Game of Nations: The New Geopolitics of Sport

On 11 December 2024, FIFA confirmed what years of strategic positioning had made inevitable: Saudi Arabia would host the 2034 World Cup. The decision was the culmination of a sporting investment programme without precedent in scale or ambition. By then, the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund with assets of approximately $925 billion, had amassed more than 900 sponsorship deals across global sport, taken majority ownership of four Saudi Pro League clubs, acquired English Premier League side Newcastle United, created the LIV Golf circuit, staged world title boxing fights in Riyadh, hosted Formula 1 and WTA Finals events, and launched the Savvy Gaming Group to capture the global esports market. Play the Game, a publicly funded sports ethics institute in Denmark, documented the full scale of these investments in a report titled ‘Saudi Arabia’s grip on world sport’, noting that more than a third of the sponsorship deals were traceable to PIF or its subsidiaries.

This was not sport as mere recreation. It was sport as statecraft and soft power.

A generation earlier, sport diplomacy meant something more modest. In April 1971, an exchange of table tennis players between the United States and China helped thaw decades of diplomatic silence, paving the way for President Nixon’s visit to Beijing the following year. The cost was negligible. The symbolism was everything. Today, the same fundamental impulse, use sport to change how the world sees you, operates at an entirely different order of magnitude. The question is no longer whether countries use sport for strategic purposes. It is who is doing it most effectively, through which sports, and how to measure this unique and fast growing national capability.

What Sport Diplomacy Is and Why It Matters

Sport diplomacy is the deployment of sport, events, athletes, leagues, clubs, governance positions and commercial investments, for strategic national purposes. It operates across a spectrum. At one end sits genuine cultural exchange: the British Council’s Premier Skills programme, which has trained football coaches across 25 countries and reached some 500,000 people, building goodwill and people-to-people connections. At the other sits geopolitical positioning: sovereign wealth funds acquiring European football clubs, states bidding hundreds of millions to host Formula 1 races, and governments systematically placing nationals on the executive boards of international sport federations.

Three properties make sport distinctive as a soft power instrument.

The first is universality. Football’s rules are identical everywhere. The Olympic Games create a shared global moment that no other cultural form can match. According to FIFA, almost 1.5 billion people watched at least part of the 2022 World Cup Final between Argentina and France, with an average live audience of around 570 million. No film premiere, album launch or diplomatic summit commands that kind of simultaneous global attention.

The second is emotional resonance. Sport generates identification, loyalty and memory in ways that trade agreements and cultural exchanges rarely achieve. People remember where they watched their team win. Countries understand this, and have learned to harness it.

The third is portability. Unlike a museum or a university, a sporting event can be relocated. Formula 1 races in Jeddah this year and Las Vegas next. The UFC stages title fights in Abu Dhabi, then New York, then Perth. This makes sport uniquely attractive to countries seeking to purchase global attention on their own terms.

The result is that sport has moved from the periphery of foreign policy to something closer to the centre. Countries from every continent and at every stage of development now deploy sport for strategic purposes, whether to build a national brand, signal diplomatic intent, attract foreign investment, or project cultural influence. The academic literature variously describes this as soft power projection, public diplomacy, nation branding, and – in its more contested form – sportswashing. Whatever term is used, the phenomenon is real, growing, and consequential.

The Scoreboard: Who Measures Sport Soft Power Today?

The field of sport soft power measurement has exploded in the past 18 months, with multiple new rankings launching in 2025, a reflection of growing recognition that sport is no longer a peripheral instrument of statecraft but a central arena in which nations compete for influence, legitimacy and global attention. The National Capability Framework situates sport within the Soft Power dimension, under the Cultural and Public Diplomacy domain, rating nations on their demonstrated capacity to host and bid for mega events, secure leadership positions in international federations, project elite sporting performance onto the world stage, and convert sporting success into diplomatic and reputational capital. The sections that follow set out GINC's initial ratings under this framework, then place them alongside the principal external rankings to show where the assessments converge, where they diverge, and what each lens reveals about the structure of power in global sport.

GINC’s National Capability Ratings

The table below presents the top 20 nations ranked by their capability in Sport Diplomacy and Mega Events, drawing on the National Capability Framework developed by the Global Institute for National Capability (GINC). This dimension captures a country's demonstrated ability to host, organise and leverage major international sporting events, from Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups to Formula 1 Grands Prix and world championships, as instruments of soft power, nation branding and international influence.

