Commerce, democracy and sport

I was recently reminded of Aristotle’s concept of anagnorisis, that moment in a Greek tragedy where the protagonist makes an important discovery.

For me, the recognition came with the impression of being on a ship, in stormy weather, where the captain and crew are all off their heads on LSD.

I usually have faith that somewhere, in the chain of powerful decision-makers above me, there is a group of reasonable, good people, soberly discussing the future of this country and the best way forward for all. But every time I try to participate in this discussion, I find my faith eroded, and occasionally it is demolished completely. The discovery again, is that there is no one up there taking care of anything, certainly nobody who has our best interests at heart, anyway.

I am not talking about God today, but about government and our so-called democracy, and the way decisions are made. In particular, I want to talk about sports and whether they should be commercialised or not. That is, do we need to make football, say, financially self-sufficient? Can’t the government continue and possibly even increase its subsidies for sport, given its lavish spending in other sectors, such as public transport, and especially since the economy is reportedly doing so well?

There was, it is said, a ‘public consultation’ on this issue. I know this may come as a surprise to you – a year ago I wouldn’t have known either – we, the public, were asked whether we agree with the commercialisation of sports facilities.

The government has now issued its response to this ‘public consultation’ exercise, which ties together the responses of all five individuals, two political parties, 17 professional bodies and NGOs. Well I know one NGO that participated in this consultation exercise, having commented on their behalf. How many of those other 16 bodies are sports-related, how many represent the interests of the construction industry and how many are environment-related is the first mystery. The second is why the numbers of participants and the number of responses received do not even add up. Let us contemplate the mysteries of our faith…

What are we being asked here? Do we agree with the commercialization of sports? Quite frankly I don’t know and I don’t care very much. I know that I don’t like commercialization in general; Guns and Roses appearing on Disney made me cringe, and I think that there are some things, such as philosophy, whose value, to be preserved, must be kept apart from that of money. But having no stake in spectator sports, I do not have a strong opinion on the matter.

The document reveals, however, that what was discussed in this “public consultation on the commercialization of sports facilities” was an entirely different matter. What was discussed was the public land leased to sports associations, and what to do with it. It seems that the public agrees that this land is to be developed into shopping complexes, hotels, betting shops and anything else that would bring in money for the clubs. According to this text, we the public agree that we want the extra traffic, buildings, hustle and bustle at our sports complexes.

Now, if any exercise is supposed to be carried out scientifically, surely a public consultation is. But all this document does is repeat verbatim the words of a few individuals and organisations. We are simply supposed to believe, for example, that sports organisations have made “authentic miracles” (yes, that is a quotation from the document) in order to attract income, but unfortunately have not yet become professional. We are expected to believe that they need shopping complexes and hotels in order to promote sports. We are expected to believe that sports should be financially self-sufficient, when education, health and so many other activities obviously are not. As long as we think we have been consulted, it seems we will believe anything.

Careful readers will notice that there are two questions here. One is: do we support the commercialization of sports in general? This is the one I am personally not that interested in, even though I find the idea of keeping sports purely about sports far more appealing. The second is: do we support the commercialization of sports via further buildings, predominantly on ODZ? If not, then is there anyone who can think of a better way?

I hope to have got my twocents in before this issue becomes politicized and the national blinkers go on. In any case, the public should be aware that according to this document, we, the ‘public,’ are already discussing the removal of ODZ status to lands leased to sports organisations.