Geopolitics in Sport – Thematic Intelligence

Geopolitics in Sports Thematic Report Overview

Political events often have a significant impact on sporting events and sometimes the latter needs to be rearranged or rescheduled as an effect of the former. For example, as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2022 UEFA Champions League final, which was originally supposed to be held in St Petersburg, was moved to Paris. Meanwhile, all Russian teams were expelled from European competitions for the 2022-2023 season. The news led to the termination of several sponsorship deals with Russian brands.

The Geopolitics in Sports thematic intelligence report assesses how geopolitics can be used across the sports value chain. The report includes relevant industry trends and provides an overview of the current landscape, as well as key players, while also highlighting opportunities for the use of geopolitics in the future. The report provides an industry-specific analysis based on GlobalData databases and surveys.

Geopolitics in Sport – Key Trends

The main trend shaping the geopolitics theme over the next 12 to 24 months is industry trends.

• Industry trends: Some of the key industry trends impacting the theme are sportswashing, state-sponsored doping, societal progression, balancing the financial cost of hosting, hosting legacy, and hosting bans.

Geopolitics in Sports – Industry Analysis

The sports industry is expected to achieve a CAGR of more than 20% up through 2030. The forecast market value of the sports industry for 2025 can potentially be altered by how geopolitics continues to shape the sporting landscape through either rearrangements, postponements, or outright cancellations. This might lead to significant losses in revenues for federations and host countries or cities as well.

Sports Market Revenue, 2019-2025 ($ Billion)

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The Geopolitics in Sports industry analysis also covers:

• Timeline

Geopolitics in Sports - Value Chain Analysis

The geopolitics value chain components include tourism, attendance, and sponsorship.

Tourism: Sports tourism is vital to certain economies around the world, with many countries relying on the vast amounts of business coming to their countries. Depending on the scale of the events as well as the cost of infrastructure upgrades, these cities become reliant on ensuring large amounts of visitors come to the city to make back the money that was spent. This is currently a key concern for a city like Tokyo, which has spent billions on ensuring that the city can host the Olympics and is currently in a difficult situation with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Geopolitics Value Chain Analysis

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Leading Public Companies

Some of the leading listed players associated with this theme are:

• FIFA
• IOC
• NBA

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Segments Covered in the Report

Geopolitics Value Chain Outlook (Value, $ billion, 2019-2025)

• Tourism
• Attendance
• Sponsorship

Scope

• This report provides breakdowns of how geopolitical situations have influenced sporting events.
• It identifies the key geopolitical trends that have wider effects on the world of sports and sports business.
• A look at some of the current geopolitical developments that have affected modern sport.
• A detailed look at the geopolitics value chain, and how value generators can be affected by developing news stories.

Key Highlights

The last tournament to be held pre-WWII was the 1938 edition in France, which saw Italy retain its trophy. The planned 1942 and 1946 editions were canceled outright due to the outbreak of WWII. Following the conclusion of the war, FIFA was once again in a difficult financial situation, having not had any way to financially sustain itself during wartime, and their first meeting post-war was held in 1946 to determine when the next tournament could be held. Hosted by Brazil, the next FIFA World Cup was held in 1950, although many nations were hesitant to take part given that many were still rebuilding and recovering from the disastrous damage caused by the Second World War. Surprisingly, Italy also participated even though many of their national team players were killed in an airplane crash in 1949, later dubbed the ‘Superga air disaster’. Germany and Japan were both unable to participate in the competition having both been suspended from FIFA, although both were later readmitted to FIFA in 1950, with Germany now competing as West Germany. The East German soccer team was inducted into FIFA in 1952. Many nations behind the Iron Curtain also declined to take part in the tournament, due to ongoing political turmoil.

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been ongoing since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and began moving its soldiers into the region. Friction arose over Russia’s belief that Ukraine is a Russian territory, while Ukraine has vehemently and repeatedly affirmed its independence. The conflict escalated in nature in February 2022 when Russia launched its invasion, with significant numbers of troops moving across the border. The effects on the region have been devastating, and the impact on the sporting world has also been of note.

Footballer Mesut Ozil, while at Arsenal, posted a tweet urging the world to pay greater attention to the plight of the Uyghur Muslims in China, and he criticized Muslims for not bringing the subject to more attention. Arsenal’s official Twitter account issued a statement announcing that Ozil’s views were his alone and that the club did not involve itself in politics. Arsenal has many business interests in China, and Ozil’s comments would have been impactful on Arsenal’s financial performance in that region. Around a similar time, Arsenal player Hector Bellerin encouraged young people to go and vote in the upcoming election, including an expletive towards politician Boris Johnson. The club did not acknowledge or respond to Bellerin’s post, highlighting the hypocritical nature of their stance, as this post was inherently political. In response to Ozil’s tweet, China removed him from three video games in response and stated that Ozil had “hurt the feelings” of Chinese fans. China also removed their upcoming broadcast of an Arsenal game from their schedule. The situation had wider repercussions, as German football team FC Cologne withdrew from the building of a football academy in China, on the grounds that Cologne should not cooperate with a country that was building a complete “surveillance state”.

Reasons to Buy

• For those wanting an in-depth analysis of the geopolitics sector and its crossover with sport.
• Discusses how developing news stories can have wide-ranging effects on all aspects of the sporting world.
• GlobalData’s thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition and secure that all-important competitive advantage.