quality:corruption
Sport

Sport spectacles like football's World Cup command worldwide audiences as nations battle for supremacy and the fans invest intense support for their national team. Increasingly people have tied their loyalties and even their cultural identity to national teams. The globalization of audiences through television and other media has generated revenues from advertisers and subscribers in the billions of dollars, as the FIFA Scandals of 2015 revealed. Jeff Kingston looks at football, the Commonwealth Games, baseball, cricket, and the Olympics and finds that, "The capacity of sports to ignite and amplify nationalist passions and prejudices is as extraordinary as is their power to console, unify, uplift and generate goodwill." The phenomenon is evident across most of the world. The British Empire strongly emphasized sports among its soldiers and agents across the world, and often the locals joined in enthusiastically. It established a high prestige competition in 1930, named the British Empire Games from 1930 to 1950, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games from 1954 to 1966, British Commonwealth Games from 1970 to 1974 and since then the Commonwealth Games.

The French Empire was not far behind the British in the use of sports to strengthen colonial solidarity with France. Colonial officials promoted and subsidized gymnastics, table games, and dance and helped football spread to French colonies.