ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the new and distinctive challenges facing decision-makers in the sport sector. The discussion profiles three ages of contemporary sport, as a basis for establishing the importance of the geopolitical economy of sport. The chapter defines the geopolitical economy of sport as the way in which nations, states, and other entities engage in, with, or through sport for geographic and politico-economic reasons in order to build and exert power and secure strategic advantages through the control of resources within and via networks of which sport is a constituent part. The case studies of Gazprom and UEFA, the NBA in China, and Qatar and the FIFA World Cup are analyzed. The chapter argues that the European utilitarian then later US neoclassical notions of sport are no longer appropriate to explain decision-making in sport.
