In the run-up to the World Cup, we’re reminded that even the world’s biggest sporting events are never free from politics
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Big sporting events give us memorable moments, a shared national pride and the chance to enjoy the greatness of a select few who are the very best at what they do. But they are also used as a valuable space for political battlefields.
This is not a contemporary development. Olympic champions in Ancient Greece received newfounded elite social status which often led to the commencement of a political career. This is sporting success literally correlating with personal political advancement.
At the 1934 World Cup final in Rome, Benito Mussolini commissioned an unofficial trophy – ‘La Coppa Del Duce’ – to present to the victorious Italian team. Standing six times larger than the official Jules Rimet trophy, this was done to showcase Italian superiority and fascist power to the world.
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Ultimately, the biggest sporting events have a unique mix of three things which make them difficult to not be entangled with politics: visibility, national pride and rarity.
Visibility is enormous with the eyes of the world watching sporting games. According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), around five billion people followed the Paris Olympic Games in 2024. Meanwhile in the US, the ABC’s Presidential Debate lagged behind 11 NFL games in terms of national television viewers in 2024, with the Super Bowl having 100 million more views. The extraordinary reach transforms sporting events into an unavoidable, powerful medium for political communication – even for positive change, as explored below.
Countries come together and bond over a shared national pride during major sporting events. When it comes to supporting the national team, everyone wants, believes in and feels the same ideal. Many political figures can only dream of this level of homogenous support, which is why intertwining politics with sporting events can prove irresistible.
But it’s not just within nations where people share their love for sport, as renowned football historian David Goldblatt said, ‘the biggest collective gathering of humanity that now exists is the men’s World Cup’. Sporting events truly transcend borders. Take Morocco, for example. Their success at the 2022 World Cup saw celebrations across the Arabic world, and throughout the Moroccan diaspora in many European cities. They were ‘not merely celebrating Morocco but a pan-African and pan-Arabic triumph, with the Palestinian flag and pro-Palestinian slogans a central element of it’, said Goldblatt.
In a world with increasing social polarisation, sport has an innate ability to connect people across borders, through friendship, rivalry and a deeply rooted shared passion.
The relative scarcity of sporting events such as the football World Cup or the Olympics lends them an air of something special, even sacred. Four years is a long time to wait, and this gap – set against an increasingly saturated club football calendar – helps turn these tournaments into landmark moments. They are not only significant for those directly involved, but are also remembered and cherished by billions watching around the world. It is precisely this global attention that makes them fertile ground for political messaging.
FIFA alignment with state power and 2026 FIFA World Cup
In football, through his attempts to cosy up to world leaders, FIFA President Gianni Infantino is increasingly shifting the governing body into more of a political entity. An investigation in 2023 shone a light on how Infantino consistently presents himself with political leaders and disproportionately with authoritarian ones – nearly three times as many of his public images feature leaders from an authoritarian leaning compared to a democratic one.
While Infantino maintained close relations with Putin and to Qatar at the time around their countries’ hosting of the World Cup, it is the relationship with Donald Trump that has created a lot of attention. Trump’s tendency to break with convention – issuing direct, sweeping statements in press conferences or on Truth Social – alongside his approach to managing relationships with influential figures such as Infantino, creates greater scope for politics, or at least his brand of it, to become entangled with sport.
The tightness of the relationship and the apparent subservience of FIFA to the Trump administration reflects the deepening encroachment of politics into football. The FIFA President has regularly been seen with Trump including on a diplomatic trip in the Middle East. But most markedly, at the 2026 World Cup draw, Trump was awarded the first FIFA Peace Prize despite no information being provided for the format that decided how the prize was awarded.
This represents an emerging trend where FIFA goes to extreme lengths to satisfy and strengthen partnerships with key stakeholders like the US President. The problem is that, with strong allegations of corrupt processes to determine the World Cup hosts, FIFA seems to be relinquishing control of the game to national governments with their own personal interests. However, some experts caution against viewing this as an entirely new phenomenon.
‘I think people are paying attention to it more because of the contemporary American political moment, but politics has always been an element of sport,’ said assistant professor of journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, Ever Figueroa.
