The future of sport is Asian

Sport is driving national transformation in some countries while enabling others to rehabilitate their reputations

- Simon Chadwick

On February 1, 2019, Qatari footballer Akram Afif scored the winning goal in his nation’s Asian Cup Final victory over Japan in the United Arab Emirates. Within days of this, Parag Khanna published his prophetic text The Future is Asian, in which he explained how a pivot from the Global North to the Global South will bring the ascent of nations from across Asia to new positions of international power as the 21st century progresses.

For Qatar, this ascent began to gather speed nine years earlier when, in 2010, it won the right to host FIFA’s 2022 World Cup. Yet even in 2019, Doha was already positioned as a major sports event destination, hosting both the World Athletics Championship and FIFA’s Club World Cup. By that stage, it was clear that Asia’s rise was more a case of reality than prophecy. Indeed, in another book published that year, Fatima Bhutto heralded three new kings of the world (Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop), to which she could now add the likes of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Saudi Arabian football’s Pro League.

This wind of change has been blowing for at least two decades and is not simply a matter of where sports events are staged, or which countries have large populations to sustain them. For instance, Asian companies are increasingly becoming major backers of sport with China contributing the largest number of the Olympics’ global sponsors. Otherwise, think Real Madrid’s team shirt sponsor (Dubai’s state-owned Emirates Airline) or one of Formula 1’s most prominent partners — Petronas (Malaysia’s state-owned petroleum corporation) — and Asia’s growing commercial presence in sport is clear.