION
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Sport and Understanding the Promise and/or Pitfalls of Globalisation
Modern sport is intertwined in a worldwide web of interdependency chains characterized by global flows and unequal skewed power relations. Sports are highly impactful, especially if one considers the consumption of sports events globally. Every day, people are attached to big sports events including the Champions League matches, the English Premier League, the Olympics, National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Football Association (NFL) among others. Such events are entertaining. Additionally, such events impact how individuals think about other individuals from different socioeconomic and political backgrounds. Put simply, sport has developed into a powerful tool that influences human activities such as interpersonal interactions and even perceptions of the political trends in different countries. Sports does not extend its influence only on players and their fans. Instead, the corporate world has indulged in sports activities all over the world. A tool such as influential can easily be used as a platform to gain power. This paper explores the relationship between sports and globalization and the possibility of employing sports as a tool to gain insight into globalisation trends. Drawing on the inputs of relevant academic literature and critical examination the assertion that sport offers the US a powerful analytic lens through which to understand the promise and/or pitfalls of globalisation is highly factual.
Globalisation and Sport
The concept of globalisation focuses on growth on a worldwide scale. Globalisation is a process through which economies and cultures are subjected to changes due to integration and international influence. In the contemporary cultural and economic context, globalisation does not imply only the expansion of networks for the exchange of goods and services (Yu-Che & Tai-Shen, 2018). Instead, the concept encompasses even ideas in objectives such as pursuance and management of terrorist activities. Technologies, blending cultures, and economics all encompass the growth in globalisation. Contemporarily, the advancements that the world is witnessing in technology impact the speed and efficiency of human interactions.
One of the areas in which such interactions are prominent is a sport. People are growing increasingly engaged with one another globally due to the influence of sport. Take for instance football. In 2018, it was established that more than 43% of the world’s population identified themselves as fans of football. Still, more than 250 million people noted that they play the game consistently on either an abrupt or organised basis (Premier League, 2021). With an estimated 4 billion fans globally, football is the most popular sport and it remains among the prospects that trigger human integration on a global scale. Every footballing event attracts more people than most can believe. The 2018 FIFA world cup in Russia attracted more than 7.7 million visiting fans. A similar trend is mirrored through other hosts including South Africa, Brazil, the US, the UK, and Korea among other hosts (Fuchs et al., 2021). Football fans travel from different cultural and economic backgrounds to share their support and love for the sport in one location.
The English Premier League is the most-watched organized football activity in the world. EPL is broadcasted in 212 territories to at least 643 million homes. EPL has a potential audience of approximately 4.7 billion people globally. In 2015, the UK indicated that EPL is one of the biggest causes of travel within the country. At least 80,000 visitors had traveled into the UK primarily to watch the games (Prince-Wright, 2021). From the above data, soccer is a powerful tool that influences aspects such as trade in the exchange of sportswear, tickets, and transportation. It also affects cultural integration at the international level with the increasing number of people who travel to witness football games live. Nations are bidding to host multinational games such as the Euros and the World Cup. The events form a hot platform for international cultural, economic, and technological integration. In such events, it becomes increasingly easy to understand why a global power such as the UK would increase the promotion of such events.
Globalisation and sport are intertwined in multiple ways thereby marking the growing influence of sports activities in the concept of globalisation. Sports are an essential prospect of American and global society by extension. The impacts of sports on a plethora of public arenas are indispensable with the influences highly evident in mass media and economics arenas. With its attempts to define the moral and ethical values attributed not only to athletes but to the entirety of society, sports fuel values within society (Fuchs et al., 2021). The athletes are merely the tools that are used to portray what is perceived as the standard ethical and moral behaviours. Sports also offer principal dynamics when it to comes to the augmentation of communal principles. That happens as it enhances the integration of social classes besides influencing the mental and physical well-being of people.
Additionally, sports are anchored on a premise that defines some vital aspects of human nature. Primary among such aspects is competition. Sports form the arena for competition among individuals from different backgrounds (Fuchs et al., 2021). Competition is a highly valued commodity whose outcomes are marked with superiority and elitism. People will always mimic behaviours if they consider them elitist or superior. That defines why countries such as the US, Britain, and France among other western superpowers struggle to lead in competitions such as the Champions League, the World Cup, or the Olympics (Sofro et al., 2019). A country with the highest medal rankings showcases high winnings, which eventually elevates their culture and sporting activities as powerful.
The world of sports also helps people to gain an insight into the prevalence of various social activities. Sports have played a vital role in highlighting sensitive issues such as classism, racism, and sexism. To ignore sports is to ignore a vital part of society and its culture (Seo, 2010). Lately, the football community has joined the rest of the world in the fight against racism. Every event in footballing is accompanied by messages against racism ranging from taking the knee to portraying messages of “no to racism”. Such inputs define the scope by which sports influence global cultural trends (Jung, 2012). The fact that the events attract the viewership of billions of people implies how fast messages transferred through a platform such as a football field can reach the targeted audience. Still, on cultural integration, there is an increasing Americanization of sports that revitalizes people’s cultural perceptions (Fuchs et al., 2021). Americanization is an avenue by which individuals derive the hidden values embedded in competitions. People decode the unseen cultural values and try to disseminate the cultures in other places. That defines the basic tenet of globalisation. Athletes taint the norms and standards of society thereby making the spectator sport a platform for the expression of individual principles into humanity.
The US is one of the countries that have fallen victims to using sports to fuel different agendas other than the intended entertainment. Sports such as soccer and American football offer an opportunity to learn tactics of how to win battles (Peptan, 2019). The ideas of the games are to develop strategies that confuse the opponents while creating opportunities for annihilating them. Soccer is highly similar to guerrilla warfare because it demands improvisation among players rather than detailed and advanced planning. The concept of counterattacks in football has widely been used in combat zones to surprise enemy armies. The significance of moving away from a tactically focused operating system to a more strategic-based one is a significant concept to take away from American strategic culture similar to that of American football (Sofro et al., 2019). Even though the existing US strategy has proven to be intrinsically successful in the past, a key question now is whether the strategic process in place is genuinely advantageous to national foreign and security policies. The United States' historical and current strategic worth has be...