International Sports Conundrum
Over the past several months, some may say, years, we have been exposed to a number of international sports’ conflicts that should compel us to engage ourselves in a comprehensive re-think of how we view sport and what this should tell us about the future and how we must prepare for it.
It is an unfortunate reality that the Caribbean sport administrators, with the possible exception of Austin ‘Jack’ Warner, have, for the most part, failed to consistently participate in the decision-making processes of the several international sports organisations to which they are affiliated. This may well be a legacy issue in so far as we have spent so many decades in subservience that we have failed to develop enough self-confidence to believe that we are equal to the administrators in the developed world.
Even when our athletes and their coaches have been able to show the world our immense talent in a wide variety of sports, our administrators still cower to the international administrators, as if giving the lie to all who genuinely believe that we are equal in sport.
Unfortunately, it is also often the case that when some of our leaders venture to compete for a place at the head table, they are pulled down by our own administrators who find them too ambitious. This is all too reminiscent of the experiences of our ancestors during slavery where the colonisers systematically pitted us against each other.
The foregoing is also an embarrassing reminder of the Caribbean’s most embarrassing and near-debilitating experience when the region’s smaller members sought to and formally establish the West Indies Federation, only to have it sabotaged by our own people.
In many respects, Caribbean sport administrators are as qualified and competent as those anywhere in the world, but we appear much too timid to strive to advance and take our rightful place at the head table of international sports organisations.
There is absolutely no reason also, why our respective national sporting bodies affiliated to international sports federations do not engage themselves in discussions impacting these latter organisations, in our collective best interests as Caribbean people.
FIFA
It was not so very long ago that several of the members of the executive committee of FIFA were arrested and brought to court on a variety of charges. To the average individual possessive of some integrity with concern for the fundamentals of good governance – transparency and accountability – there should have been a global response. But that did not happen.
The global response to the discretions of FIFA’s executive members has been weak at best. The sport has become so popular and financially beneficial to its numerous stakeholders that nothing really came of the matter.
FIFA continued along its merry and financially lucrative way.
Importantly, the sponsors of FIFA, anxious to continue to reap near-immeasurable financial benefits from their association with the sport and its governing body, did nothing in response to what should, properly speaking, have been a major sporting scandal of international proportions. Additionally, the existing sponsors at the time were all well aware of the several commercial enterprises, waiting in line, for the opportunity to fill any breach created by those that may have allowed their consciences to cause to withdraw their support.
The revenues from the World Cup in Qatar set new records and the media and the world to which it brings ‘news’ and ‘scandals’ were all satisfied with supporting the status quo.
For our Caribbean member federations of FIFA, it is business as usual. Getting the opportunity to access millions from FIFA is far more important than matters of ethics, morality, good governance, and values.
European Championships
A relatively new challenge will, soon enough change the nature of multi-sport Games. It is called, the European Championships.
Under the tag line, ‘The whole if greater than the sum of its parts’, the European Championships “brings together the existing championships of the continent’s leading sports into one multi-sport event to create a just-watch, must-attend, experience that elevates the Champions of Europe”.
The first edition of the European Championships was held in Berlin, Germany and Glasgow, Scotland, in 2018, and featured seven sports. There was an estimated economic impact of 144 million euros.
The second edition was held in 2022 in Munich, Germany and included nine sports. The estimated economic impact for Munich was approximately 122million euros, and an advertising value of 486 million euros.
The approach suggests that unlike the Olympic Games where participating 28 international federations (IF) have to share one-third of the television revenue as per the determination of the International Olympic Committee, the European Championships may well afford the participating IFs a proportionally larger percentage of revenues generated.
One wonders whether our Caribbean administrators are paying enough attention to the European Championships. Are they contemplating the strengths and weaknesses of the model being used for the European Championships or are we simply content with the models in the Americas that merely mimic that of the IOC and the Olympic Games?
For what it is worth, for the most part we appear content with attending Games more than being creative and contemplating what we can do with our own Games, for our collective interests.
European Super League
Some of the owners of leading, lucrative football clubs in Europe recently proposed the creation of a Super League. Close analysis of the proposal suggested that it was perhaps designed to appeal to the greedy to procure more financial benefits, ultimately for the owners. The players are the mere pawns being enticed by their very own financial desires.
The fans across England, in particular, protested the proposed Super League and were successful in having it being officially pulled off the table.
In reality though, the proposal has only been temporarily withdrawn. We can look forward to a new proposal with significant modifications in the very near future. The monied interests will eventually have their way and the players will find ways to explain their eventual support and compliance with all provisions.
Golf’s LIV Leap and the PGA
Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia’s super rich entrepreneurs last year launched the most financially lucrative Golf Tournament. Immediately upon release, the PGA, long-time leader of international golfing, set off fuming opposition.
Close examination of the protestation from the PGA was that LIV had more financial backing and more lucrative prizes for the winners.
Helped by the international media, wittingly or unwittingly, as always, the proponents got the tournament off with the winner taking home several million dollars. The PGA knew it was defeated and eventually did an about-face this year with the leadership fumbling through one ridiculously manufactured explanation after another.
One of the world’s leading golfers who appeared to have thought that there was merit in the initial defence of its case to reject LIV, found himself waking up to the reality of sport today and declared to the world that he felt ‘used’.
The LIV/PGA debacle was only brief tragicomedy for a very short while. ‘Money talks’ and once more the players capitulated to the appeal of raw cash.
AIBA to IBA then on to suspension
Then there is the matter of boxing. The IOC, now perhaps the unofficial ‘global sports policeman’, too on the role of ‘righting the wrongs’ of the sport, especially in the areas of governance and fair play.
The IOC took unto itself, the organisation of the sport at the Summer Olympics of 2021 and continued to wrestle with the international federation in a rather protracted struggle, during which the organisation moved from being AIBA to IBA. In the end, the most recent decision by the IOC, the suspension of the IBA from engagement in the Summer Olympics of 2024, is most interesting, if only because the sport is retained on the Games sports programme but under an ‘independent’ management structure acceptable to the IOC.
The IOC appears to belabour its message that its actions over the past several years and even now, are consistent with its insistence on ensuring that the athletes’ interests are uppermost in its consideration.
Already a new grouping has started its own international federation. Now that the IBA has been suspended, sports administrators who are students of the history of sport will readily follow the unfolding transformation that will inevitably take place.
But boxing is not the only sport that seems under threat of being sanctioned in one way or another by the IOC. Weightlifting and Modern Pentathlon seem to be ‘on the brink’.
Whither international sport
The reality is that many of the IFs may well, at this stage be wondering who’s next on the IOC’s list.
We could well conclude that the IOC is well within its right to exert firm control over its treasured Olympic Games. This may well mean that if the respective IFs wish to see this involvement as being their primary source of income every four years and be content with just that, they will have to pander to the wishes, policies, and programmes of the IOC.
By the same token, each IF may very well consider itself committed to the development of its own sport. Like the IOC, each individual sport may believe that all this it is doing is in the best interest of the sport as well as the athletes who practise it.
The events of the past few years as enunciated, in part, in this Column, causes each individual to reflect more deliberately on the future of sport.
Many and readily disposed to quoting Nelson Mandela on the power of sport. Somehow, some of our international sporting organisations take unto themselves a kind of self-righteousness and we in the Caribbean often accept that without employing due diligence.
All too often, what obtains in sport, including who dictates who is right and who is wrong, often ignores its own mode of operation and fails to apply to itself the very rigorous principles that it so eagerly impose on others.
The role of money in sport politics is no different and perhaps worse than what obtains in domestic and international politics. The end result is nonetheless the same. Monied interests dictate.
