Sportswashing

 Alexandre Maciel

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

16 May 2022

Sportswashing 

    Sportswashing is the concept of world governments and businesses using their power and wealth in order to attract sports to their country. This includes things such as athletes, venues, or competitions. As American Winter Olympic champion stated, "Sports are an amazing way to bridge the gap and be a force of unity." Although sportswashing is getting very out of hand now adays, it isn't a new concept. In 416 BCE during the Athens - Sparta war, and Athenian politician named Alcibiades decided to pay for 4 chariot teams during the Olympics. Now keep in mind that the Olympics even back in the day were and expensive business, very similar to Formula 1. His teams finished, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. However, Athens during that time was incredibly poor, and had very few resources. But this scared other people and they thought that they came up with the solution that Athens must be perfectly fine. Nowadays, sportswashing is seen in some of the most popular sports in the world such as soccer. After President Putin invaded Ukraine, FIFA banned Russia from all of their competitions. This wasn't really a punishment for Russia; however, President Putin has been using his influence and sports in order to shape Russia. For example, during the 2018 World Cup Opening Ceremony, Putin gave a ceremony inviting everyone to get out and explore the beauty of Russia, before thrashing Saudi Arabia 5-0. 

    For a couple of years now governments have been using sports as a distraction to the actual problems going on in their country. Since people are distracted in the games, they don't realize that these countries are actually using sports to blind people about what their actually doing. 

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