(Newswire.net — October 15, 2020) — A recent signature campaign against the Barcelona president led to 20,000 plus people signing against him. This petition and its response show the unpopularity of the president and the sentiments the fans hold.
Many fans, knowing the ins and outs of their favorite team and sports, find themselves betting at Draftkings Sportsbook, and their knowledge makes their opinion stand out. Giving the supporters a bigger say provides a democratic way of making decisions. But democracy doesn’t guarantee the making of better decisions.
Sports, which is primarily a meritocratic domain, has seen a lot of politics throughout history and has complicated the question of their relationship even further, and there isn’t a simple solution to the problem, if we consider it to be one, that is.
The Power to Bring Change
Sports events hold tremendous power to bring political change in a country. There are certain examples of authoritarian regimes, like North Korea and Nazi Germany that held, and still hold (in the case of North Korea) sports as an important national interest but have done little to none to bring about reform.
But if we look at the apartheid movement, in which the decision of the exclusion of South Africa from the Olympics had a significant impact on ending it, showing the power that sports hold in bringing the authoritarian into the light.
The Power in the Wrong Hands
Sports, as a business and an entertainment industry, naturally inclines itself toward countries where money trumps and where liberty may or may not. Today, more and more sports events are hosted by wealthy dictatorships providing themselves with an international political platform and political legitimacy that further suppresses the voices of the reformers in the country.
A Conflict of Opinions
A recent debate in politics that hadn’t seen much consensus but has been accepted in sports is the participation of transgender individuals. It isn’t common for policies to come into effect when the public opinion hasn’t even settled on an issue, but its consequences in sports, particularly the transgender issue, make things much more complicated and muddy.
Many activists see it being unfair to women in sports, as many of the athletes who have gone through male puberty before transitioning have seen great success in women sports. Access regulations are put into place to ensure fair competition but are seen by the opposers as a transphobic act of discrimination.
Historically sports has been perceived as a male domain, and women in sports still feel the ripples of the struggle they have gone through throughout history. The progressive movements like the trans-movement, though for a good cause, hurt women, and as trans individuals struggle to find acceptance in sports, this issue ends up becoming a controversial one.
An Uneasy Blend
It is impossible to write the final thoughts on the relationship between sports and politics as it is complicated, to say the least. The problem isn’t easy to solve; the conflict of interests exists across the board. People will continue to operate possessed by their ideologies without looking at the aerial view of the issue as a whole.
The place of sports in our society remains significant, and politics and policies will continue influencing the lives of sportsmen of today, and neither of them can escape each other.