The assessment reflects GINC's initial composite scoring across the underlying capability indicators, including hosting track record, bidding success, sporting infrastructure, governance maturity and the strategic deployment of sport as a vehicle for diplomatic engagement. Nations are grouped into rating bands (BBB through CCC), with countries within each band listed alphabetically. The scores shown are rounded to the nearest integer; finer-grained differentiation exists within each tier in the underlying dataset.

As an early-stage assessment, these ratings should be read as indicative rather than definitive, and will be refined as additional indicators and validation work are incorporated into subsequent versions of the framework.

Figure 1. GINC 2025 National Capability Ratings

Market Rankings

Beyond GINC's own assessment, several established rankings offer complementary perspectives on national capability in sport diplomacy and mega events. Each measures something slightly different, structural governance power, qualitative soft power, foreign policy integration, or city-level brand strength, and together they triangulate a fuller picture of where influence actually sits in global sport. The six rankings summarised below are the most relevant reference points for benchmarking GINC's results against the wider field, and they vary considerably in scope, methodology and maturity. Read alongside one another, they highlight both the consistent leaders (the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Australia recur across nearly every list) and the methodological choices that shape who rises and who falls.

The Sports Political Power Index, produced by Play the Game and the Danish NOC (DIF), is the elder statesman of the field, running since 2013. It measures something very specific: who holds executive positions in international sport federations. By counting and weighting the nationalities of presidents, vice-presidents, secretary-generals and board members across more than 130 federations, it maps the structural governance power that shapes how global sport is run. The United States leads, with Australia a strong second. Seven countries – the United States, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Australia – have appeared in the top 10 in every edition.

SKEMA Publika Sport and Soft Power Ranking (March 2025) is the first dedicated sport soft power country ranking. Produced by the SKEMA Publika think tank in Paris, it assessed 55 countries using ten criteria, including sport industry size, government policy, elite performance, event staging, broadcast markets, governing body membership and social media presence, drawing on 60 international experts over twelve months. The final ranking covers 25 countries. Top three: United States, United Kingdom, France. Its strength is breadth; its limitation is that the methodology is qualitative and perception-based, and there is no time series yet.

The PIDS Sport Soft Power: 2025 States Ranking, produced by the Polish Institute of Sports Diplomacy, is a parallel effort ranking 30 countries from a pool of 60 assessed. It examines the role of sport in foreign policy, public and private sector sponsorship, federation governance positions, and athletic achievement. Less visible in English-language media, it offers a distinctly Central European perspective on sport as a policy tool.

The Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index covers 193 countries, with sport as one sub-dimension within a broader assessment of national soft power. Useful for context, less useful for sport-specific analysis.

The Burson Ranking of Sport Cities (September 2025) shifts the lens from countries to cities. It ranks 100 cities based on perception surveys, expert feedback from more than 1,000 sports media representatives, social media analytics and media coverage metrics. Paris has topped the ranking for three consecutive years, followed by Los Angeles, New York, London and Madrid. This ranking matters because sport soft power increasingly accrues at city level.

The CEOWORLD Ranking of Sport Cities offers an alternative city-level view, with London at the top in its 2025 edition and a somewhat different methodology from Burson.

Four Ways Countries Play the Sport Power Game

The most important insight from analysing sport diplomacy across the National Capability framework is that countries which look similar in aggregate rankings often have radically different capability profiles underneath. The United States and Saudi Arabia both appear near the top of every existing ranking, but they are playing entirely different games, with entirely different instruments, at entirely different stages of maturity.

GINC’s Sport Diplomacy and Mega Events capability, situated within Soft Capability, Information and Influence, Cultural Reach and Influence, decomposes sport soft power into four mechanisms. Each represents a distinct strategic choice, requires different resources, and delivers different kinds of influence.

Host It (Event Hosting and Infrastructure)

Win the right to stage a mega event. This is the most visible and most expensive mechanism. Qatar spent an estimated $220 billion in connection with the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a widely cited figure that encompasses not only stadiums (approximately $6.5–10 billion) but the broader national infrastructure programme under the Qatar National Vision 2030, including a new metro system, airport expansions, roads and hotels. The United States will co-host the 2026 World Cup with Canada and Mexico, then host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Saudi Arabia has the 2034 World Cup. The hosting pipeline has become a geopolitical signal in itself: a country’s event calendar tells you where it intends to be on the world stage for the next decade.

