Is sportswashing a systemic problem at FIFA and the IOC? – with Jules Boykoff

Welcome to sustaining sport. Today we are talking to a renowned expert on a niche, yet vital topic, the complex and powerful relationship between the leaders of nation states and the gatekeepers of sporting mega events. For those that are interested, this episode is actually also available on YouTube, so you can see my face. But first a quick introduction to the topic. The two most talked about mega events are the football world cup and the Olympic games, and thus the corresponding gatekeepers are FIFA and the International Olympic Committee or the IOC. These organizations have revenues in the billions of dollars and are super national, not beholden to any one nation state. They have carved out for themselves an exceptional degree of political power, which is strange considering they are supposed to be limited to only governing sports. Now at the time of recording this, the world's focus is squarely fixed on Qatar, as it's halfway through hosting the 2022 men's football world cup. Especially in the last few weeks, there has been so much said about the human rights violations on stadium construction, the fossil fuel derived funds being used to stage this event, and the environmental disaster and excessive greenwashing that has occurred to bring this tournament to the region. While so much of this criticism is justified and I strongly echo the sentiment of these arguments, I believe a lot of the reporting efforts have so far been too late to allow for meaningful change, chasing the trending news stories now and not speaking out when something could have been done about the situation when the vote was first announced. Furthermore, I believe that many commentators have focused too much on the nation of Qatar as the problem, rather than the more systematic issues with FIFA historically. There is an argument that the environmental and human rights disaster that is this world cup is actually a symptom and not the cause of the problem. Aside from the fact that this is very much the authoritarian leadership structure and not the collective Qatar republic who are at fault, we must not discount how the gatekeepers like FIFA use their mega events as products. The men's football world cup and the Olympic Games are arguably the two finest jewels in the crown of cross-cultural celebration and sporting excellence, but almost since their inception, they've been loaned out for a hefty fee. To national leaders around the world, we need a boost in domestic morale or public image. And these leaders are not exclusively authoritarian, although vote-buying might be easier for them to organize. But often, democratic leaders engage in similar shady tactics to achieve a similar morale boost with voters. You can see how naturally sport intersects with politics and thus sport is not immune from all the complexities and issues on the global political record. Now this is not just simply a case of good versus evil, but rather more of a spectrum that includes a large number of participants, many of whom are very well-meaning and acting just for the love of the game or in pursuit of sporting greatness. But this just makes it all the more difficult to identify the fundamental causes of why, again and again, disastrous choices are made on where and how these mega events are held. To help tackle this exceptionally difficult task, I'm delighted to be in conversation with Jules Boykov, Professor of Political Science at the Pacific University in Oregon in the USA. He is the author of five books on the politics of sports and mega events. Most recently, the 1936 Berlin Olympics race power and sports washing. His writing has appeared in the likes of the New York Times, the Guardian, NBC Think and most recently on democracy now. And he is also a former professional footballer, having represented the US under 23 men's national team. So he has seen how these events work from all angles. With that, please enjoy this latest episode on the Sustaining Sport Podcast. Welcome, Jules to the Sustaining Sport Podcast. Good to be with you. Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. So first question, as always, where in the world are you right now? I'm joining you from Portland, Oregon on the US West Coast. Nice. Nice. As I said to you, or fair, first time person from the West Coast joining us, Jules was great. So I thought I would start with your most recent publication titled toward a theory of sports washing, mega events, soft power and political conflict. So we've got a broad range of themes at the beginning with there. Firstly, what is your understanding of the term sports washing? Well, for starters, it's a very new term. It only came around in 2015, but it's been used a lot, especially because of these recent sports mega events that we can talk about today. And I thought it was really important to offer a baseline definition of sports washing. So maybe I should start with there. I think that sports washing is when political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while at the same time stoking nationalism and deflecting attention from chronic problems and human rights woes at home. So sports washing can emerge in both authoritarian context and democratic contexts and everything in between. I think a lot of the times when we talk about sports washing, we only sort of waggle a finger at other countries like, say, Beijing with the 2022 Winter Olympics or the Qatar World Cup here that's happening at the end of 2022. Whereas in reality, it happens in democratic spaces as well just to give a quick example. I'm coming to you, as I said, from the US West Coast where Los Angeles is slated to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. And the mayor there, a guy called Eric Garcetti, said that if they get the Olympics, that they would use that to get rid of homelessness by the time the Olympics roll around. Yet another example for your UK folks is just that way back when the London Olympics were coming around, we were told that if London got the Olympics, it would really help the youth get more involved in sports and exercise, which was seen as a real social problem. Then and unfortunately that just didn't play out. They had the Olympics, of course, in 2012, but that did not lead to an uptick in youth sports participation or exercise, at least not according to a number of studies, including one done by the Lancet. Yeah, I think you've touched on so many good points already there. The first one I would raise is that you use the term political actors using sports washing because often people or definitely the people within sport argue that sport is not a political thing, whereas from my perspective, particularly in the context of something like a World Cup or Olympics where we play with our national jerseys and we wave our flags, sport is inherently political. What would you say to that? Oh, I 100% agree with you. And not just because I'm a political scientist by training, if politics is who gets what when, where, how, and why, at least according to the thumbnail definition of Harold Lastwell, a famous political science from days gone by, well, then obviously these sports mega events are thrumming with the political. I mean, if the Olympics, let's just take the