Cruically, the World Cup this summer has many political fault lines. A tournament co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, comes after strained relations between the US and its North American neighbours. For example, Trump has imposed significant tariffs on both Canada and Mexico, sparking tensions. At a speech at Davos, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney subtly referred to the US by criticising the increasing weaponisation of economic might. Trump responded by saying that Canada ‘gets a lot of freebies’ from the US, and that ‘they should be grateful’. The result is a palpable strain between neighbours now jointly hosting the world’s largest sporting event.
In addition, travel bans for fans from four qualified countries are consistent with a strong anti-immigration rhetoric from the Trump administration.This creates a stark tension between the World Cup’s identity as a global celebration and the reality of one host nation potentially undermining that inclusivity. Measures such as the presence of ICE agents around stadiums and host cities would only deepen this divide, reinforcing the sense that politics is reshaping the atmosphere of what is meant to be an open, international event.
Then, there is Iran. Although the nation has qualified, uncertainty still surrounds its participation amid the ongoing conflict. Reports this week have even suggested that Italy could be called up as a replacement. At the same time, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated that Iranian players would be permitted to enter the country for the tournament. While the president of Iran’s football federation had previously indicated a potential boycott of the US, more recent signals suggest the team is now prepared to take part as planned.
For now, Iran’s group-stage matches on the US West Coast remain scheduled to go ahead. Beyond the headlines and diplomatic messaging, the prospect of Iran competing on American soil – hosted by a nation with which it has been in active conflict – may prove one of the most striking examples of politics spilling into sport this summer.
The IOC as apolitical or the most political organisation?
The Olympics has had many of its own political interferences too. The Olympic Charter states that sport organisations within the Olympic movement ‘shall apply political neutrality’. Similar to FIFA, political neutrality can be problematic as inaction can sometimes be seen as the most political stance.
‘The fact is that we can no more remove politics from athletics than we can remove athletics from humanity. Human society is, I believe, inherently political, and all of its facets follow the ball,’ said Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College, R. Bruce Anderson. Inevitably, as Anderson suggests, the IOC is constantly making political decisions – highlighting how politics is inextricable from sports.
For example, since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian and Belarusian athletes have been excluded or tightly restricted from competing at the Olympic Games. At the Winter Olympics earlier this year, some individual athletes were allowed to compete as neutrals. A similar process happened in Barcelona in 1992 where Yugoslavian athletes had to compete as neutrals as a result of UN sanctions.
There are many other countries that could be punished by the IOC for actions that go against the Olympic Charter. For instance, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has said that more than 7,000 people were killed in Iran’s suppression of anti-government protests earlier this year. Yet no action has been taken by the IOC against Iran.
The vague and at times contradictory approach from the IOC feeds into notions of ‘strategic ambiguity’, where it grants itself the privilege of flexibility; making selective decisions on a case by case basis while simultaneously evading justifications because of its ‘neutral’ stance.
Positive legacies
While leading sporting organisations may be crucial in the appearance of top-down political manifestations in sporting events, it is often individuals who leave the strongest, positive legacies of politics in sport.
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens won four gold medals as a Black athlete in Nazi Germany under the watch of Hitler. Political forces wrongly discriminated against Owens, but on the sporting stage, his excellence was allowed to flourish.
At the podium at the 1968 Games, Black American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised their hand, covered in a black glove, in silent protest. Known as the Black Power Salute, it produced one of the most powerful images and sites of resistance in Olympic history. Although they were condemned by the IOC and suspended from the American team, it was the sign of strength against the systemic oppression of Black people in the USA, which was so powerful.
In addition, the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa was a uniting force for the country after decades of being torn apart as a result of Apartheid. Many races were excluded from playing rugby at elite levels in South Africa. This made it all the more influential when at the Johannesburg final, Nelson Mandela – the country’s President and central figure in the struggle against Apartheid – wore the green Springbok jersey, the shirt that once embodied aggressive racial hierarchies. South Africa went on to win against New Zealand, becoming world champions, and emblematising the power of sport in uniting people.
Ultimately, whether it serves to unite a nation in difficult moments, challenge injustice, reinforce power structures or shape the very organisation of a tournament, sport has never existed in isolation. For better or worse, politics remains inextricable from major sporting events — an influence that continues to shape not just how games are played, but what they represent.