The Burson data reveals a predictable Olympic lifecycle: pre-Games momentum, peak visibility during the event, and post-Games decline. Strategic cities, however, can achieve recovery through legacy activation. Rio de Janeiro climbed 41 positions in the Burson ranking between 2023 and 2025, years after the 2016 Olympics, suggesting that hosting value is not confined to the event year.

Win It (Elite Athletic Performance)

Olympic medal tables remain the purest form of nation-state competition in sport. China’s systematic medal programme, the United Kingdom’s lottery-funded elite sport system, and Australia’s Institute of Sport model all reflect deliberate state investment in competitive success as a national branding exercise. A country that consistently produces world champions in globally visible sports generates sustained soft power dividends without needing to host a single event.

This mechanism also extends to individual athletes as cultural ambassadors. Usain Bolt became synonymous with Jamaica. Roger Federer projected an image of Swiss precision and elegance. Lionel Messi’s move to Inter Miami was arguably as significant for the city’s brand positioning as any infrastructure investment.

Own It (Commercial Sport Ecosystem)

The commercial dimension encompasses league strength, club ownership, broadcast rights, sponsorship networks and sport-adjacent entertainment. The English Premier League is arguably the United Kingdom’s single most powerful soft power export, broadcast across 188 countries and territories, with international rights now valued at approximately £6.5 billion for the current three-year cycle, surpassing the domestic UK deal for the first time. The NBA projects American culture globally. India’s IPL has transformed cricket from a leisurely Commonwealth tradition into a commercially explosive global entertainment product.

This is also the mechanism through which sovereign wealth funds have most dramatically reshaped the landscape. Saudi Arabia’s PIF has acquired football clubs, created golf circuits, invested in broadcasting platforms, and built sponsorship portfolios that give the Kingdom commercial presence across virtually every major global sport. The Play the Game research identified more than 900 Saudi sponsorship deals by the end of 2024, with more than a third traceable to PIF or its subsidiaries.

Govern It (Institutional and Federation Influence)

The least visible but arguably most durable mechanism: placing nationals in executive positions within FIFA, the IOC, World Athletics and other international sport federations. The DIF Sports Political Power Index demonstrates that governance power is highly concentrated. The same seven countries have dominated the top 10 in every edition since 2013. This is structural power, the ability to shape rules, award events, set agendas and determine which sports receive Olympic recognition.

Governance positions are also disproportionately cost-effective relative to other mechanisms. Hosting a World Cup costs billions; securing a seat on a federation executive board costs a fraction of that, but delivers influence over decisions worth far more. Most national sport strategies over-index on hosting and commercial investment and under-index on governance influence, which represents both a strategic gap and an opportunity.

Country Profiles

The following profiles assess each country across the four mechanisms, drawing on available ranking data and strategic analysis. The aim is not merely to report who ranks highest, but to identify where countries are strong, where they are exposed, and where their trajectories are heading.

🇺🇸 United States

Top-ranked across every existing index. The commercial ecosystem is unmatched: the NFL, NBA and MLB alone generate combined annual revenues well in excess of $30 billion, with global broadcast reach that projects American culture into virtually every market. Governance positions are strong across most federations. The hosting pipeline is historically dense, FIFA 2026 (co-hosted with Canada and Mexico), LA Olympics 2028, Salt Lake City Winter Olympics 2034. Yet sport diplomacy is overwhelmingly private-sector-driven. The State Department’s Sport Diplomacy Division exists but is modest relative to the commercial footprint. The United States projects sport power without a coordinated national strategy, which is both a strength (authenticity, market credibility) and a vulnerability (no strategic direction, reliance on commercial interests that do not always align with foreign policy objectives).

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Second in the SKEMA ranking, consistently top five across all indices. The Premier League is the crown jewel, broadcast across 188 countries and territories, generating international rights of approximately £2.2 billion per season in the current cycle. London sits fourth in the Burson city rankings, and the country’s hosting track record (2012 Olympics, annual Wimbledon and British Grand Prix) is exemplary. Governance positions remain strong, with British nationals well represented across federation boards. The weakness is trajectory: there is no major hosting bid in the pipeline after 2012, and Brexit has introduced brand challenges that complicate the UK’s positioning as an open, globally connected sporting nation. The UK is in a maintenance phase, not a growth phase.

