In 2024, sports leagues saw the world burn

In 2024, several seismic shifts have shaken the world of sport. Last year, the most famous American basketball player under 30 appeared. Her name is Caitlin Clark, and she went from NCAA sensation at the University of Iowa to leading a traveling WNBA roadshow that sold out arenas and brought record audiences. (She also talked about how its straightness and its whiteness factorized in his popularity.) In baseball, the game-straddling slugger, now with a World Series ring, was the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Japanese mega-star Shohei Ohtani, and he didn’t even have to pitch. The most dominant basketball player remained the slow-footed, feathery-touch Serbian bear, Nikola Jokic, and the biggest threat to his perch was, sooner than expected, a 7′ 5” 20-year-old French player, Victor Wembanyama. Appropriately, Sports IllustratedSportsman of the year 2024 was Simone Biles, recognized not only as an all-time athlete, but also for her incredible return to greatness at the Paris Olympics. These competitors not only defined their sports; they showed that diversity, opportunity and excellence are inextricable. Their successes pose a living cultural threat to the ideology of the next administration.

But while these athletes deserve to be celebrated, we must not forget that in 2024, the sports world has faced a growing reactionary movement and, with a few exceptions, has chosen silence. The leagues that had recently sung paeans to social justice turned out to be made up of good Germans – and I’m not talking about the Detlef Schrempf. In 2024, the idea that players should just “shut up and dribble” has gone from a racist Fox News taunt, targeting athletes like LeBron James for speaking out against police violence, to an accepted logic within the league management and media and even among the players. athletes.

The stakes for silence have never been higher. The gaming addiction industry and streaming services, desperate for market-ready content, are pouring billions into the sports world. To be controversial as a big league athlete is to risk generational wealth. The country has become polarized. Billionaire sports owners have never been richer and the salaries of top players are stratospheric. This is occurring alongside the impoverishment of universal youth sports which, due to a lack of public financial support, have turned to families to make up the difference and are now too expensive for many.

We should all be in favor of players getting their share, but few athletes get Juan Soto’s $765 million contract. The story of player salaries is another story of polarization. The gap between the haves and have-nots is especially evident at the college level, where high-profile athletes are finally – and rightly – free to monetize their name, image and likeness and can now access a transfer portal which gives them unprecedented freedom of movement. Yet the stunning stories of college athletes being offered fortunes to change schools have also provided cover for the NCAA to do nothing to address collective bargaining issues like unionization and health care. Today, college quarterbacks are being offered millions to drop out of their schools, while less influential players are paid in concussions.

The cost of defending justice in this political climate was too high for most leagues, athletes and sports journalists. This was especially true when it came to Israel’s war against Gaza. Last year, Israel killed world-class people…even Olympic-athletes. He used historic stadiums as places of interrogation and torture. Yet while the Palestinian sports world burned, the sports world yawned. Palestinian athletes challenged the world’s embrace of Israel at the Olympics, but their efforts received little media attention. At the Paris 2024 Games, it was stark to see the contrast between the crowds cheering Palestinian Olympic athletes and the media’s silence on the athletes, despite personal stories of incredible trials, obstacles and triumphs: the very attributes that NBC said they represented the “Olympic spirit” at its best. Interview Fadi Deeb, Paralympian from Gaza is the memory of 2024 that I will carry with me most dearly.

Olympic Paris was also the scene of the forced displacement of more than 12,000 people, that separated families, a grotesque violation of human rights that the international press largely ignored. When politics made inroads at the Games, it was mainly through fiercely anti-trans voices. The anger of the right was directed against the Algerian boxer Imane Khelifwho, despite not being trans, proved to be an effective post-truth target after knocking out an Italian boxer, Angela Carini. The fact that Carini was a state police officer under Italy’s ruling fascist right received far less attention than Trump repeating the lie that Khelif was “a man” at his rallies. The hate machine was activated before Carini’s body even hit the canvas.

If the most influential sports corner in the 2020 elections was the WNBAthis year, perhaps the most politically powerful voice came from Dana White’s Ultimate Fighting Championship. No place in the sports world is more obsessed with Trump than the UFC. It is led by White, who campaigned for Trump and spoke at the RNC. Several of his biggest mixed martial arts stars have supported Trump with a passion that no athlete has expressed for Harris. The UFC is at the top of the fighting world, occupying a space formerly occupied by boxing. UFC is an entertaining product that attracts millions of young male viewers. We have seen in other countries, notably in Eastern Europe and Brazil…rigorously documented by Karim Zidan– how mixed martial arts clubs and organizations can be vectors for a radical right that dominates this space from top to bottom. Questioning the dominant politics of these spaces – as some courageous mixed martial artists and fans are doing – is no small task.

Looking ahead, we should remember 2024 as a historic year between brands and on the field and which reminded us that the world of sports, increasingly exclusive, profitable and, in the case of gaming, chance, addictive, does not lead resistance. Movements, no matter how small, will need to be built off the field of play. Every time an athlete steps up the fight…especially in the case of Palestine– that’s worth celebrating, but right now, hoping for more isn’t a smart bet.