{"id":1472,"date":"2015-02-15T20:52:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T19:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2015-02-15T20:56:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T19:56:45","slug":"australias-summer-of-sporting-events-has-it-been-worth-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/australias-summer-of-sporting-events-has-it-been-worth-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s summer of sporting events \u2013 has it been worth it?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cricket-world-cup\"
The second major sporting event Australia is hosting this summer, cricket\u2019s World Cup, began on Saturday 14 February. AAP\/Paul Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cricket World Cup\u2019s opening game, which pits Australia against England on Valentine\u2019s Day, is the latest twist in a summer in which Australia has played host to two of the world\u2019s biggest sporting events. Football\u2019s\u00a0Asian Cup<\/a>\u00a0and cricket\u2019s\u00a0World Cup<\/a>\u00a0have brought representative teams of 27 sporting nations to these shores in pursuit of two elusive trophies.<\/p>\n

The curious geography of international sport has meant that the only countries participating in both tournaments are Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney are the only Australian cities to stage both football and cricket games.<\/p>\n

Apart from the surprising entertainment of the Australia Day\u00a0knighting<\/a>\u00a0of Prince Philip and the ensuing\u00a0political turmoil<\/a>\u00a0in the Liberal Party, sport has offered the summer\u2019s most conspicuous contests. By the time the cricket World Cup final rolls around on the eve of Easter, matches will have been running ever since the pre-Christmas Test matches against India.<\/p>\n

But what is the significance and value of these festivals of international sport? Are they worth the effort, cost and risk? Large quantities of public money are spent in securing and presenting them, including\u00a0keen competition<\/a>\u00a0between the states for host rights \u201cpackages\u201d.<\/p>\n

International sport creates a massive carbon footprint that is hardly good news for planetary sustainability. As cultural researcher Toby Miller has\u00a0noted<\/a>, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa:<\/p>\n

\u2026 had the largest carbon footprint of any commercial event in world history: 850,000 tonnes of carbon expended, 65% of it due to flights.<\/p>\n

Few events in the world are more dependent on flying large numbers of people long distances than a major sports tournament in Australia.<\/p>\n

There are also the familiar \u201cbread and circuses\u201d\u00a0criticisms<\/a>that sport distracts people from really important matters. If that sounds a little too puritanical, there is no doubt that \u201cbig sport\u201d seriously disturbs the cultural and media ecology. Television and radio news program schedules are often changed and when the news can be accessed it\u2019s likely to be led and dominated by the sport event that changed the schedule in the first place.<\/p>\n

So, how convincing are the conventional justifications for hosting mega events? The most prominent case is economic and emphasises the benefits of sports-related activity, especially tourism. Tourism Australia\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0the Asian Cup as providing a \u201cfree kick\u201d in generating 500,000 spectators (it was actually 650,000), including an estimated 30,000 from overseas.<\/p>\n

More diffusely, the advantages of attracting the wandering eyes of the world to Australia are stressed through television viewing figures. This was\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0at more than a billion worldwide for the Asian Cup. A similar number is\u00a0\u00a0predicted<\/a>for the cricket World Cup.<\/p>\n

The economic benefits of hosting mega sporting events are\u00a0notoriously inexact<\/a>. The equally common claim that mega sport moments make for sustained higher levels of sport participation and improved health and fitness are also\u00a0frequently discredited<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stubborn lack of evidence connecting mega sporting events to real profits and blooming health leads their proponents into more nebulous territory \u2013 such as that they function as important sport diplomacy vehicles, especially as Australia turns towards and embraces Asia, from which 20 of the 27 teams in the two tournaments originate.<\/p>\n

While sport may encourage goodwill between nations, it can also provide a focus for geopolitical tensions. There were\u00a0rumblings<\/a>\u00a0from West Asia, on the eve of the Asian Cup final between Australia and South Korea, that the host nation should be expelled from the Asian Football Confederation for not being Asian enough. The irony would not have been lost on sport diplomacy advocates and sceptics alike.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n
\"australia-asian-cup\"
Australia won football\u2019s Asian Cup in dramatic circumstances on home soil in January. AAP\/Paul Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More seriously, had Indonesia qualified for the Asian Cup, sport diplomacy would have been a very delicate matter as many people make stringent attempts to save Australians\u00a0Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran<\/a>\u00a0from the appalling prospect of a firing squad.<\/p>\n

Sports events are characterised by assembling large numbers of people in confined spaces in a competitive atmosphere. While serious social disorder would have been unlikely, a \u201cdiplomatic incident\u201d involving protest at the apparent determination of Indonesia to execute the two men would not.<\/p>\n

In any event, the possibility of sport-related or facilitated\u00a0political violence<\/a>, and the enthusiasm of authorities for subjecting people attending or living near mega sporting venues to\u00a0heavy-duty control and surveillance<\/a>, has already inflicted some very undiplomatic indignities on them.<\/p>\n

Despite \u2013 or perhaps because of \u2013 these concerns, the most reliable justification for hosting mega sports events is as boosters of national morale and collective identity. The vagaries of national team performance \u2013 as Brazil discovered to its deep shame in hosting the 2014 football World Cup \u2013 can put a dampener on pride in country. But it can have the reverse exhilarating effect, as many Australians found in winning the Asian Cup on home soil.<\/p>\n

At the same time, event organisers have artfully harnessed the \u201cold country\u201d passions of diasporic sport fans in multicultural Australia.<\/p>\n

Mega sporting events, in the final analysis, are exuberant and expensive parties. Not everyone wants to be invited to or attend them. But nobody could have ignored that across the summer, with its usual diet of the Australian Open tennis, cycling\u2019s Tour Down Under, A-League football, domestic Twenty20 Big Bash and international tri-series one-day cricket, two very big travelling sport circuses swung by.<\/p>\n

These mega events won\u2019t be back for a while. But just as Australia\u2019s summer of the sporting event recedes into history, it will already have merged seamlessly with the rugby and Australian rules football seasons. Too much sport, as the nation\u2019s foremost sport philosophers have\u00a0pithily proposed<\/a>, is barely enough.<\/p>\n

\n

Previously published by\u00a0theconversation.com\/<\/a>\u00a0(Academic rigour, journalistic flair).<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Copyright \u00a9 David Rowe 2015<\/strong>
\nEmail:\u00a0d.rowe@uws.edu.au<\/a>
\nTwitter: @rowe_david
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/www.uws.edu.au\/ics\/people\/researchers\/david_rowe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cricket World Cup\u2019s opening game, which pits Australia against England on Valentine\u2019s Day, is the latest twist in a summer in which Australia has played host to two of the world\u2019s biggest sporting events. Football\u2019s\u00a0Asian Cup\u00a0and cricket\u2019s\u00a0World Cup\u00a0have brought representative teams of 27 sporting nations to these shores in pursuit of two elusive trophies. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,36,20,40,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-1472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-okategoriserade","7":"tag-asian-cup-2015","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sport"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-nK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}