Olympics, if the Olympics weren't political, then why would we have all these countries marching in behind flags, thereby working up everybody's nationalism into a frenzy? We could have all the poll vultures walk in together. I mean, that would be a real sign of solidarity internationally, which is supposedly what the Olympics are about. And so, essentially, my rule of thumb is if somebody comes along and tells you that the Olympics or sports in general aren't political, they may well be milking that sports machine with both hands. In other words, making their money off the Olympic Games, that's certainly been my experience over the last decade, plus working on these things is that people that push back against me are often the very people who happen to be making their living off these events that we're talking about. Yeah, I think that's a trend I've observed as well, where only people who are sort of quite fervent and can actually get quite emotional about this stuff are the people whose livelihoods depend on it. And from that perspective, I can maybe understand, for example, if you're a catering company and you've just got a big Olympic contract, you don't want to hear about that kind of stuff, but it's this unfortunate thing where these are mega events, and if we criticize them, there's such a knock on of business and livelihoods there, which does make I think bit of a more critical or a difficult task to do. And the one I would definitely raise, of course, is the argument they always throw back to criticism is, oh, what about the athletes? You know, you can't take this right from the athletes. What would you say in response to that kind of pushback from criticism? Yeah, well, for starters, I think you're making a really important point about the money that's sloshing through the sports system. And in particular, with sports mega events, I mean, the Qatar World Cup is going to bring $7.5 billion to FIFA, just the World Cup. And every single Olympics that happens brings billions upon billions to the International Olympic Committee, the group that oversees the Olympic Games. And so yes, in a lot of ways, the athletes that we're talking about in the World Cup or the Olympics, or really many other types of sporting events, are essentially turned into human shields for profit making, in a sense, especially if they're happening under conditions that involve human rights violations, that involve massive greenwashing, then these players are put in the awkward position of essentially being the thing that pulls everybody's eyes to these sports events. And so really puts them in a difficult position. Fortunately, I think Ben, we're living in a moment that I think is fair to call the athlete empowerment era where more and more we're seeing athletes with the social conscience, athletes who care about the environment, athletes who care about social justice, and we're willing to speak out about it. And so they've been pushing back against some of these narratives that the sports are not political. In fact, they're very involvement in fighting for justice in various fronts is further evidence that these sports fear is absolutely political from top to bottom. And anyone who tells you otherwise is living in a fantasy land. Yes. And I have definitely appreciated some of the efforts on this most recent World Cup from teams that are trying to basically, I don't want to say I have the cake in either two because that sounds too critical, but basically still go to the World Cup and participate at that level. But without sort of fully embracing what is going on there, I think the good example is Denmark where they refuse shirts, sponsorships because they were like, we don't want to make money off this difficult thing beyond just our performance. I know Norway also said a lot of things around it, but they had the benefit of having not qualified by the time they said it. So you have to be like, okay, so that's probably what a lot of teams actually think, but the ones who qualified won't say that because they're already there. Let's talk a little bit about that paper. I referenced at the start, one of the things that I found so insightful about that paper is that you reference not just autocratic states, but also democratic states because I've done actually two solo episodes on this podcast, deep diving into the problems with mega events like the Olympics, which I wasn't familiar with your work at the time. And I wish I had been because that would have fast-tracked my research process somewhat. But basically, I end up coming to a lot of the similar conclusions that you had and definitely probably out of the benefit of your work and some of your colleagues. But I guilty of those episodes that I focus too much on autocratic states because those accusations are so much more obvious. What would you say with regards to democratic states in sports watching? For example, you already mentioned London 2012. What evidence have you seen there? Yeah, there's lots of evidence that London organizers did not follow through on their promises. I mean, it really astounds me sometimes when London 2012 is held up as this super success story for the Olympic Games. I mean, let's just slow down for a second and remember that when London was bidding on those 2012 Olympics, they said that they were going to cost $3.8 billion, $3.8. Hey, that's plenty. They ended up costing $38 billion, according to a Sky Sports investigation that talked about all the transport upgrades, hotel upgrades that should be counted. $3.8 to $38 billion. And of course, who pays mostly for the cost of the Olympics? The public pays, the taxpayer pays. And so the Olympics are a really good example in London is the paradigmatic example of how they're basically a game that's rigged for the rich. It's trickle up economics and it's a way of transferring enormous public funds into the hands of private entities, corporate sponsors, other people who are well positioned to benefit from the Olympics or from the World Cup. And so, yeah, I mean, London made big promises about how this was going to help the youth get out there and be more active. And hey, that's a really noble goal to try to get to. Absolutely. Unfortunately, it just didn't happen. And again, you have to wonder, was it because so much money was plunged into the event itself and not into what was going to happen after the event? I mean, they could have taken many of those billions of dollars and plunged them into local sports and made them free for young people. That surely would have helped in terms of uptick in the participation rates among youth. But it's not just the London 2012 Olympics. I mean, you see it all the time with various Olympics. I mean, I was in Tokyo ahead of the 2020 Olympics. This was pre-COVID. This was 2019. And if you'll remember, Tokyo organizers were saying that if you give us the Olympics, it's going to help us recover. They called in the, quote unquote, recovery games. And by that, they met recover from the triple whammy earthquake tsunami and nuclear meltdown that happened in Fukushima. And unfortunately, that just simply didn't happen. I actually traveled around with a professor who had a dosimeter device with him that measures the radiation in the air. And as we drove from Tokyo to Fukushima, the rates of