ABSTRACT
Due to its social significance in society sport is recognized as a human right in many Latin American countries’ constitutional charters. Specifically, many governments in the region tout sport as a means to enhance the lives of citizens by addressing a wide variety of social issues including poverty, exclusion, discrimination, the fight against HIV, peace, coexistence and overcoming conflict among other struggles. For Flausino and Mascarenhas (2012) this narrative relates to the mystification of sports. Additionally, we suggest sport as a tool for social development works to expand the overall marketization of the industry by diversifying sport’s business portfolio beyond fans, ticket sales, merchandising, advertising, sponsorship, labour transactions, and grassroots programme implementation, among many other industry segments. Furthermore, sport also requires a great number of resources (human and financial) in matters related to infrastructure and participation for events in the Olympic and Paralympic cycle and this represents important levels of social expenditure. It is important to note that this does not take into account resources allotted to other programmes not traditionally classified as competitive sport programming, including sports for all and sport for at risk populations as well as recreation and physical activity.
