Notes from the FrontLines:

Demystifying Sports Diplomacy

Target Audience: executives, management, athletes, coaches, NGOs, sponsors

There’s a growing emphasis on the sports world playing an increased role in civic and human rights advocacy to encourage action across a range of issues–and sports diplomacy, when the sports world meets the diplomatic one, is an ever-growing field of engagement that can play an important role. Since 2000, governments and sports federations have formalized their sports diplomacy policies while ever-more private sector sports stakeholders, including leagues, teams, and sponsors, as well as athletes, coaches, and the media who cover them, engage in some form of sports diplomacy. Yet, most don’t recognize it for what it is. Understanding the sports diplomacy framework can empower participants to partake with greater intentionality and more authentically craft their policy, communications, and engagement initiatives.

In this workshop, Dr. Krasnoff will demystify the sports diplomacy framework, unpack its various uses (and abuses), while encouraging attendees to think about how they might incorporate this impactful storytelling prism and outreach instrument into their own approaches.

Attendees of This talk will be able to:

  • Understand what sports diplomacy is, and how and why it has evolved since 2000

  • Identify and distinguish the differences between formal, informal, and digital sports diplomacy formats 

  • Familiarize with different models in play at the government, league, team/corporate, and individual levels

  • Dissect which sports diplomacy initiatives are effective, which ones fall flat, and why 

  • Walk away with an improved comprehension of how they’re engaged in sports diplomacy and how they might participate in the future with greater intentionality to ameliorate objectives and goals