Düsseldorf At the end of February, Russia’s national ice hockey team will play for victory in the final of the Olympic tournament. But against Finland nothing will come of the hoped-for defense of the gold medal. Four years earlier in South Korea, the troupe around the superstar Alexander Ovechkin, who plays in the USA, had brought the prestige success for Russia at one of the world’s most acclaimed sporting events.
Now, a few weeks after the end of the Winter Olympics, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has also changed the sporting world. Although Ovechkin is still one of the best players in the North American ice hockey league NHL, he was recently greeted with catcalls in Canada. The sports icon is considered a Putin friend, and a photo with the President greets the millions of followers on Instagram. The NHL has cut ties with Russia but stands up to its Russian players.
But with this solidarity, the league is gradually alone. Russian athletes, who are no longer allowed to compete under their national flag at the Olympic Games as a result of a state-orchestrated doping system, are also excluded from the remaining international competitions. There will probably be no more Russian sports heroes in the near future.
The exclusion hits the country harder than many other nations would. “Russian sport is used in many ways to underline the great power narrative,” says Timm Beichelt, Professor of European Studies at Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder. For decades, the Kremlin has used sport as an important propaganda tool.
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The calculation: Success in sport promises international recognition. They are also intended to demonstrate a country’s financial and organizational capabilities in front of an audience of millions, such as at the 2014 Winter Olympics or the 2018 World Cup, which took place in Russia.
“Sport helps to do nation building,” says Christoph Breuer, Professor of Sports Economics at the Sports University in Cologne. “In major competitions, whole countries gather behind a team or an athlete.” Sporting success can thus strengthen national pride, even patriotism.
Strong combination of sport and politics
Scientists led by Stanford political scientist Neil Malhotra found out a good ten years ago that sporting successes can even indirectly increase political approval among citizens. If your own team wins, the supporters are in a good mood. And people with positive emotions are more likely to settle for the status quo—including the incumbent. The Roman principle of “bread and circuses” is still true today.
“In contrast to Germany, Russian sport is not autonomous,” says Beichelt. Every year, the Kremlin pumps large sums into sports funding, the amount cannot be reliably quantified. “The Russian sports associations are very opaque,” says sports economist Breuer. The goal is clear: success at any price.
The state apparatus injected its athletes with a doping system to the top of the medal table. Since 2018, Russian athletes have not been allowed to compete under the Russian flag at the Olympic Games.
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Perhaps nowhere is the connection between sport and politics as close as in Russia. One example is the CV of the Russian sports official Vitaly Mutko. In the 1990s he became president of the Gazprom club Zenit St. Petersburg. Later Mutko was elected to parliament and at the same time president of the Russian Football Union. He then rose to become Minister of Sports. When state doping was exposed during the Sochi Games in 2015, Mutko had to vacate his post as sports minister. Other consequences? No. He was made deputy prime minister and deputy minister.
Economic factor sport
“Political loyalty is often rewarded with leadership positions in Russia,” says Beichelt. Therefore, it is mostly Putin loyalists who head Russian sports federations or represent Russia in international sports federations. Beichelt suspects that this group is probably the main target of the boycott.
Many of the officials are likely to lose their jobs if they are excluded from the international sports community. This deprives the Russian government of an instrument to bind social elites to itself, explains the expert.
Almost complete isolation from the sports world also has economic implications. “The performance of one’s own nation definitely has an effect on a country’s willingness to spend,” says Christoph Breuer. Sporting top performances also help to increase the willingness to spend. Spending, in turn, stimulates the economy.
According to Breuer, the annual turnover of the sports industry in Russia is estimated at around seven billion euros. However, this is a very rough estimate. There is no precise statistical recording of the Russian sports industry as is available for Germany, Austria or Great Britain.
Russian athletes are only allowed to compete internationally under a neutral banner.
(Photo: Reuters)
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The Russian government has also invested heavily in major sporting events in recent years. The Winter Olympics in Sochi are said to have cost around 30 billion euros, and the World Cup probably cost at least ten billion euros.
Experts estimate that the actual costs for both events may have been significantly higher. For Beichelt, the events are purely political calculations: “That’s state marketing. These events are intended to present Russia as a country that is open to the world.”
Beichelt and Breuer agree that it is difficult to say how hard the sporting boycott will hit Russia. “Is the exclusion decisive for the war? No. Is he destabilizing the country? Probably not either. But of course that affects a lot of sports fans and maybe also makes some doubt,” says Beichelt.
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