Roving consumers of pleasure: at the conceptual intersection of sport tourism and sex tourism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Mega sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, Olympic Games and Super Bowl, are often constructed as corresponding sites of bodily tourism, with a shared motivation among some tourists to purchase and consume both commercialized sport and sex. This paper begins by deconstructing the ‘common sense’ connection between sport tourism and sex trafficking. It recognizes, however, that both sport and sex tourism are grounded in bodily consumption and conquest. That is, both sex and sport tourism rely on the commodification and consumption of the body as currency and fantasy, defined as a libidinal economy. As such, this paper explores the colonial systems of power that enable and perpetuate the commodification of colonized bodies at the intersection of sport tourism and sex tourism. The paper situates this intersection within the colonial matrix of power and the structural hierarchies maintained through the colonial framing of power, race, gender and sexuality. In this sense, tourism is defined as roving colonialism [Sykes, H. (2017). The sexual and gender politics of sport mega-events: Roving colonialism. New York, NY: Routledge]. Using the colonial matrix of power as a theoretical framework, then, we evaluate the libidinal economies of sport tourism and sex tourism and propose a conceptual understanding of bodily labor and exploitation at this unique intersection. By using this conceptual framework, this paper calls for further empirical study that explicitly evaluates the impact of corresponding systems of sport tourism and sex tourism simultaneously at play within national and international sporting events.