radioactive particles in the air went up through the roof to extraordinarily dangerous levels. This is 2019 right before the 2020, well, eventually 2021, summer Olympics there. And so they said it was going to be this wonderful way to improve society. Absolutely. They did not do that. In fact, the people that I interviewed in Fukushima pointed a finger at Tokyo and said that actually they've slowed down our recovery because they've sent all the cranes to Tokyo to get ready for the Olympics instead of leaving them here to help us with our recovery. So definitely, this is a key point. And I'm glad we're focusing on it right out of the gate, Ben, that it's not just authoritarian powers, although they certainly do it too. But it's domestic leaders who use sports to sports wash things that they don't really want to talk about or use sports to say they're going to address things, which then they just don't do. Yes. And it's so curious regarding London 2012 that obviously the Brexit vote was four years after that without getting into the debate of whether it was right or whether it was wrong to vote for Brexit. It was such a tight vote. You could easily see that if London 2012 doesn't happen in that sort of promotion or improvement of national spirit in the wake of 2012, maybe the vote would have gone differently, which shows the relevance and the power of these mega events. It's also interesting from a perspective because then you start to question what are the motivations for bidding it in the first place? Is it like, oh, my country's not in a great position right now, economically or socially or whatever? This would event would really bring people together, but unfortunately, it seems often to be like the idea of it will bring them together rather than the actual what happens on the ground. And you mentioned some of the infrastructure legacy in London 2012. The one I heard of the other day was that obviously West Ham now play in the Olympic stadium, which is I suppose a good thing relatively like the bar is so low for white elephant stadiums with the Olympics, at least the London stadium is being used by a team. But unfortunately for the taxpayer, basically West Ham couldn't afford it at full price, so they got a discounted deal on that stadium, which basically means if you're a tax paying mill wall fan, you've essentially paid for your rival team's new stadium, which just shows the lack of almost realistic accounting that went on before and after the games. Talking on that exact topic, what would you say around the concepts of monitoring and evaluation? Because I think what often happens is these organizations say before the fact, oh, it'll be fine, but we can't really know that until afterwards. And then four, five, six, seven years later, when it seems to be a disaster, the people in charge have kind of taken their money and left. How do we break that cycle? Yes, that's a really good question. And it's an extraordinarily difficult cycle to break because basically what happens is the world focuses its attention on that sports mega event for a short period of time while in the lead up to and then when it's happening. And then we all shift our attention to the next sports mega event. I mean, I consider myself guilty of this to a certain degree as well. Part of the reason why they can get away with it is because there's just zero accountability bricked into the process, meaning there's no independent group that oversees these big quote unquote legacy promises. That's what they call them legacies. I don't you like to use the word. I think it's just promising things and then following through on things, legacies just sort of fancy speak for making it sound more important, but they don't have to follow through on their so-called legacy promises because no one's there to say, hey, guess what? You need to do this. And that's because the International Olympic Committee, in the case of the Olympics, which we're talking about with London, is essentially a peristate. It floats among states. You just saw Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, talking at the G20 as if he's some kind of international dignitary, but they're peristates that descend on your city and basically act like a parasite on your city, whether it's the taxpayers, whether it's these big lofty promises, and then they just move on to the next place. I saw the exact same dynamics when I lived in Rio de Janeiro in the lead up to and during the summer Olympics in 2016. I had the good fortune of being a full bright research fellow there. And so I was on the ground watching communities getting displaced, watching communities fighting their displacement, and then watching these grand promises coming from up top with the International Olympic Committee with local organizers, and then boom, Olympics are over, IOC, International Olympic Committee is gone, never to be seen again. And these stadiums that they built special for the Olympics, which had basically no use because they're for all these specialized sports, and they take a lot of money to maintain. They just fell into immediate disrepair, and nobody was really there to hold the people accountable. The other factor that I think is really important, the last thing I'll say on this for the moment, Ben, is that what happens sometimes with these sports mega events is that one group of people is in office when they're pushing for the bid, but then those folks are long gone by the time the actual event happened. So they're not even held accountable. You're going to see this with Los Angeles, as I mentioned before, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles said all manner of things about how this was going to put Los Angeles on the map, like Los Angeles isn't on the map just side note, but that it was going to make all these things happen. Eric Garcetti is going to be long gone from being mayor of Los Angeles by the time this rolls around. So there's another potential foothold for accountability that just doesn't work out. Yes. And that timing point you make is so crucial, I think. I actually have been withholding in the last couple of months to be posting content about Qatar, because I almost think it's too late. Me amongst many other much more distinguished people were raising these issues for years, literally since the bid happened, or even it was put forward. And now in the last sort of three weeks, I've just seen such a rush from the media to condemn Qatar and all of this stuff, and I'm like, why are you doing it now? It's way too late. We had to put the brakes on. If anything, now that the emissions and the human rights have been committed to the air and committed to criminal history, we should almost just have the world cup, because I don't want to waste those stadiums. We need to make these criticism so much sooner. On that topic, what do you think around the idea that the Olympics and, of course, also the World Cup might actually just be a sort of lens on which to more accurately look at problems that exist anyway. And I'll give you two related examples, one of which is what I would call the almost kind of white color corruption of the United Kingdom and the buildup to London 2012. It's not so much cash and briefcases, but it's very much favours, friends, lords, periods, etc. Whereas