For years, global sports organizations have been willing to look the other way and grant their biggest events to some of the world’s worst authoritarian powers. These regimes use the events as a stage for propaganda, normalizing the repression of their citizens and their aggression on the world stage.
The latest authoritarian regime to put its name in the running is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is looking to land the Rugby World Cup in 2027. Hosting the Rugby World Cup would be another feather in the cap for Putin, as Russia already hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014 and bribed its way into hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
While Australia appears to be the front-runner for the event and World Rugby has generally done a good job in its selection process, FIFA and the International Olympic Committee have not.
FIFA’s bribery scandal saw it hand the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, which has been using slave labor to build its soccer stadiums in the lead-up to the event. The Justice Department has brought indictments against facilitators of the bribes, which led to the resignation of FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The bribes have lasting effects outside of FIFA; Russia is pitching World Rugby with the stadiums it used in 2018, and Qatar is looking to bid for the Olympics now.
The International Olympic Committee has been even kinder to authoritarians. Like Russia, China was granted the Winter Olympics for 2022. China was also given the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2014 Youth Summer Olympics. Qatar is preparing to throw its hat in the ring for 2032, as is Turkey, which made a bid for the 2020 Games.
China’s 2008 Games were a propaganda extravaganza. The New York Times gushed about the opening ceremony while acknowledging that the Chinese Communist Party “wants to inspire national pride within China, and bolster its own legitimacy in the process, even as leaders want to reassure the world that a rising China poses no danger.” How has that worked out for us 12 years later?
It was Nazi Germany that perfected the art of propagandizing while hosting major sports events, with the 1936 “Nazi Games” in Berlin helping strengthen Adolf Hitler against his domestic opposition. Global sports organizations have a moral obligation not to serve as tools for the world’s worst leaders, especially when free countries are readily available to host year in and year out.