🇫🇷 France

Third in SKEMA, with Paris first in the Burson city rankings for three consecutive years. The 2024 Paris Olympics delivered a widely praised hosting moment that reinforced France’s credentials as a premier sport destination. Ligue 1 is commercially weaker than the Premier League or La Liga, but Paris Saint-Germain (Qatari-owned) operates as a global brand, and Roland Garros carries enduring prestige. Governance influence is strong, particularly within UEFA and Olympic structures. The challenge is sustaining momentum: the post-Olympic decline effect is well documented, and France needs a credible next act to avoid the trajectory that afflicted London after 2012.

🇨🇳 China

Fourth in SKEMA, with strong governance positions in many international federations. Beijing is the only city to have hosted both Summer (2008) and Winter (2022) Olympic Games. Basketball rather than football is the dominant participation sport domestically, and China’s commercial sport ecosystem, while large in domestic terms, has limited international projection compared to the US or UK. Esports is deployed as part of a broader digital cultural strategy alongside gaming and entertainment exports. The constraints are geopolitical: tensions with the West, doping controversies, and the political framing of Chinese sport participation limit the soft power returns on what is otherwise a substantial investment. China’s sport capability is large but its conversion to genuine attraction is uneven.

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia

Ranked 16th in SKEMA, but the fastest-moving country in the field by a considerable margin. The PIF-led investment strategy spans football (Saudi Pro League, Newcastle United), golf (LIV Golf), motorsport (Formula 1 Jeddah Grand Prix), combat sports (UFC, boxing), tennis (WTA Finals, ATP partnerships), and esports (Savvy Gaming Group). More than 900 sponsorship deals had been executed by end of 2024. The FIFA 2034 World Cup is the capstone of the hosting pipeline. Governance positions are growing, with PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan holding at least 22 key roles across Saudi sport, including chairmanships of Aramco, Newcastle United, LIV Golf and Riyadh Air. The vulnerabilities are equally significant: the sportswashing critique is persistent and intensifying, domestic sport participation culture remains underdeveloped, and elite athletic performance is limited, the national football team’s best World Cup result was reaching the Round of 16 in 1994. Saudi Arabia’s sport capability is unprecedented in its investment velocity but unproven in its soft power conversion. The question is whether capital alone can build genuine attraction, or whether it merely purchases attention.

🇦🇺 Australia

Second in the DIF governance index, which is a striking result for a mid-sized country of 26 million people. Australian nationals hold a disproportionate number of federation executive positions, reflecting a long tradition of engagement with international sport governance. The hosting track record is strong, Sydney 2000 remains a benchmark for Olympic delivery, and Brisbane 2032 provides the next major platform. The commercial ecosystem is mid-tier globally: the AFL is domestically dominant but internationally niche, cricket and rugby carry Commonwealth-wide reach, and the A-League has limited global visibility. Geographic remoteness constrains event density and limits the frequency with which Australia can host travelling competitions. Governance influence is Australia’s hidden sport diplomacy asset; the country punches well above its weight in structural power terms.

🇯🇵 Japan

Historically top 10 in the DIF governance index, with a strong record of hosting major events (Tokyo 1964, Sapporo 1972, Tokyo 2020, and the 2025 World Athletics Championships). Japan’s domestic sport ecosystem is commercially powerful, the J-League, Nippon Professional Baseball, sumo and motorsport all generate significant revenues, but international projection is more limited than the US or UK. Japan has been an early mover in esports infrastructure and is a major market for Formula 1 and tennis. The 2020 Olympics, delivered under pandemic constraints, demonstrated resilience but generated less soft power than a typical Games. Japan’s sport capability is deep domestically but internationally concentrated in specific niches.

🇩🇪 Germany

Strong governance positions, particularly within European federations, and a commercially successful domestic league in the Bundesliga. Munich’s rise in the Burson rankings (up nine positions to seventh in 2025) reflects growing city-level sport brand strength. Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup, widely credited with transforming the country’s international image, and the 2024 European Championship reinforced its hosting credentials. The weakness is in global sport export: the Bundesliga is well regarded but generates less international broadcast revenue than the Premier League or La Liga. Germany’s sport capability is solid and well balanced but lacks a distinctive growth catalyst.

🇶🇦 Qatar

Ranked 15th in SKEMA, and the pioneer of the Gulf sport diplomacy model. The 2022 World Cup involved an estimated $220 billion in associated national investment, by far the most expensive sporting event in history. PSG ownership, the beIN Sports broadcast network, and continued investment in event hosting infrastructure sustain Qatar’s sport diplomacy position. The country’s challenge is sustaining attention post-World Cup. The Burson data shows that the post-event decline effect is real, and Qatar’s small population base (under three million) limits the domestic sport ecosystem. The country retains influence through governance positions and commercial assets, but the strategic initiative in Gulf sport diplomacy has shifted decisively towards Saudi Arabia.

