The Fairy Tale of Professional Maltese Sport: Exploring Obstacles and Hindrances in Local Elite Sport Development

Abstract

It is an anomaly to hear of a Maltese athlete who earns a living solely fromsport. Culturally, it is almost considered nonsensical for an athlete to consider pursuingsport as a profession. In contrast, Cyprus, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein are fourcomparable countries that form part of the European Small States and are all under theone million inhabitants mark. Notably, however, each can boast of a number of professionalathletes and lucrative results at the highest pinnacle of sports, the Olympic Games. Indeed,Liechtenstein, probably one of the smallest states in Europe with a modest population of38,244 as opposed to Maltas 416,388 (at the time of writing), has very recently won bronzeat the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Koreatheir ninth at the winter edition.These anomalies beg the question: is a Maltese world-class athlete a character from a fairytale? Or is this a sociocultural issue? The themes explored in this paper highlight a numberof contrasting, yet impactful differences between the micro-states. Accordingly, using theMalta situation as a lens, we theoretically explore what may impede some populations frombeing equally competitive as other European micro-states.