Can Sports Be Apolitical?
Some thoughts about BTS, Qatar, and the World Cup
Ah yes, December. The loveliest month of the year. Well, in my part of the world, certainly. The air is chilly, the festive season is peaking, and everyone seems delightfully lazy. It is also the month when subscription services tell us what we have been watching, reading, and listening to over the last year, summarised in shareable pictures.
Many of my friends are sharing their Spotify Wrapped pictures on social media, which is giving me a fat list of recommendations without having to put any effort. Over the last couple of years, I have seen a common name across a lot of these lists: BTS. Yes, we are going to talk about BTS.
BTS is an abbreviation for Bangtan Sonyeondan. They are an insanely popular Korean band, with music spanning multiple languages, including English and Japanese. How insanely popular? Sample this - according to a report published in 2019, BTS’ contribution to the Korean economy was greater than $4.5 billion. Every year, Korea attracts nearly 800,000 tourists just to watch them perform.
I put out a self-produced cover of a famous track the other day. Four people liked it. Sigh.
But I digress. Full disclosure - I haven’t heard much of their music. So, for the uninitiated, let me quote the official Grammy website on why they are so loved.
“Good music that transcends genre is only icing on the cake. They’re also extremely talented performers, have uplifting messages in their music, speak up on important issues, and have built an organic bond with their fans.”
I first heard BTS only recently. Some of my friends are massive fans, and I have a 15-year-old cousin who is ready to change nationalities for them. Their music is great. It is catchy, extremely well-produced, and differs from conventional pop in its usage of vocal phrasing and instrumentation. The synth work in the chorus of Dynamite stuck out. Bit of Michael Jackson and van Halen going on there with the bright patches. I love it.
The most recent track I heard is called Dreamers. Pop isn’t my usual go-to genre, so I doubt if any of my discovery funnels would have recommended that song. But Dreamers is produced exclusively for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Jeon Jung-kook, BTS’ star vocalist, sang it at the opening ceremony. It is a lovely track, quite unlike most official World Cup songs. Many from the older editions, like Waka Waka, Wavin’ Flag, and Cup of Life, have become cult hits. Most have a common theme of evoking a carnival-like atmosphere through their rhythms and heavy percussion. Dreamers, as the name suggests, has a more dreamy vibe going for it.
Many like me are either just discovering their music or haven’t heard them before. The FIFA World Cup is as big as it gets to gain new audience or reinforce existing reach. More than 1 billion people watched the final of the 2018 edition. One billion, simultaneously. There cannot be a better platform for advertising your product.
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The World Cup itself is one. The 2022 edition, held in Qatar, is entering its spicier stages now. As I type the first draft of this post, Netherlands are playing USA for a spot in the quarter-finals. This has been a riveting tournament, replete with upsets and neutral favourites usurping traditional heavyweights. Usually, a World Cup season brings with it a lot of hype and frenzy. This one has carried a distinctly different flavour all through.
Most of the coverage leading up to and during the tournament has focused on the host nation. The microscope has probed into two major questions. One - the grim story of how Qatar even got to host such a massive event. And two - the even grimmer story of the people who helped build the infrastructure to host it. The coverage has been so wide and overwhelming that the questions have reached players, coaches, and even viewers.
Invariably, these conversations are uncomfortable. One of the ripostes loosely thrown in such situations is - “don’t mix sports and politics.” Well, a thought like this comes from a place of hope and wilful negligence more than reality. So, before going into today’s episode of Comedians in Governments Getting Football, here is a quick primer on Qatar, FIFA, and landing the 2022 World Cup.
The decision to award hosting rights is made through a voting process that involves twenty-four influential men in FIFA, football’s global governing body. These men are representatives of football bodies from different continents, commonly known as confederations. The group, mafia if you will, is collectively known as the FIFA Executive Committee or the ExCon. Basically, these twenty-four men decide who gets to host the major tournaments based on the bids received and some other stuff. In 2010, during a FIFA congress, the voting for the 2018 and 2022 editions was done together. The USA, Japan, and England submitted compelling bids. All these countries had fully mature football infrastructures and enough precedence of hosting global events of the highest standard. All of them lost out to Russia and Qatar.
When votes are involved, bribery will inevitably follow. Both Russia and Qatar could grease enough hands at the ExCon, in enough different ways, to secure their chances. Allow me an example. Four months before the vote in 2010, the Thailand and Qatar governments were renegotiating an energy deal. In that meeting sat Thailand’s representative from FIFA. But what does a football administrative official have to do with fuel policies, I hear you asking. A vote for Qatar at the FIFA congress automatically meant a better natural gas deal for Thailand.