🇧🇷 Brazil

Brazil’s sport capability rests primarily on football’s enduring cultural power, no country is more synonymous with the beautiful game. Rio de Janeiro’s remarkable 41-position jump in the Burson rankings (from 74th to 33rd between 2023 and 2025) suggests that the 2016 Olympic and 2014 World Cup legacy is generating delayed returns. Domestic football, particularly the state championships and the Brasileirão, has significant cultural weight but limited international commercial projection compared to European leagues. Governance positions are reasonably strong, particularly within FIFA and South American confederation structures. The vulnerability is institutional: political instability, corruption scandals in domestic football, and under-investment in sport infrastructure beyond the mega-event cycle limit Brazil’s ability to convert cultural capital into sustained strategic influence.

Which Sports Carry the Most Geopolitical Weight?

Not all sports are equal as instruments of national influence. A country that dominates table tennis gains less geopolitical leverage than one that hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix. The difference lies in three factors: geographic reach (how many countries care), media concentration (can the sport deliver a single global moment), and portability (can the event be relocated to wherever a state is willing to pay).

Tier 1. Global instruments

Sports that function as soft power vehicles across all regions

⚽️ Football (association)
The dominant vehicle. More than four billion followers worldwide by most estimates. The FIFA World Cup is the single most powerful soft power event in existence, and domestic leagues, particularly the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga, project cultural influence year-round. Every major state actor deploys football as a primary instrument.

🌀 Olympic sports (multi-sport platform)
The Olympic and Paralympic Games remain the only platform that assembles virtually every nation in a shared competitive framework. Hosting the Games is the ultimate expression of national sport capability. Athletics, swimming and gymnastics serve as the headline disciplines, but the multi-sport format creates cross-cutting visibility.

🏏 Cricket
Deep diplomatic significance across South Asia and the Commonwealth. India-Pakistan cricket contests carry explicit diplomatic and security implications, functioning as arenas for symbolic confrontation and occasional rapprochement. The IPL has transformed cricket’s commercial model and expanded its audience well beyond traditional markets.

🏀 Basketball
The NBA is the United States’ most effective cultural export in sport, with substantial global audiences across China, the Philippines, Africa and Europe. Basketball’s popularity varies by market – it is the dominant sport in China, and its star-driven culture amplifies individual athlete diplomacy.

🎾 Tennis
Four Grand Slam tournaments across three continents provide premium global visibility. Tennis carries strong associations with host city branding (Wimbledon and London, Roland Garros and Paris) and has become a standard component of Gulf sport diversification strategies, with Saudi Arabia hosting the WTA Finals and investing heavily in ATP partnerships.

Tier 2 – Established and rising

Sports with concentrated but powerful soft power effects

🏎️ Formula 1 and motorsport
Twenty-four races across multiple continents in the 2025 calendar, with intense bidding competition among states and cities for hosting rights. F1 has arguably become the fastest-growing soft power vehicle in global sport. Jeddah, Las Vegas, Miami, Singapore, Baku, the calendar reads like a roll-call of cities and states using motorsport for brand positioning. The Netflix Drive to Survive documentary series has dramatically expanded the audience, particularly in the US.

⛳️ Golf
The LIV Golf disruption, funded by Saudi Arabia’s PIF, transformed golf from a genteel establishment sport into an explicitly geopolitical arena. Major championship hosting (the Open, the Masters, the Ryder Cup) carries prestige, and the PGA Tour-LIV merger negotiations illustrated how sovereign capital can reshape an entire sport’s governance structure.

🏉 Rugby
The canonical soft power case study remains Nelson Mandela’s use of the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite post-apartheid South Africa. Rugby has been used to establish national brand identity in various Commonwealth countries. The Rugby World Cup carries genuine diplomatic weight in six to eight core nations, and the sport’s values narrative (discipline, respect, integrity) is actively deployed in development diplomacy programmes.

🏈 American Football (NFL)
Primarily a US domestic asset, but the NFL’s international games programme (London, Munich, São Paulo, Madrid) is expanding its footprint as a destination-branding tool. The Super Bowl remains one of the most watched annual television events, though its audience is heavily concentrated in North America.

