Populist Dimensions of Sport Histories

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the concept of populism to further our understanding of sport-based institutions and discourse and to demonstrate the relevance of “sportive populism” to sport history scholarship. It begins with an account of the application of the concept to strongman populism in historical and contemporary contexts and then focuses on two specific historical cases: the Colosseum in Rome in the first century CE, and the formative discourses of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based primarily upon secondary sources, analysis of the cases illustrates the interpretive potential of the populist concept for our understanding of a form of sportive populism in the political project of the Colosseum and in the formative discourses and persisting rhetoric of the two international sporting bodies.