Get Smart About Sports Diplomacy

The phrase “sports diplomacy” is used ever-more frequently, even as there remains some confusion as to what constitutes sports diplomacy and who engages in it.

Yet, in the 2020s, sports diplomacy is no longer a “nice to have” — it is a necessity for any stakeholder working within the global sports ecosystem.

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. Understanding sports diplomacy and it’s use as a “Swiss Army Knife” tool can empower participants to partake with greater intentionality and more authentically craft their strategy, storytelling, thought leadership, and engagement initiatives.

In this workshop, Dr. Krasnoff will demystify sports diplomacy, 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 with targeted examples and suggestions.

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