Now, there is too much dirt to dish on FIFA, most of which is outside the scope of this post. Just saying Corruption ProMax doesn’t cut it. So I will redirect you to this incredible documentary on Netflix. If you prefer the slow burn of a book, this by David Conn covers everything in the documentary and more.
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World Cups have always carried stains. Qatar aren’t the first defaulters of this kind, and definitely won’t be the last. The 2010 World Cup, held amongst such fanfare in South Africa, was the result of a promise then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter once made to the African Confederation to guarantee votes of an entire continent for keeping him in office. The 1978 World Cup in Argentina was held in concert with fascist President General Videla’s suppression of dissent by making activists disappear.
Germany, at the height of the Third Reich, hosted the 1936 Olympics. Hitler was there, hanging out at the VIP boxes and whatnot. Popular sports are the best tools for soft power. Influential positions amongst sporting bodies, or hosting rights for major events, catapult a nation or a regime into the high echelons of global consciousness. Think of Qatar right now. Imagine the number of people, some of whom may not have any interest in oil or politics or football, consuming television and culture directly beamed from Doha. Can you really blame a regime for spotting this opportunity? Over the last eighteen years, Qatar have hosted twenty major sporting events. They have not been just an oil country for a long time now.
Football is at the top of this soft power pyramid. The sport’s continental and global bodies speak a language all governments understand: money. If you give the cronies at FIFA or UEFA enough money, they will advertise Zubaan Kesari pan masala for you.
We can possibly laugh much of this corruption and bribery stuff off. The stories of the workers who built the stadiums and hotels are far darker. It would be terribly unfair to just skim through them without going into detail, so I urge you to read this 112-page report. Some of the details are gut-wrenching. YouTube has a growing list of video reports from the camps these migrant labourers have been placed in, their working conditions, and just how many of them have paid for a football tournament with their lives. It was only as late as this week, on a Piers Morgan interview that too, that an official from either the Qatar government or World Cup organising committee admitted to the toll of 400 deaths. Up until now, they have been bullish about a sub-50 death count.
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The World Cup comes every four years. It is the most incredible of tournaments. Old fans get rejuvenated, and young fans find new teams and idols. The smorgasbord of colour, the undivided attention into one event, brings new fans into the game every time. Football has never really been a game of twenty-two silhouettes chasing a round sheepskin object. With every such tournament, more people open up to it. So how does a fan deal with all these terrible conversations circling around the World Cup they were so excited to watch?
I should be the last one to talk, actually. I am the biggest hypocrite. I spent the previous 700 words talking about the game’s ills and feel strongly about the many other ways it has become emblematic of the world’s biggest societal issues. And yet, here I am. Just the day before, when Hee-Chan Hwang’s last-minute winner sent Korea through to the knockout stages, I was out of my chair. Yelping, jumping, sending capitalised gibberish on a WhatsApp group of fellow football fans.
If I can say one thing, a fan looking for recreation or escape shouldn’t have to bear the burden of activism. Immersing yourself in the joys and sorrows of this unique sport and event is the best way of reclaiming a piece of something that is basically a dirty dance of money and power from every other angle. Fans don’t have a say on who gets to host a World Cup or how the host nation treats labourers.
The World Cup in Qatar feels like a sliding doors moment in sports. While politicians and oligarchs have made inroads for years now, especially with TV and internet used to spread the gospel of sport as a political tool, hosting a football World Cup is the point of no return. Qatar, the product, has been advertised to the entire world. I know many people - aware, empathetic, kind - who have visited Qatar during this tournament because they wanted to experience a World Cup. And fair enough. I was tempted to travel to Russia and Brazil for the previous two editions, fully knowing what has gone on in those countries around the last eight years.
As we watch France play Poland tonight, I hope the conversations about the depth of football’s quagmire don’t stop. Let me leave you with a quick story about France. In 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy called Michel Platini for lunch. Platini, an ex-footballer and French legend, was then president of UEFA, football’s administrative body in Europe. He reached the Élysée palace and found two more men. Sarkozy was waiting with the Prime Minster and Emir of Qatar. They wanted a simple thing from Platini: guarantee us your and some other votes for Qatar’s bid. Sarkozy had placed Platini in a spot where he couldn’t refuse. He obliged, and Qatar won the hosting rights. In 2011, Qatar Sports Investments bought Paris Saint Germain. It also, funnily, happens to be Sarkozy's favourite team. In 2022, that team employs Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappe - three of the biggest names in men's football and the star players from Argentina, Brazil, and France.
Sports and politics don’t mix? Lol, sports is politics.
I would go on to say that everything in life is politics :)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.