swap to somewhere like Rio, or even the Sachi games in Russia, that's very much more conventional corruption, if I can call it like that, where it is very much local officials being paid off, any dissenters are sometimes being literally murdered for speaking their mind. So yeah, I guess my question is, do you think that's kind of what happens in business in general, and that the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup just exacerbate that? Well, I think that looking at sports is an incredible way to talk about really important issues in society, whether it's around sustainability, whether it's around police repression, whether it's around how we spend our public dollars. For those who are listening who aren't sports fans, you know, you might be disappointed, but sports are really important culturally out there. And I can tell you, before I started writing and doing research on the politics of sports, I wrote about state suppression in the United States. In other words, what the government does to suppress political dissent, what the media do to suppress political dissent. And I can tell you from personal experience, I think all of us probably have somebody who's to the right side of the political spectrum in our family, and you sit down with them and you're telling them about things that you're passionate about for me, the suppression of the American Indian movement in the 1970s, for example, and their face is just kind of glaze over. But I can talk to those very same relatives of mine in Wisconsin, who have no interest in those sort of leftist suppression histories, who when I talk about who owns the green Bay Packers football team, that's a US American football team. Well, it's a publicly owned team. And my family members, who might be to the right side of the political spectrum, they actually have little scripts they've paid into that. They're public owners. They have the little piece of paper on their wall that says they pitched in $200 to make the team and keep the team public. So my point is just that sports can be such a great way to open up conversations with people who don't necessarily want to talk about politics with you, but you can get there through these various ways. In terms of what you're asking about, I essentially look at it like legalized in illegal corruption. We all know what illegal corruption looks like. Here's a satchel of cash. You vote for my country to host the next world cup. That is just illegal bribery and so on. But there's all a manner of legalized corruption that is still extremely unethical that is totally bricked into the way these mega events work. And I think when we were talking before about the sort of classic upward transfer of cash, capital and wealth as using these mega events to do so, that's what we're talking about with the, it might not be illegal, but it's certainly unethical forms of corruption. And you don't have to look very far to find lots of examples of this sort of unethical yet legal corruption. In fact, you could argue that the Olympics these days are essentially rooted in different forms of legalized corruption, whether it's the upward transfer of money and overspending, every single Olympic spend since 1960 has gone over budget. This is an incredible opportunity to give the police forces in your city and country all the weapons they'd never be able to get during normal political times. They say, oh, we could have a terrorist attack and it's true. There have been terrorist attacks at different Olympic events. I think Munich 1972 think Atlanta 1996, but on that one rare chance that it happens, they get all these special weapons and even special laws that they don't just like return and cancel after the Olympic Games or the sports mega event, they stay on the book and become part of racialized policing in the wake of these mega events. And so these are just some of the examples. There's actually many more when it comes to the social sustainability side, when it comes to the environmental sustainability side of practices that are highly unethical, promises not followed through on, and yet we often just move on ourselves and just lay it behind and don't actually get a chance to fully address it. Yes. And the one that always came into my mind when thinking about those, just because of the sheer volume of money involved was such a 2014, because if you read the volume of public money that Basie was falling to the relevant oligarchs who were profiting from it and you know, but it's always their company or their contract, the sheer volume of money. I mean, you're talking bigger GDP than many countries, kind of money, which is scary. Talking of Sochi, I think that finished in what was it January, February 2014, and then Russia invaded Crimea about a week later. Going back to that paper, our reference of yours at the start, you talk about staging of militarized action almost in the wake of these events. What can you say about that? Yes. I'm so glad you're returning to that point. First of all, yes. Sochi was supposed to cost in the early days, $12 billion. In the end, it cost $51 billion. That's more than all previous winter Olympics combined. And not only that, but Vladimir Putin and others inside of Russia used it as an opportunity to work the country up into a patriotic frenzy. You know, sometimes people ask me, does sports washing work, if you will? And I think most of the time, not always, but most of the time when they ask that question, what they mean is, does it work on an international audience? And if you go back and you look at media coverage in the UK, US, other countries in the lead into those Sochi Olympics, you'll find that those media were raising all sorts of critical questions about what was happening in Sochi, not just in terms of spending, but in terms of environment, in terms of the incredibly punitive anti-LGBT law that was passed right ahead of those Olympics. They called it the gay propaganda law in 2013. The rest of the world was jumping up and down, saying, this is incredibly unethical, and it clashes mightily with principles enshrined in the Olympic charter. How can they be hosting this sports mega event? And yet inside of Russia, Vladimir Putin was getting ever more popular. He was cozying up to a lot of these barons and oligarchs and getting their millions upon millions, in a sort of deal where they got to keep their billions in order to keep this going. And his popularity ratings went through the roof. By the end of the Sochi Olympics, he was polling approval ratings at 86% and all time high for him. And like you mentioned, this isn't just some branding exercise. He actually turned around pivoted and used that popularity to invade the Crimea between the Olympics and the Paralympics, just as a side note, making a massive mockery of the Olympic truce, which you're not supposed to be engaging in these kind of battles during the Olympic time period. And so yes, this is a serious issue sports washing and looking at Sochi really helps illuminate that. Yeah, there's just some interesting parallels around a nation hosting the games and military action. I mean, you've got Sochi in 2014 and then the invasion of Crimea, you've got slightly more of a delay, but FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. Now what's going on