It’s been a tough week without that je ne sais quoi magic that the Paris 2024 Games conferred. here are a few things I’ll integrate into my global communications, sports diplomacy, and teaching work this fall.
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.
Recently, I spoke with with Estelle Brun of the Sport and International Relations Programme, IRIS Geostrategic Observatory on Sport, on basketball. At hand was the question of how the sport’s globalization—and especially the NBA’s worldwide growth since 1984—has impacted international relations, the ripple effects in the WNBA, and how #hoopsdiplomacy gains attention, whether its via Dennis Rodman, the NBA-China “events” and beyond.
There’s a lot to be excited for as we kickoff the new decade. I’m looking to 2020 as I continue to build out two key basketball stories of my own, but I also see 2020 as a break out year where many of the trends and movements in the global sports sphere finally bear fruit. Primarily, these are stories where cross-sport and cross-cultural influences—often influenced by different types of sports diplomacy—make all the difference.
As 2019 races across the finish line more quickly than a Ford at Le Mans, its clear that sports diplomacy—recognition of what it is, the various ways that it is being used, how it is changing the sports world, and some of its caveats—is ever-more present. This is true in my own work as a scholar-practitioner, as well as how athletes, teams, and countries tell their stories or how the sports business world is impacted by sports diplomacy, for better or worse. Here’s the top ten events and stories in which sports diplomacy threaded its way through my 2019—plus one honorable mention :)
Today the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s Executive Committee endorsed unanimously a recommendation that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) be declared non-compliant for four years for its role in the latest Russian doping scandal. This means, should the signatories of the April 2018 International Standard for Code Compliance by Signatories (ISCCS) abide by the code they signed, Russia’s elite athletes will be prohibited from competing in elite international competitions until 2024.
This particular case raises the question: what happens when doping meets #sportsdiplomacy? A lot, it turns out.
This Armistice Day, Veteran’s Day, its fitting that 100 years after the Franco-American and basketball bonds were more deeply entrenched that another milestone is being marked. Today in Texas, the San Antonio Spurs are retiring jersey #9, the number worn by famed French point guard Tony Parker for all but one season in his storied NBA career.
Many people think of food, fashion, and yes, football (soccer) when they think of France and associate a weekend in Paris with glamor, gossamer dreams, and macaroons. Others think of the “new Paris” that features La FrenchTech and Parisian-style hipsters along the Canal St. Martin in the 10ème. For over a century, all “good Americans” have had their own versions of the City of Light, but “my Paris” has long been sports-centric. Given the building anticipation of the NBA’s January 2020 match in the French capital, a quick 48-hours en ville by basketball illustrates different aspects of the city that you likely never thought of.
