Opinion piece by Simon Chadwick States have long played a role in sport, sometimes in promoting participation and at other times in helping governments to achieve political ends. This role is often perceived as being positive, for instance in the way it is intended to address public health challenges. Though states’ engagement with sport can be for malign reasons, indeed there are many examples of sport being deployed for propaganda purposes. Such is the potential for states to exert their influence over and through sport that, for example, football’s governing body FIFA explicitly prohibits states from intervening in national associations.
Simon Chadwick
Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Skema Business School
Simon Chadwick is a researcher, writer, academic, consultant and speaker with more than 25 years experience in the global sport industry. His work focuses on the geopolitical economy of sport. He co-founded and co-directs the China Soccer Observatory (University of Nottingham, UK). He is Founding Editor of GeoSport, a digital sports platform created with the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. Chadwick previously founded and directed the University of London's Birkbeck Sports Business Centre, and Coventry University's Centre for the International Business of Sport. In addition, he has worked at several of the world's most prestigious business schools, such as IESE in Spain, Otto Beisheim in Germany, Tsinghua in China, COPPEAD in Brazil and Waseda in Japan.