in Russia with Ukraine? And then obviously, you can go all the way back with the Nazi Germany hosting the Olympics in the decade previous to the World War Two. And then we know what happened there. So there's just this interesting correlation between particularly like authoritarian slash dictator type politics with the idea of military action in the pipeline, okay, let me just get a mega event through to get the nation ready to go what I need to go kind of thinking. And it really works. I mean, that's the truth of the matter. As I mean, you mentioned the Berlin Olympics of 1936 initially Hitler wasn't very excited about those Olympic games. Actually, he wasn't that into sports really. The only sport he mentions in mind, Comf is boxing. But Gerbels, his propaganda minister, Joseph Gerbels, convinced Hitler that this was an incredible propaganda opportunity. And in fact, the organizers of the Berlin Olympics created a new tradition for the purposes of passing along propaganda through Europe. And that was the Olympic torch relay. That was invented by people who supported the Nazis ahead of those Olympics. And it was used as a way, not just a spread excitement about the Olympics throughout Europe, but also as a way of the Nazis tried to make the argument that they were the true and worthy errors of the Aryans from Greece. And so yes, from the early days, even though sports washing wasn't coined until 2015, there's elements of sports washing that go back into history. And of course, everybody knows what happened in the wake of those 1936 Olympics moving into World War II. You know, another thing that we should both point out is, and I know you agree with me on this, is just that we're not arguing that this some kind of simple equation where sports washing all of a sudden is this trampoline for war. But what it does do is it softens up the population, whips the population into this frenzy of patriotism, which makes it much more easier for one of these leaders to move toward war. And of course the Olympics in both the case of Sochi and the case of Berlin weren't the only thing going on at that time. I mean, there's a whole lot of other propaganda activity in both of those situations, but the Olympics surely contributed in a way that allowed these leaders to engage in war without the kind of pushback you might expect at the domestic level. Yes. And then that naturally goes into what was going on in the Cold War and that the Soviet Union, the United States were flexing over the space race and many other things. But both of them got a mega event in that time. Both of them put extra emphasis on those mega events in that time to as an additional show of dominance. The other thing that I noticed was quite interesting trend. The term has kind of moved away now, but definitely when I was in high school, we were taught of the BRICS nations. That's Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These were some of the most economically promising countries with the still emerging economies. And then what I started to notice was an interesting trend was that those countries suddenly for about a 12-year clump became so associated with these mega events. You had Beijing in 2008. You had South Africa for the FIFA World Cup in 2010. And to add context to this, I'm from South Africa. I was there. I got that enjoyment that patriotism from it. So I'm not going to criticize it in its entirety. But then you had Sotchi in 2014. You had Brazil 2016. And then Russia 2018. And what am I forgetting? Oh, Brazil had both. Brazil had the World Cup and the Olympics. So suddenly you've basically knocked out all of the BRICS nations. And that just makes me think, with those countries, just the ones that could afford the bribes without having the checks and balances to be caught for the bribes. Because the example I would give in Canada, that is Australia. Australia is obviously a very developed country. And it's got strong checks and balances. Australia's never had a FIFA World Cup. And even their Olympics, they have to do quite a lot of vote buying to get it. Do you think there's any credence to that idea? Well, it's interesting. I'm with you. It's the BRICS moniker has really kind of gone away over time. But they cashed in in terms of these sports mega events for sure. I think that the groups that oversee both the World Cup and the Olympics are keen to spread their events as wide as possible. And this is purely, I mean, they say it's because they want to spread the sport and all that. And these are people of conviction. But I mean that in a double sense, they believe in sport, but like you're pointing to many of them also are convicts actually now. So there are men of convictions in multiple senses, I guess you'd say. But yeah, I think you're on to something geographically trying to spread out money. I mean, sports mega events are very much about what do countries do with surplus capital once they rack it up? How do you stop up surplus capital for projects that will advance your country? I mean, Qatar is the perfect example of this. It's a petro state that has many, many billions upon billions of dollars sitting there. And they put it to use to essentially build up their city around Doha and then the country more widely to get it ready for this mega event. We're seeing similar dynamics as Saudi Arabia talks about wanting to host the 2030 world cup. And so you are definitely seeing a shift where many of the developing countries, I use those kind of binaries with great caution because I think that they're just, you know, for heristical purposes only. But you are seeing kind of a shift. But I think there's in the interest of the elites in those countries who can benefit from the shine that the games can bring to them. But it's definitely to the benefit of the leaders at FIFA and IOSU can turn to their corporate sponsors and say, Hey, look, we're spreading the game far and wide. Here's new fields where you'll be able to reach billions upon billions of new customers. And so you can't talk about these sports mega events without talking about the political economic implications of them as well. Yeah, there's no getting away from the fact that suddenly the Gulf region seems to be cashing in mega events. I think the most ludicrous one and we'll get onto this when we finally talk about sustainability as well. But Saudi Arabia has just been chosen for the 2029 Asian or Winter Olympic games, which yeah, we will get onto that when it comes to sustainability. But yeah, just from an economic boom perspective, obviously these countries have come into wealth and they seem to be cashing in. A point I would really like to make though and actually by coincidence, I was talking to two people from Saudi Arabia yesterday. And I do think sometimes we're guilty when we use these terms to say, oh, the Saudis or the Qataris or this. What we definitely mean though, and I'm sure you'll agree with this is the state actors, the ones who are making these decisions. I would say for example, and I literally asked these people yesterday, you know, what did the average Saudi Arabian think of Saudi Arabia buying new castle united, for example. And one, we're not very interested. And two, they had like no conceptualization of it. They weren't consulted. It's their public well fund