⛷️ Winter Olympic sports
The Winter Olympics carry particular soft power significance for Nordic, Alpine, East Asian and North American states. Beijing 2022 was explicitly deployed as a geopolitical statement. However, this category faces structural challenges (see ‘Falling’ below).

Rising Into Contention

🎮 Esports
The strongest challenger to the established top 10. Esports has been positioned as a site of cultural production and political significance, with scholars and policymakers viewing it as an emerging arena of soft power and public diplomacy. South Korea integrates esports into its Hallyu cultural export strategy alongside K-pop and K-drama. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily via the Savvy Gaming Group and won the right to host the inaugural Esports Olympics. The inclusion of esports as a medal event at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou marked a watershed. The medium reaches younger, digitally native demographics that traditional sport does not.

🥊 MMA and combat sports.
Event-centric, globally mobile, and increasingly Gulf-funded. The UFC has become a genuine geopolitical platform, staging title fights in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, London and Las Vegas. Saudi Arabia has attracted marquee boxing events through substantial hosting fees, generating global pay-per-view audiences and reinforcing the Kingdom’s positioning as an entertainment destination.

⚽️ Women’s football.
Audience growth has been dramatic, and the Burson data shows a direct correlation between women’s sport investment and rising city sport profiles. Lyon entered the Burson sport cities ranking largely on the strength of its women’s football team. The Women’s World Cup and Women’s European Championship now attract sufficient audiences and state attention to function as independent soft power instruments.

🏓 Padel.
The fastest-growing participation sport in Europe and Latin America. Not yet a soft power vehicle at state level, but the sport’s association with Spain and the growth of professional circuits suggest it could become a cultural export mechanism for Iberian and Latin American nations.

🚴Road cycling.
The Tour de France Grand Départ bidding process has become a city and nation-branding exercise in its own right (Copenhagen 2022, Florence 2024). Saudi Arabia is pursuing Italian cycling properties, and the commercial value of road cycling’s multi-day event format provides sustained rather than single-moment media exposure.

Falling or Plateauing

⛷️ Winter sports (as a standalone category).
Climate change is shrinking the pool of viable host locations. The Winter Olympics face declining competitive interest among bidders – Salt Lake City was the sole candidate for the 2034 Games, selected through the IOC’s reformed process without a contested bid. The International Ski Federation is adapting, but the structural constraint is existential for snow-dependent disciplines.

🐎 Horse racing and equestrian.
Once a staple of Anglo-Gulf diplomatic relations, with events like Royal Ascot and the Dubai World Cup serving as high-level networking platforms. However, the media profile is increasingly niche, audience demographics skew older, and the sport struggles to attract younger global attention despite continued sovereign investment.

⚾️ Baseball.
Geographic concentration in the US, Japan, Korea, the Caribbean and Taiwan limits soft power utility. The World Baseball Classic has expanded international interest, but broadcast reach remains modest compared to football or basketball. Baseball’s domestic US dominance does not translate into proportionate international influence.

🏐 Handball.
Popular in northern Europe and parts of the Middle East, with strong participation numbers in countries such as Denmark, Germany and France. However, limited global broadcast reach and the absence of a commercially dominant professional league constrain its soft power potential beyond its traditional markets.

🏓 Table tennis.
Historically significant in sport diplomacy (the original ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ between the US and China in 1971), but the sport’s contemporary media profile is modest and its competitive landscape is heavily dominated by China, limiting the breadth of nations that can deploy it strategically.

The Structural Shift

The underlying dynamic across these movements is a shift from participation-based soft power (how many people play your sport) to event-based soft power (can your sport deliver a concentrated media moment to a paying host). This structural shift favours Formula 1, MMA, esports and golf over sports with larger participation bases but less portable event formats. It also favours cities and states willing to pay hosting fees, which explains why the Gulf states have gravitated towards event-centric sports rather than attempting to build organic grassroots participation cultures.

Five Dynamics to Watch

1. The sovereign wealth fund era

Sport diplomacy used to be the domain of government ministries and cultural attachés. Now it is dominated by PIF, QIA, Mubadala and their equivalents, deploying billions into sport assets with the speed and scale of private equity transactions but the strategic patience of state actors. This changes who can compete, how fast capability can be built, and what ‘success’ looks like. The entry cost for meaningful sport diplomacy has risen dramatically, potentially excluding smaller states from the most visible arenas.

