[source: Commonwealth Sport.]
[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies. Opinions do not reflect the position of the editorial board.]
The Commonwealth Games have been pioneering in permitting non-sovereign entities to participate more than any other international sporting event and, as a result, are particularly valued by such teams. This is confirmed by many of these teams, such as the Falkland Islands, whose National Sports Council have stated that they ‘matter a great deal … both for sporting and political visibility reasons’ (Summers, Citation2025). International sport’s capacity to promote positive patriotism can also be seen in an endogenous form. Jamaica used their hosting of the 1966 Commonwealth Games to announce their sovereign arrival on the world stage four years earlier, with a new national Independence Stadium symbolically built for the occasion, and took great pride in being the first black majority country to host the event.
In line with the Jamaican experience of hosting the Games, recent evidence supports the case that – contrary to the rationale for the recent withdrawals – hosting cities and countries invariably gain in terms of social capital. In-depth interviews with residents of Gold Coast, Australia, in relation to the 2018 Games, found overwhelming support for the knock-on effects of hosting. Respondents cited significant pay-offs in terms of physical capital – such as the upgrading of sports facilities – as well as social capital gains in employment opportunities, increased tourist inflows and the multiplication of social connections (Doyle et al., Citation2021; Falla et al., Citation2022). Analysis of the 2022 Birmingham Games similarly found evidence of notable material and social capital gains. The event is estimated to have made a financial profit and provided a £1.2 billion boost to the UK economy. Beyond this were also significant less-tangible gains, echoing the findings of the Gold Coast studies, in terms of community cohesion, physical and mental wellbeing and regeneration (UK Government, Citation2024).
Fair play, justice and universality are inherent to the governance of major international sports, and the Commonwealth Games have probably gone further than any in promoting human rights on the world stage. The Games adopted their and international sports’ first official Human Rights Policy in 2017 (updated in 2022), committing the organisation to enshrine a respect for human rights in the bidding, hosting and management of the Games. This policy document built upon the ‘Transformation 2022’ statement of 2015 which permitted athletes at the Games to ‘advocate’ a political message at the podium. As a consequence of this, the rights of indigenous peoples and sexual minorities were celebrated in ceremonies at Birmingham. In this way, the Games have gone beyond the Olympics in providing a platform for non-state identities to be celebrated. The Games have also been pioneering in advancing disabled sports: at the 2018 Gold Coast Games, disabled athletes’ events were integrated into the Games schedule, rather than the Olympics/Paralympics separate model; and Birmingham 2022 was the first global multi-sports event to feature more medal events for women than men.
Probably the best example of international sport advancing rights and justice, though, is in regard to challenging racial discrimination. The boycotting of major events is often cited as evidence of the negative politicisation of sport, but this is a skewed account of the phenomenon only properly applicable to the ‘tit for tat’ Cold War Olympics boycotts of 1980 and 1984. Beyond this, sporting exclusions and boycotts have done much to challenge racism and advance human rights in the name of fair play and the Commonwealth Games are probably the leading example. The Commonwealth’s strong African contingent made the organisation a leader in the anti-apartheid movement, dating as far back as its emergence in the 1930s. In 1934, the hosting of the Second British Empire Games was taken from Johannesburg and, instead, took place in London after complaints about the South Africans trying to dictate the racial composition of visiting teams.
Internal Commonwealth pressure and the anti-apartheid movement led to South Africa withdrawing from the Commonwealth in 1961, but full sporting isolation of Pretoria did not happen since some rugby and cricket connections were maintained by England and New Zealand. Protests against this culminated in the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement which declared that a full sporting boycott of South Africa and other racist states (such as Rhodesia) should be maintained. When the British commitment to this seemed to wane, there was a mass walk out in advance of the 1986 Edinburgh ‘Unfriendly Games’: the largest sporting boycott in history with 32 states (out of 59) pulling out. As a result, the Edinburgh Games were a sporting, financial and political disaster for the UK, rescued only by the supposed sponsorship by newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell. Following this nadir, the Games have not experienced another sporting boycott and their contribution to advancing non-discrimination has advanced.
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Ultimately, the value of international sport comes from its contribution to deepening global communications, without which human rights and notions of international justice cannot develop. The Commonwealth Games, for some, smack of imperialism: an ugly, racist relic of the past. Whilst the Games and the Commonwealth as an organisation obviously have an imperial past, this criticism does not stand up to much scrutiny. Participating nations do so voluntarily and several countries that were never part of the British Empire have also chosen to participate in the Commonwealth and its Games.Footnote1 The government of one of these countries, Rwanda, has cited the healing capacity of sport as a contributory factor to debuting at the Commonwealth Games this year (Mimosa, Citation2022).
Arguments that the Commonwealth Games are not cost-efficient ignore the fact that the Games demonstrably can make a profit – as in the case of the Birmingham Games in 2022 – but also that there are wider, less tangible gains for the hosts, participants and spectators. In a polarising world, the inclusive, integrative, rules-based and rights-based nature of organised international sport should be encouraged rather than questioned. The Commonwealth Games have a proud record of advancing these goods and should not be consigned to history on the basis of blinkered economic analysis and imperial guilt.
Peter Hough is with the School of Law & Social Sciences, Middlesex University, London, UK.
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