in theory, but they weren't consulted. So it is a very actually small number of people that we're talking about here who are making these actors rather than the citizens themselves. And I think that's important to make because then that stops the argument going down the lines of, for example, elitism or Islamophobia because that's not what this discussion should be about. And in fact, if those state leaders try to use that as a defense mechanism sometimes. Absolutely. I'm really glad that you raised that point here. This has been one of the pushbacks on critics of what's happening in Qatar right now is that they're engaging in Orientalism and so on. We've seen a lot of what about Islam, you know, hey, what about human rights violations in England or in the United States or in Canada. And they're right. There are human rights violations in every country, but that doesn't mean we absolve everybody of having to deal with the serious crimes that are actually happening in front of us. I mean, that just is ridiculous. It doesn't give people a free pass by wagging a finger at other people, but I'm really glad you raised that. Yes, I would agree with that. I also was interested literally actually about a month after I posted my two episodes on this topic. I was fortunate to find one of your debates with Dick Pound. And if anyone who doesn't know who Dick Pound is, I referenced it in those episodes, but long story short, he's still the longer standing IOC member, I believe. And he's Canadian and he's a long time. I don't want to say apologies because that sounds like I'm prejudging him. But from what I have understood of him, he's one of the key voices that us pushing back on this criticism, particularly when it came to for example, the criticism of Beijing hosting the games and the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims. But one of the points he raised in the debate and I'd like to get into this a bit more with you is around the cost because there is an argument and his exact wording was if we want to have these events in the way that it is now expected first to have them, we need to go to these nations you can afford them. We almost couldn't go to someone else to have this world cup in the way that it wanted to be other than the Qataris who had all this money lying around. What is the solution? Is it that we maybe need to have a more dulled down event? What do you think? Well, he's implicitly pointing to the fact that these sports mega events have gotten much bigger over time. And there is recent academic research that was published that found that going back to the 1960s and moving forward that the Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics and men's world cups have just gotten enormously bigger in terms of the number of people participating in terms of the costs for the host nation or host city in terms of the marketing involved in terms of the number of athletes involved and so on. So these things are getting bigger which does kind of mean that the cost will inevitably go up. But he can't act like he's some passive observer in this process. Like you said, he's the longest serving member of the International Olympic Committee. He's somebody that people inside of the organization look to and take his words seriously. So he can't just act like a neutral observer here. There's a lot that the International Olympic Committee could do and I think should do, especially when thinking about the environment, to try to make the game smaller or at least not have everybody maybe come to one location for them. But you know, I don't think they're really all that interested in that because whenever you start talking about alternatives such as hosting the Olympics in one place or rotating it among a small group of cities, like a handful of cities around the world, the International Olympic Committee has shown zero interest in this. I mean, these are folks who've gotten very used to Ascot's caviar, velvet robes, they're living the good life. These guys, if they're on the executive committee of the International Olympic Committee, get $900 a day in per diem for showing up at these events and for meetings, $900 a day in per diem. That doesn't count the five star hotels they get. In other words, they can actually make more money a member of the International Olympic Committee's executive committee than somebody who wins a medal from a country at those very Olympics. Just by sitting in the seventh row and sleeping the whole time if they wanted to, they could still walk off with more money than an actual Olympian. So my point is just that they don't have a lot of incentive to change. In fact, if you look at the International Olympic Committee in FIFA, there are two organizations that are always changing so they don't have to actually really change at all. What I mean is they just do little tiny little thing here around the edge thing here around that edge, but then actually the core business model remains the same. And, you know, Richard Pound, who you're mentioning, this longest serving member, he's considered to be the wild man at the IOC. The guy who was a real truth talker there, pretty much everybody else is in line. So when he moves on, we're looking at an organization that has moved in total lockstep with their leader, which is Tomas Bach. In fact, if you look at the organization, the International Olympic Committee right now, they're starting to resemble the totalitarian countries that they are often now more often open to teaming up with. They are ruled with an iron fist by their German leader, Tomas Bach. And there is very little room for dissent inside of the organization. Yes. And it's funny what the first piece of evidence that alerted me to or made me question, should I say, the lack of, I don't know, maybe brought down the veil, so to speak of who these people are, was when the word got out that these mega events tend to be actually catastrophic financially for the locations. And that suddenly there was a massive withdrawal of bits. Countries weren't bidding anymore. I think one of the ones was Norway bit for winter Olympic games. And then when they saw the list of demands from the IOC for their members in terms of luxury hotel, sweets, private parking, a whole highway lane or something ridiculous like that. But I do list all of these in one of my episodes if anyone wants to go back and listen to that. That just shows you who they are. They almost paint themselves at this kind of person you could go up the lane to your county office and have a chat to behind an old desk. That's absolutely not who they are. They are their leaders to the elite of the wealthy and powerful. And I think also doing research into and I know this was more prolific in the 90s, but I'm sure it still happens at the moment was even when Australia successfully got the 2000 games because the Australians as I mentioned earlier were slightly ahead of the game in terms of checks and balances in their legal system was ready to go. They found so much evidence of just agreed just vote buying you know using Australian taxpayers money to host African IOC members and just pay them in cash etc etc. And what frustrates me as well is that okay that was all laid out and there's lots of we're sorry and we need to do better on this. But then