Boycotts and Beyond: How should we respond to ethically compromised sporting events?

Major sporting events can be ethically charged. They may be hosted by fascist regimes, as a way to gain a perception of legitimacy on the world stage. Notably, the 1936 Olympic games was hosted by Nazi Germany, and opened by Adolf Hitler. More recently, the FIFA World Cup in 2018 was hosted by Russia, only a few years after their 2014 annexation of Crimea, and before their recent invasion of Ukraine. The following World Cup was also extremely controversial, because of Qatar’s human rights record, and the environmental and human cost of the stadium construction, with an estimates that over 6,500 workers died in inhumane working conditions.  The practice of using sporting competitions to launder a regime’s reputation has been described as sportswashing (e.g., Fruh, Archer and Wojtowicz 2023).

              Competitions like this raise serious ethical questions. Should the athletes involved speak out against the regime? Should companies withdraw sponsorship? Should sports teams or national associations refuse to participate? Given the significant cost of actions of this sort, can other measures - short of boycotts - be justified? And what should fans do? Knowing that their behaviour may make no difference (particularly if they just watch on TV), they may find themselves torn, and wonder whether there really is any reason to avoid watching. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted in the USA, Canada and Mexico, these questions are as timely as ever. The USA will host the majority of the matches in this tournament, and many have suggested that Trump’s America is sliding towards fascism.

This workshop will bring together experts in applied ethics, philosophy of sport, business ethics and political philosophy. Respondents (TBA) will provide a commentary for each paper, before a Q&A. 

For further information about this workshop, please contact Joe Slater ([email protected]).