Sport and Globalisation

At a very general level globalisation is an increasingly criticised term used to describe a set of related processes that have served to increase the interconnectedness of social life. The term has been used to reflect the compression of the world and the intensification of the world’s consciousness as a whole. The term has become ubiquitous because there is no agreed definition of its meaning. This in part explains the extent to which it has figured within many international public debates, including debates about the nature and ethics of international sporting organisations and the power of international sporting finance to determine sporting practices, such as the timing of Olympic competitions or World Cup Finals. There is little point in seeking to deny the fact that global capitalism has affected the way sport is administered, packaged and watched, but this has not been an even process. For some, globalisation and global sport is nothing more than neo-liberalism and equates to market forces controlling sport, minimising the role of the state in terms of sports provision and inequality within sport being non-problematic. Critics of this agenda denounce global sport and globalisation as being a vehicle of global exploitation which has produced sports goods on the back of cheap labour, helped to maintain global poverty levels and maintained different levels of inequality in sport, particularly in terms of access of women and ethnic minority groups to positions of power in global sport.