you fast forward 15 20 years and the same people are there. The same IOC members who were in charge. There's one Australian one I can't remember the name of but he's still there. John Coats that's exact John Coats is his name right yes yes yeah it's a great story Ben actually can I just say one thing real quick I'm really glad you raised that just so John Coats who doubles as an IOC vice president as well as the head of the Australian Olympic Committee forever he was the head of the Australian Olympic Committee yeah he doled out $70,000 on the eve of the vote for the Sydney games and scored two votes from Uganda and from Kenya and they won by two votes and so I mean afterwards he was asked about this and he was like yeah there's nothing wrong this is a perfect example of what we were talking about before legalized corruption I mean it sounds super shady anybody who walks up to it with an open mind goes what he just gave them $70,000 for sport in their countries on the eve of the vote and then they turned around and voted for him but that's the way it works I mean this guy John Coats he changed the bidding process help change the bidding process for the exact reason that you mentioned for a period there between like 2013 and 2018 around a dozen cities said no including Oslo to the 2022 Olympics that they were bidding on there and that's because of the cost it's because of the IOC extravigates and all these different factors and so John Coats and a few others inside of the International Olympic Committee they decided we're going to do this differently we're not going to have the traditional way of bidding on the Olympics anymore basically what we're going to do is anytime you get elites in a city and political leaders in a city to say we'll host the Olympics and it looks pretty much good enough to do an Olympics we're just going to lock them in when we can so the first group that benefited from that was people from guess what Australia in Brisbane some 11 years beforehand so this Australian guy John Coats sets up a process that basically allows you to lock in anyone when you can and the first beneficiaries are from his very home country and again it's not illegal per se but wow it sort of looks fan ethical on the surface and we have been using basically FIFA and the IOC interchangeably so far almost because of the similarities in the nature of the events and obviously both of them are located in Switzerland for obvious reasons but what frustrates me is again you sometimes see members in between sometimes they'll step down from the IOC and move into FIFA or vice versa and for me that should be almost completely unacceptable that you've taken this massive position of power in as you said earlier like this global institution it's not like it's beholden to any state and you're bouncing between and it becomes I know it's not entirely men but it does become bit of an old boys club which is obviously brings up easy incentive for wrongdoing absolutely in fact the International Olympic Committee didn't allow women in the organization until 1981 the Reagan era the Fatcher era I mean my goodness they just this year I have been trumpeting their ability to now have women in equal numbers on committees inside of the International Olympic Committee so this should not be confused with a proto feminist organization the IOC absolutely not yes right so I want to bring up two final themes first of all capitalism I kind of alluded to this earlier when I said can these games exist but what has happened in recent years is that they have realized that no one's going to bid on these games unless they kind of dull it down a bit so you've got Los Angeles I think Paris is supposed to be you know lots of reusable infrastructure one frustrating point I would raise before I ask you a question is that it's annoying that they're doing it now as if they've just worked it out themselves like oh we've heard we've realized we've listened to you and we're going to change but people were raising these concerns I'm sure you were raising these concerns many games ago and it only took until now for them to kind of change their tone for nations to stop bidding but to go beyond that point do you think that these organizations can exist in a fair and proper way in this kind of I don't know neoliberal capitalist way of doing things because I almost can't conceive of an idea of the Olympic Games or FIFA without some kind of behavior going on because again just the sheer cost of what needs to go in well for starters I think it's a really good idea to think about these sports mega events within a context of capitalism and as a way of better understanding the machinations of capitalism if neoliberal capitalism is all about deregulation privatization and letting the market decide as people often talk about the sort of hyper individualization of economic processes well I'm not so sure that sports mega events are a great example of that I mean after all they're under tight regulation regimes in terms of intellectual responsibility in terms of rights in terms of the building of these stadiums are highly regulated it's privatized sort of but it's really the public as we've been talking about that pays the bills for these things I mean these are publicly funded events where the private entities walk off with their rewards and we're really not letting the market decide in any kind of discernible sense and yet it is a great way of thinking through capitalism and all the advantages that people get who are well positioned political elites economic elites within these systems and so I think we can learn a lot about capitalism by studying sports mega events and I think we can learn a lot about sports mega events by studying capitalism and it's definitely an evolving sort of beast here and one that is on its back foot right now I mean when I started studying this intensely well over a decade ago you could still walk up to the podium if you are a bitter on one of these Olympic bids let's say and talk about how this was going to rise all boats in the city it's gonna put us on the map and people would just sort of some nambulistically not along yeah yeah wow yeah that sounds really good this will be fun but nowadays absolutely can't do that whether it's Oslo like you mentioned before Ben or really any other Olympic city you can't put a bid on the table without locals knowing about these endemic downsides that we've been talking about today so the ground is really shifted under the feet of these people who organized these big sports mega events and yet they remain popular for one reason and one reason only and that's because of the worker athletes that make them happen yes I think that was very well phrased and as you raised there's almost some irony there of this what can be seen as like the emblematic capitalist event of Coca-Cola sponsors everything on the grand scale but often has been paid for by the taxpayer and whatever vicinity it's taking place in also raises the concept of like the political spectrum is not necessarily a line but a wheel and if you go far enough left you become a fascist and you go far enough right you become a fascist so that's an interesting point but just because we're running out of time I will raise this last topic just because you've written about