Amid all the Zoom fatigue, I wanted to flag the recent #TalkingSport conversation “From World Cup glory to COVID-19: The future for women’s sport“ organized by World Football Summit and Eleven Sport. Featuring Angela Ruggiero (CEO, Sports Innovation Lab), Laura Georges (Secretary General, French Football Federation), Kate Johnson (Head of Global Sports & Entertainment Marketing Partnerships, Content & Media, Google), and moderator Lynsey Hooper, it was one of the better webinars I’ve attended in a while.

I appreciated this insightful panel and the speakers’ thoughtful points. You can read my Tweet thread of highlights, which notes several key aspects I noted, and watch the highlights on YouTube. But for me, one of the discussion’s biggest value added was the speakers’ diversity of global views.

Such webinars in English typically feature professionals from the United States, Britain, and the Commonwealth but much more rare (to my chagrin) are there voices from France, Italy, or Iberia. As a French speaker, I’ve tuned into several Francophone discussions, and especially the ones organized on Africa find a myriad of experiences informing the conversation at hand. I thus appreciated Georges’ perspectives last week both for broadening the conversation as well as gaining a better understanding of the French Football Federation’s stance on canceling the remainder of the 2019 football season.

France, alone of the European Big Five football leagues, scratched the season. It’s a highly controversial move with significant financial and legal ramifications. This bitter pill is all the more difficult to swallow as counterparts in Germany, Italy, Spain, and England are returning to the pitch despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, most French clubs are not awash in the kind of cash that enables Paris Saint Germain to compete on the global stage. Instead, for more than 20 years, French clubs have focused on scouting and developing some of the best young footballers in the country then selling them to other clubs, making France the second largest exporter in the world of football talent. French clubs then use the transfer fees to sustain the process. It’s a system I documented in The Making of Les Bleus and one that’s also taking a hit with the cancellation of all football competitions in France until August.

During the #TalkingSport discussion, Georges articulated why the federation acted as it did. Safety was a paramount concern, as was being aligned in lockstep with the government.

“It’s not about economic importance. Its for everyone to be safe.”

This is where I put on my historian’s hat and remind you that:

• France has a tradition of putting the good of the community over the individual

• It is still in certain ways a socialist country, where the public-facing emphasis is not as much on individual financial gain and profit as it is in other more capitalist-centric cultures (although this is changing)

• There is a much longer, deeply ingrained acceptance of the state playing a large role in the everyday lives of citizens, from Louis XIV “L’état, c’est moi” to the Fifth Republic’s social as well as sports policies

So, understanding these historic isms, I was not surprised by Georges’ comments and reasoning as to why the FFF cooperated with the government and canceled the remainder of the 2019 season. But it was a teachable moment that underscored the many ways that history and understanding socio-cultural contexts play important roles in today’s global sports industry and business worlds #EverythingHasAHistory