The soft power of global sport is faltering under the weight of populism and hate speech

Sports are usually associated with morals, dialogue, and communication between peoples. Sporting events have provided an opportunity to highlight global civilizational and cultural diversity, and raise awareness of humanitarian, legal, and environmental issues across the world. It also played pioneering roles in bringing nations together and providing a sound diplomatic climate to reduce crises and conflicts. In recent years, organized groups have emerged within what is known as the “Ultras,” giving these demonstrations great momentum and influence.

At a time when stadiums, especially those related to football, have become widely followed and watched across the world, among a number of social groups, due to the direct broadcast of interviews led by a group of specialized international satellite channels, sports have become an important component of soft power that contributes to strengthening world peace, overcoming political differences, enhancing rapprochement between peoples, and supporting development projects.

In this context, many stadiums have become full of slogans and banners that contain humanitarian, political and cultural implications. It has often contributed to transforming these sporting moments into channels for advocacy on a number of humanitarian, social, environmental and political issues that do not receive the attention of traditional media.

Nine years ago, the German city of Dusseldorf witnessed a symbolic football match, which brought together a team made up of Muslim imams and another made up of Christian priests, while a Jew took over the task of refereeing, while the stands of the stadium embraced a wide audience of Muslims and Christians. Regardless of the result, this match represented a sublime humanitarian message embodying dialogue and tolerance.

However, sporting events were not devoid, in many cases, of deviations and manifestations of violence and riots, which made them turn into something like platforms for disgraceful behavior, and into moments for expressing racist and extremist positions, due to the media load in which a group of media outlets fall, which adopt military terms and expressions, such as attack, training camp, revenge, injury, strategic plans, and fateful confrontation..., which makes it appear to the recipient as if the matter is related to a military confrontation.

In many sports matches, some chants are chanted that constitute an insult to players of certain nationalities and minorities, which negatively affects the psychology of the players and their performance inside the fields, and the psychological and social effects that result from these behaviors are not hidden from the fans.

The manifestations of this behavior are evident inside the stadiums in the form of directing insults and insults to sports teams, including players and technical staff, on the basis of race, religion, or gender, in order to reduce the morale of opponents. Team management can also fall into these deviations, by not enabling minority sports competencies to monopolize leadership positions within the management of artistic and technical teams or to participate in sports competitions.