it recently in regards to the guitar world cup sustainability how on earth is it potentially possible for us to host a games anywhere and I know guitar has been particularly bad at this and environmentally friendly sense because all of their claims around carbon neutrality net zero offsetting obviously seem from any reasonable third party verification to be rubbish so how do we proceed from here well for starters I mean I think that the guitar world cup is a classic and quintessential example of greenwashing in other words showing a public display of concern for the environment and a supposed inclination to change society for the better by providing green solutions while doing the bare minimum if anything to make actual improvements to the environment and yeah from the carbon offsets to the fact that guitar is highly reliant on liquefied natural gas which is hardly a bridge fuel we can go directly to wind and solar and other renewables but actually lng liquefied natural gas is slowing down the process and these things link together that we're talking about I think that's why you're pulling it together right at the end then because greenwashing essentially can sort of anesthetize us to the serious implications of these sports washing events so greenwashing and sports washing come together as this sort of double barreled vehicle for not just blunting the reality that these sports mega vents have endemic downsides but that they leave permanent marks on cities they leave permanent marks on ecosystems and because we're living in an age of climate disruption that means they leave permanent marks on our collective future I know that these sports mega vents don't do nearly as much damage as like big countries like mine the United States or China that is just belching out all sorts of emissions but they are important symbolically and they are great ways to focus our collective attention on what can be done as we press ahead and try to create a real deal greener future which is totally possible where it not for these corporate entities and well-bought political figures who don't want to do anything about it yes and I think it can actually leave people quite disillusioned if these institutions don't roll back somehow because there's also this pressure about us trying to act personally around our sustainability you know there's all this rhetoric right now about like you know you shouldn't fly because it's so high emissions but then you turn on the Olympics and you see X, Y and Z flying all over the world continuously for whatever sport and it does demoralize you being like wait why must I act if these people refuse to act and you can see a couple of like clear examples that even today there is no acceptance or no reasonable acceptance of the extent of the problem I would give the example of the next World Cup in four years time which is across three countries like it didn't have to be it could have been in Mexico or in Canada or in the United States but they've put it across three I mean if you're basically a fan of a team you're going to have to get on nine planes or something to enjoy that World Cup which is ridiculous and then obviously as I mentioned earlier in the context of sustainability this Saudi Arabia being given the Winter Olympic Games I mean to even consider it you have to be so not concerned about climate change the sheer volume of energy and resource that has to be put in to make Saudi Arabia feasible for a Winter Olympic Games boggles the mind so then that will lead me on to my absolute final question with all of this stress and anxiety going on around the world of sport how do you as I know a former athlete and also a sports fan how do you stay in love with these games that obviously are the real reason that these events became so big in the first place yeah it's getting ever more difficult to continue to love sports when they don't love you back as Jessica Luther and Kavita Davidson put it in their excellent book I tend to look at it in multiple ways for starters I really differentiate the athletes from the people who are organizing the event and I look at the athletes as workers and so I look at sports as a labor issue and I think you can side with these athletes and these athletes can actually have a really positive influence on the labor movement and so I'm here to support worker athletes many of whom from the Olympics at least will reach out to me behind the scenes and we'll have conversations sometimes leak documents to me it gets very exciting sometimes but why wouldn't I want to support them many of them are from lesser known sports who aren't really going to make a lot of money off the Olympics they do it for the actual love of the game I mean the other way I guess I can look at it is I have dedicated a lot of my life to sports you know whether it's playing or coaching or what have you and why should I let these barons from the FIFA or the International Olympic Committee come along and ruin something that not only I love but the rest of the world gets a lot of joy from and so for me there's a real temptation to just sort of say you know what I'm not going to watch the World Cup in Qatar this year this is a bridge too far for me but on the other hand there's something inside of me that just says wait then FIFA wins then I'd rather just stay actually and fight try to raise up some of these issues and basically try to sort of piggy jack the event piggy back off of it and the attention around it and hijack it for social justice purposes and I guess that's the way I'm approaching it at this time in my life talk to me in a year or two who knows maybe I will be fed up at that point but I do believe this sports is a really important terrain upon which you can have important conversations with people across the political spectrum in ways that other issues simply don't allow us to do in this highly polarized world and so because of that and other reasons I'm going to stick with it and I'm going to keep fighting because I do think there is power in sports and there's real possibility as well. I think that was fantastic you all said and I think there's also some small irony in there that you essentially have quoted a little bit of what the Olympic legacy and the Olympic charter says around how sport brings people together that is a true statement but unfortunately most of the people who usually said aren't actually acting in that way so maybe it's up to the likes of yourself and myself and anyone else listening that we can still uphold the values even if the current arbiters of those values aren't so on that note Jules I'd like to say thank you so much for your time and really appreciate it. Thank you Ben it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to this latest episode of the Sustaining Sport Podcast it was a real privilege for me and a pleasure to have Jules on the show. This is the penultimate episode of 2022 the last one coming to you within the next few weeks is about sustainability within motorsport to look out for that but come January I've already got a few speakers lined up so very excited to continue to bring you more content around sustainability in sport. So on that note thank you as always and of course please subscribe on your platform of choice and I will see you in the next episode.