A great guest post from our colleague Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, from Paris:
Last week the annual Global Sports Week Paris teamed up with Viva Tech for a four-day Future of Sport extravaganza at the Paris Expo Center at Porte de Versailles. The space may be familiar, given the acrimony and scathing critique of the Paris 2024 planning committee’s original intent to host the first rounds of the Olympic basketball tournament there. What was less familiar was how conversations around this content-driven industry event gravitated towards the role that sports business plays in the international society of sport.
This was the common thread across three panels I moderated as part of the “Living Well Together” stream. It was perhaps naturally woven into the lively discussion on “Sport and Diplomacy: The Role of Athletes as Influencers” with FC Shakhtar CEO Sergii Palkin, Yunis Sports Hub’s Thomas van Schaik, and our Young Sport Maker Caio, who is focused on athlete mental health. Although so much of my work centers around athletes and their roles as sports diplomats within the larger sports diplomacy framework, it was still illuminating to learn from these different perspectives. Our revived era of athlete advocacy is here for the long run. Athletes will continue to grow their brands and speak up in support of a range of issues, including human and civil rights. Thus their roles as different types of sports diplomats will have ever-more impact. This applies to teams like FC Shakhtar, too, who engage in the acts of diplomacy (communication, representation, negotiation) in the locker room as well as in their external communications and storytelling endeavors about life on- and off- the pitch.
That’s why it’s imperative for the global sports industry, particularly businesses, to better understand how they’re (likely) already engaging in some forms of sports diplomacy. It’s also why stakeholders need to better incorporate sportswomen and men in their sports diplomacy policies, initiatives, and storytelling.
In Africa, global sporting events are helping to pave the way for youth engagement and economic growth, which shapes how sports businesses interact with stakeholders in the larger international relations realm in different parts of the continent. This was reinforced at every turn throughout “Beyond the Game: Understanding the Socio-Economic Impact of Big Sport in Africa” with the phenomenal Ibrahima Wade (Dakar 2026), Amadou Gallo Fall (The BAL), and our Young Sport Maker Meriem. Although I’ve worked on the ways that basketball, and The BAL in particular, is helping to drive change via basketball diplomacy, I was still struck by the power of sport for inclusion and the ways that it can influence youths.
Case in point: today The BAL is working to promote gender inclusion throughout the African basketball ecosystem thanks to a variety of initiatives that include #BAL4HER. According to Fall, more than half their workforce are female…a result of hiring the best candidates, not a quota system. You’ll recall from Fall’s interview for the Basketball Diplomacy in Africa Oral History archive via the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London, that he was first inspired in basketball by the Senegalese women’s national teams that dominated African competition in the 1970s and early 1980s. And to Wade’s point, diversity of sporting disciplines at the #Dakar2026 Youth Olympic Games is also about inclusion, influencing and reaching youth where they’re already at.
Lastly, “Safeguarding Our Athletes: Minimizing the Physical and Mental Risks” hit home just how interconnected athletes, coaches, governing bodies, businesses, and other stakeholders are within this international society for sport. Panelists Paoline Ekambi (Sportail Community), James Williams (Lasso Safe), Simon Latournerie (Colosse aux pieds d’argile), as well as our Young Sport Maker Victoria, painted a stark portrait for the audience as to the challenges to athletes’ physical and mental well-being. But they also offered concrete actions in working towards tangible solutions on this vital issue that impacts us all. It is no longer sufficient to just be bystanders. This applies to every stakeholder around the global sports table, including businesses and industry.
This links to my training as a historian of modern France and the assessment of how much responsibility bystanders have. Such questions came into play when learning about and teaching twentieth century French history, particularly the Second World War era. After 1945, the commonly held but factually incorrect version of this history was that most people were part of the Resistance to Nazi German occupation and Vichy French governance led by General Charles de Gaulle. The more simplistic equation of “resister or collaborator” was an easy one that helped society recover and rebuild after the war—but reality was very different. Historians a generation later, particularly Robert Paxton’s seminal Vichy France and the Jews, broke open this conveniently constructed myth. Thus began the very long process of coming to terms with the fact that, while there were resisters and collaborators, the most people were bystanders…and grappling with what that meant re: their responsibility, moral or otherwise.
All that to say, one of the clear take-aways from this last panel is that today it is incumbent on each and every one of us to take action to help better safeguard the mental and physical wellbeing of our athletes, regardless of age. For small actions count just as much as big ones.