2. Cities are overtaking countries

Paris, London, Miami and Riyadh are building sport identities that transcend their national contexts. The Burson data makes this clear: sport soft power increasingly accrues at city level. Milan’s 18-position rise (to ninth) ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Miami’s climb to eighth on the back of Formula 1, Messi and a diversified event calendar, illustrate how individual cities can move faster than national strategies. Countries that do not empower their cities as sport diplomacy platforms will underperform relative to those that do.

3. The governance gap

Most national sport strategies over-index on hosting and commercial investment and under-index on governance influence. Yet the DIF data shows that the same seven countries have dominated international sport governance for over a decade. Federation executive positions deliver disproportionate influence, the ability to shape rules, award events, set eligibility criteria and determine which sports receive Olympic recognition, at a fraction of the cost of hosting a mega event. The Gulf states are beginning to address this gap, but there is still an arbitrage opportunity for countries willing to invest systematically in federation representation.

4. Women’s sport as a leading indicator

Investment in women’s sport correlates with rising city and national sport profiles, and the trajectory is accelerating. The Burson rankings show this empirically: London consolidated its position partly through the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and Lyon entered the sport cities ranking on the strength of its women’s football team. Countries and cities that invest early in women’s sport infrastructure are building brand equity that will compound over time. This remains an arbitrage opportunity for early movers.

5. The authenticity test

Sport deployed without a credible domestic narrative faces diminishing returns. The term ‘sportswashing’ has moved from academic critique to mainstream media vocabulary, and the scrutiny applied to host nations is intensifying with each major event cycle. The countries that will sustain sport soft power gains are those that can connect international spectacle to genuine domestic participation, athlete development and social reform. Investment alone is necessary but not sufficient. Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup will be the defining test case: whether a decade of unprecedented sport investment translates into genuine soft power, or whether the gap between international spectacle and domestic reality becomes a persistent source of reputational risk.

Measuring What Matters

The National Capability Framework assesses Sport Diplomacy and Mega Events through eight key indicators, mapped to the four mechanisms described above:

Major event hosting pipeline (bids, awards and delivery track record). Elite athletic performance (Olympic and Paralympic medal share, world championship results). Sport industry scale (domestic league revenues, broadcast market reach, commercial sponsorship value). International federation governance positions (executive board seats, committee memberships, secretary-general posts). Sport-related foreign direct investment and sovereign fund deployment. Global sport media and digital engagement (social media following, broadcast audiences, content reach). Sport diplomacy programme activity (government-sponsored athlete exchanges, sport development aid). City-level sport destination positioning (drawing on available rankings such as Burson).

This capability sits alongside related capabilities in the GINC framework, including Creative and Cultural Exports, National Brand and Reputation, Tourism and Destination Branding, Digital and Social Media Influence, Multilateral Engagement, and Economic Diplomacy and Commercial Statecraft. The cross-cutting linkages matter: a country’s sport capability does not exist in isolation but interacts with its broader national brand, its tourism infrastructure, its digital reach and its diplomatic networks.

The existing ranking landscape provides valuable inputs. SKEMA Publika and PIDS offer the most direct sport soft power assessments. The DIF Sports Political Power Index provides the longest time series for governance analysis. Burson delivers city-level granularity. Brand Finance provides the broadest contextual frame. GINC draws on all of these as reference data, but adds value through mechanism decomposition, cross-capability linkage and strategic diagnostics that move beyond who ranks highest to where the capability gaps are and what the trajectories look like.

Looking Ahead

In 1971, a table tennis match helped open a diplomatic channel between two superpowers. In 2034, a World Cup will be staged in a country that has invested more in global sport than any nation in history. Between those two moments, sport has transformed from a peripheral instrument of cultural exchange into a front-line arena of national competition.

The question is no longer whether sport matters for national influence. It does, measurably and consequentially. The question is whether countries are assessing it properly and investing in it strategically. Too many national sport strategies rely on a single mechanism, hosting an event, acquiring a club, winning medals, without building capability across all four dimensions. Too few connect sport investment to broader national capability objectives.

GINC’s Sport Diplomacy and Mega Events capability is designed to provide that integration: not a league table, but a diagnostic framework that reveals where countries are strong, where they are exposed, and what the strategic trajectories look like. In a world where the competition for hearts and minds is intensifying, and where the stakes attached to sport have never been higher, that kind of analysis is not optional. It is essential.