The Business of Athletics: Coe’s Balancing Act Between Capital and State Power

Global sports governance is a lucrative enterprise that frequently masquerades as a moral crusade. The reality, as World Athletics President Sebastian Coe recently outlined, is a perpetual tightrope walk between accepting state resources and fending off state interference.

Consider the recent spectacle at FIFA. Following a telephone request from United States President Donald Trump to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, world football's governing body obediently overturned a red-card suspension for American forward Folarin Balogun. This intervention highlights the capitulation Coe wishes to avoid ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Trump will be nearing the end of his second term during those games, and the temptation for executive grandstanding will be immense.

Coe approaches this dynamic with pragmatic realism. As the former head of the 2012 London Olympics and a former British parliamentarian, he understands that delivering a global sporting event requires deep collaboration with state apparatuses. Treasuries and homeland security agencies are indispensable. Yet, he insists sports organisations must maintain the institutional backbone to reject political requests regarding sporting matters. According to the World Athletics chief, the objective is to keep politicians involved in the logistics without allowing them near the steering wheel.

This necessity for institutional independence extends into finance. Infantino finds his leadership under threat after an opaque, failed attempt to sell World Cup profits to private equity. While Infantino secured backing from Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force for the World Cup, Coe views capital markets differently.

He does not reject private equity. Coe acknowledges that sovereign wealth funds have been essential to sports for a decade. With World Athletics facing the expiration of broadcast deals in 2029, he encourages member federations to seek external revenue. The crucial distinction, he argues, lies in stringent governance and transparent consultation—elements absent from FIFA’s recent manoeuvres.

Geopolitical maneuvering presents another challenge. Coe is preparing to defend his organisation's ban on Russian athletes at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. While the International Olympic Committee recently lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, World Athletics remains steadfast. The ban, imposed after Russian forces invaded Ukraine over four years ago, is now being challenged by Russian Athletics.

It is fitting that this dispute will be settled in Switzerland. The Alpine nation profits from remaining outside the European Union, cultivating a highly functional state system that occasionally borders on the naive when dealing with global realpolitik. Coe, who unsuccessfully bid for the IOC presidency last year, frames the ban as a question of competitive integrity. The primacy of an international federation to determine what eligibility looks like in the sport is the base of the pyramid, Coe stated. Whether that pyramid can withstand the pressures of political vanity and private capital is the defining question for athletics.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com