ABSTRACT
The link between sport and community development goes back at least as far as the modern Olympic Games. The globalisation of sport goes much further than the movement of its players. Football is, after all, big business—in 1999 alone Americans spent a whopping $763 per capita on sporting goods. A report of United Nations Research Institute for Social Development's conference on corporate social responsibility (CSR), published in July 2004, quoted Eddie Rich, of the United Kingdom Department for International Development, on corporate tax management. Reports in the Financial Times in August 2004 suggested that tax was a problem not just for developing countries. In September 2004, economist John Christensen, coordinator of the Tax Justice Network, argued that 'curiously the CSR debate, which has touched on virtually every other area of corporate engagement with broader society, has only recently begun to question companies in the area where their corporate citizenship is most tangible and most important—the payment of tax'.
