Sportswashing is a term used to describe the practice of nations, individuals, groups, corporations, or governments using sports to improve reputations tarnished by wrongdoing.
Perhaps I'm just spending too much time on Reddit, because it seems like whenever a nation engages in sportswashing, Redditors do see through the trickery. Redditors frequently criticise countries for attempting to distract from atrocities through the use of sports.
Or perhaps sportswashing does work – could it be that sportswashing is why Western governments still are very active in fostering business deals and military alliances with certain Middle Eastern absolute monarchies? Also, since obviously not everyone is a Redditor – does your average non-user of Reddit actually get swayed by sportswashing?
Does sportswashing work?
byu/2252_observations ingeopolitics
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I make this post because Redditors seem to be quick to spot and criticise attempts at sportswashing. However, countries obviously still do engage in sportswashing. So what I’d like to know is if sportswashing actually does work, and if countries do successfully use it to garner support from non-Redditors and foreign governments alike?
Sportswashing is best understood as a form of soft power projection. Soft power is real power, there is no doubt about it, and as such it does play the role you described; see for example how much Japan’s international image has been restored from their role in WWII because of their impact on billions of childhoods.
However, just because all countries can try project soft power, it doesn’t mean they are all equally successful at it. Some countries in particular stand out as being better than others globally: US, Japan, and more recently, South Korea. Other countries have soft power reach as well, but a more localized than global one like UK, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, Turkey etc. Most countries go through short phases where they manage to project soft power, but fail to maintain this projection for a long time.
So the answer to your question is that it depends. Sports-washing works with some, but does not work with others. Some attempts are blatant and those are the ones Reddit quickly criticizes, others are more subtle.