A guest column from our colleague Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff…
How we tell the story matters. Images and words have equal weight, even if they communicate in different ways, and can often have impact beyond our original intent.
Moreover, the narrative framework and context is vital. For communicators working within a global sports industry, that means that we need to be more cognizant of non-U.S., -UK, and -Australian understandings and reference points within our sporting world.
Those were some of the key take-aways from this month’s Taiwan Sport Forward Association (TSFA) two-day conference on “Using Sports as Diplomacy: Taiwan and the United States Jointly Build an Asia-Pacific Sports Peaceful Exchange Platform.” The event brought together professionals from around the world to think through and discuss how sports diplomacy can be used to help promote gender equality. In its deconstruction of what sports diplomacy is, what it can look like, and the different ways it is used, the symposium helped attendees reframe, refresh, and better wrap our heads around this wonky-sounding yet increasingly omnipresent terminology.
Simply put, sports diplomacy is what occurs when the diplomatic and sporting worlds collide. The acts of diplomacy—communication, representation, negotiation—occur every single day within the sports realm in our Internet-connected, social media-driven globalized ecosphere. Formal sports diplomacy driven by officially credentialed state representatives such as heads of state, diplomatic ambassadors, or national team athletes in elite competitions, is the most often readily recognized variety. Yet, it’s the informal variety, powered by the global sports industry, including the media that cover them, sponsors, and NGOs, that constitutes the larger percentage of sports diplomacy engagement today.
I’ve written about and taught sports diplomacy as a scholar-practitioner helping to build out the field, particularly on the basketball side. I’ve discussed sports diplomacy’s uses in engagement, diplomacy, and international sports relations at a variety of levels. One of my key arguments is that it is a tool, a strategy, but also a framework, as well as a storytelling prism. But when I put on my communicator’s “hat,” this conference reinforced how storytelling sports diplomacy can have a far more potent impact than meets the eye.
Throughout my week on the island, the tensions between Taipei and Beijing were implicit and constant. Despite Western media hype, many Taiwanese live with this status quo as a given part of everyday life. But what was more interesting was how some in country are thinking about sports diplomacy’s use in advocating greater gender equality to tell the larger story of Taiwan’s support for democracy and human rights.
My first take-away, that the impact of imagery cannot be underestimated, arose during the Women in Sport International Sports Photography Awards. The ceremony, presided over by President Ing-Wen Tsai[LK1] , underscored how photographic storytelling of women’s sports stories can be powerful, inspiring, and, according to several of the award-winning photographers present, filled with far more emotion than typical of their male subjects.
That’s because images, particularly emotive ones, can transcend different cultural constructs and contexts. They can communicate, represent, and negotiate different attitudes, perceptions, understandings wordlessly, effectively. Yet, while the percentage of female sports media members are frightfully low, their female photographer counterparts constitute an even lower percentage. Moreover, according to UNESCO, only 4% of sports media coverage worldwide is of women’s sports even as female athletes account for some 40% of professional athletes. Sports diplomacy to promote gender equality can be useful in changing these figures, and the Women in Sport International Photograph Awards are one clear step towards doing so. This year’s finalists will be featured in the next edition of AIPS/ASIA Women (the most recent issue is here), but you can view the finalists and award winners here.
My second take-away is that the framing of the story matters, particularly getting beyond the AUSUK (Australia, United States, United Kingdom) storylines shaped by the media. This applies for the sports world, just as it does for the international affairs realm. Reliance on these narratives do us as communications professionals a disservice in that we are not as well-equipped to understand different perspectives, reference points, as some of our global counterparts. Even as I keep abreast of news through the French press, I still felt a disconnect with the reality that colleagues from Taiwan relayed.
It’s clear that we all need to do a better job of continually exposing ourselves to non-Western media views, colleagues, and sports stories to be better communicators to global audiences through sport.
That’s because at its heart, the power of storytelling is preeminent, whether print, digital, or image-wise. It can have a far more profound impact that we might initially think upon counterparts across different corners of the world.
Take the story of our host, TSFA Executive Director and founder Po-Chun (Sophiya) Liu. Known as the “mother of baseball in Taiwan” as its first female baseball umpire, Liu’s dream of umpiring was difficult and originally halted due to gender discrimination…until the New York Yankees came to town. They invested in helping her gain access to opportunities to umpire, so that she could demonstrate her skills, knowledge, and know-how on the diamond. As an alumna of the Empower Women: Global Sports Mentoring Program (GSMP), a U.S. Department of State, espnW and Univeristy of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace and Society sports diplomacy and mentorship exchange, Liu knows first-hand how sports diplomacy, particularly that which works towards promoting greater gender equality, can be effective.
Not everybody in the industry shares the same understandings of history or perspectives. That’s why it is critical for marcomms and public relations professionals working within the global sports industry–especially those whose clients/projects include hosting of sporting mega events like FIFA World Cup 2026 and Los Angeles 2028–need to have far more nuanced understandings of how history, geopolitics, and culture impact the international sports world today. And by transitive property, how these influence prospective fan attendees’ views of the United States.
That’s not to say that everyone must be a trained history expert. But, reaching out and engaging with the experts or counterparts in Asia, Africa, or South America can help crack open global understandings that may differ from that reported in US, UK, and Australian press.
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a historian, speaker, and consultant working at the intersection of global sport, communication, and diplomacy. Author of Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (2023) and The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010 (2012), her work on French and global sports has appeared with CNN International, The Athletic, The Washington Post, VICE Sports, The New Yorker, New York Times, and others.
Here’s the YouTube of her https://youtu.be/CTWmjiMB6ps
