One hundred thirty years ago, the first basketball game played outside North America was held in Paris, France, the first step in a global movement recently celebrated with World Basketball Day—one that Philadelphia now has a unique tie into thanks to its very own Batman, the 76ers’ French swingman Nicolas Batum.
Even though baseball is the dominant sport in Taiwan and its neighbors, basketball offers up interesting lessons in how sports diplomacy can be used to promote greater gender equality.
That’s a bit of a provocative question, but one that lent itself well to a workshop I co-directed with Dr. J Simon Rofe last week at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London.
Hello there, and welcome! I’m glad you stopped by.
This space is designed as a general catch-all for my ideas and what inspires me across the international sports-, history-, and communications worlds.
Why focus on these three “hats”? Many people silo these off into individual industries. But in fact, from my professional experiences as well as what I’ve learned in the field, today’s sports, communications, and history worlds are in fact intricately intertwined.
One of the things I’m greatly encouraged by is how the way we tell the stories about women’s sports is evolving. And while much of this rests on how societies are rethinking the role, import, and investment in women’s sports, it’s also highly dependent upon access: to present-day sources but also, vitally, to past accounts, statistics, and more.
How we communicate the story pertaining to issues and events in global sport shapes popular memory and sporting myths. Thus sports industry professionals, executives, investors, and the media should think more intentionally about how the ways that they tell their stories will shape, constructively or negatively, the larger narrative.
France begins its UEFA Euro 2020 campaign against Germany at the Munich Football Arena. The symbolism is rife this year, and this edition is still known as Euro2020, a nod to the competition’s 60th anniversary and celebration of an integrated “Europe” that's had the French as a driving force in the post-1945 era.
Tomorrow the French national team confronts the United States in Le Havre in what could turn into a more interesting-than-usual friendly match. The two teams’ histories with each other form a very different sort of Franco-Americain relationship than most people think of.
