Football Matters
Football can turn something as simple as a ball and an open field into opportunity, national pride and international influence.
This year, I discovered a love for football. It took a long time, and I spent much of my life decrying the sport as overrated and a distraction from what I believed to be more important matters. I was wrong.
Football, or soccer if you prefer, is the world’s most popular game for a reason. It is deceptively simple and accessible to billions of people, while also being incredibly lucrative, tactically complex, and poised to create drama that lasts decades.
But football doesn’t just matter to the players and fans. The FIFA World Cup, notably, has real, tangible effects on geopolitics and entire economies. And I’m not talking about host countries spending billions while FIFA profits. I’m talking about the participating countries and how getting a ball into the back of a net can produce substantial value for an economy.
Prestige and national recognition
The World Cup is multifaceted. On one hand, football fans have favourite teams and players, often informed by family tradition, historical rivalries or a preference for a certain type of play. But on the other hand, this is an international tournament where teams are representing their countries. Governments inevitably associate themselves with the success of their footballers regardless of merit.
This creates a difficult situation for judgemental observers of geopolitics like me. There is an urge to support a country based on how I feel about that country. How they treat their people, how they feel about freedom, etc.
This might seem like irrelevant pettiness. Should I not just support a team that deserves to win?
The problem is that psychologically, people and politicians around the world are likely to favour the country of a winning team, and even if marginally, will be influenced by this new bias.
If a country with a terrible government performs well, many football fans and even nominally disinterested observers may start to look at that government more favourably – taking off pressure from reform.
This cuts both ways. If a country performs badly - or worse yet, behaves badly - then negative recognition of that country goes up. Look at the worldwide demonisation of Argentina. In the final Argentina’s team behaved, frankly, absurdly badly. And they did seem to be favoured abnormally by the referees throughout the tournament. Couple this with Argentinian players making a blatant political statement about the Falklands.
Argentina has taken a huge hit to its national prestige. Not just in football, but internationally, as British officials have demanded an investigation surrounding the Argentinian team’s provocations around the Falklands.
Argentina squandered much of the prestige that its successful run might otherwise have generated.
Winning isn’t the only thing that matters. The behaviour of a team and its fans, and how they conduct themselves influences how the world sees that country.
This matters not just for soft-power negotiations, trade deals and national pride. It helps determine how people treat citizens of a country abroad and at home. Citizens from a country that behaved torridly will likely see themselves treated coldly while abroad.
Not always about winning
A country doesn’t need to win the World Cup to benefit. Some of the biggest winners of this World Cup didn’t even make it into the quarterfinals.
Japan has built a worldwide fanbase for its Samurai Blue football team due to its plucky underdog spirit, fair-play and incredibly friendly, enthusiastic and respectful fanbase. Japanese fans are famous for cleaning up stadiums after their games – win or lose. This has reinforced Japan’s reputation for civic-mindedness and consideration, creating exactly the sort of favourable national image from which its tourism industry can benefit.
Cape Verde has already started reaping the rewards of its miracle, underdog performance at the World Cup, with its tourism industry benefiting. Expedia reported UK travel interests in Cape Verde increasing by 265%.
A tiny island nation of only half a million people captured the world’s imagination. For many, it’s likely the first time they’ve ever heard about Cape Verde. And now, thanks to hitting far above its weight, this country has been put on the map.
Thanks to its extremely likeable striker Erling Haaland, wonderful fans with a culturally rich rowing chant, and a fun-loving spirit, Norway were another major winner without needing to win the cup. Norway’s tourism industry has already capitalised on the popularity of Haaland and the team, using the viral rowing chant to introduce international audiences to Norwegian history, Vikings and the country’s maritime culture.
Economic benefits
Football is big money. Skilled football players are paid in the hundreds of millions, leagues print billions in revenue, and many clubs put big businesses to shame.
But the benefits of performing well extend beyond players’ salaries, although those should not be ignored: players and clubs pay taxes, employ staff and support substantial commercial ecosystems.
The tourism effect is not merely theoretical. A peer-reviewed study examining five World Cups between 1998 and 2014 found that winning countries received, on average, 5.9% more international tourists in the following year and 3.4% more in the second year. Unexpected quarterfinalists also received 3.4% more tourists two years after their performances, while comparable control countries experienced no similar increase. The effect faded by the third year, suggesting that football creates a temporary window of global attention that countries must actively convert into lasting economic gains.
Individual cases illustrate the potential scale. International tourist spending in Spain rose by €3.9 billion, or 7.9%, in the year after its 2010 World Cup victory. After Croatia reached the 2018 final, foreign-tourism revenue increased by €769 million, or 9%, during the first nine months of 2019.
Morocco’s travel receipts rose by roughly MAD10.8 billion, or 11.5%, after its historic 2022 semi-final appearance, alongside a record 14.5 million visitors. Football cannot be credited for every rand, euro or dirham of these increases, since tourism is also shaped by economic conditions, marketing and existing growth. But the consistent pattern shows that a strong World Cup performance can translate national prestige into more visitors and substantial additional spending.
Greater national recognition can also benefit a country’s stock market, although the effect is less consistent than the tourism boost. A successful World Cup run can improve investor sentiment, draw attention to local companies and raise expectations for tourism, hospitality, retail and media businesses. Spain’s listed tourism companies, for example, recorded an abnormal gain of more than 4% immediately after its 2010 World Cup victory. Such gains are often brief and concentrated in particular industries rather than spread across the entire market, but they show that sporting prestige can translate into real financial value.
Football is for everyone
Football isn’t just a game. It is a platform where countries can not only show off the beauty of their culture and the skill of their players but reap tangible benefits and national prestige that helps instil their people with pride and their peers with admiration.
What makes football even more beautiful is, as I mentioned, its accessibility. It is the most democratic of sports, with repeated stories of star players rising above dire poverty and uplifting not just themselves, but their entire communities. It isn’t an elite game requiring rich parents to buy expensive equipment and coaches.
Football at a school level isn’t just fun. It focuses children, instils discipline, drive and teamwork. If done properly, school-level leagues can create a generation of players that can represent a country on the world stage – uniting a country and ensuring that the world recognises it beyond its borders.
Football matters because it converts something as simple as a ball and an open field into opportunity, national pride and international influence. Countries that take the sport seriously can build stronger communities at home while earning admiration, tourism and investment abroad. Supporting football at school and community level is therefore not frivolous spending on entertainment. It is an investment in young people, social cohesion and the possibility that South Africa might one day command the world’s attention for all the right reasons.
Nicholas Woode-Smith is a political analyst and author. He is the managing editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.