2025体育与软实力排名报告

March 2025 SKEMA Publika is an independent international think tank aiming to anticipate the societal andgeopolitical transformations of tomorrow. It fuels public debate and issues recommendations fornational and international policymakers. Affiliated with SKEMA Business School, the think tank tacklespublic policy issues. It looks at them from the angle of early signs and formulates suggestions for the Find our work at: https://publika.skema.edu/ Table of contents .................................................................................................................................................... 3Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 4Context.................................................................................................................................................................... 6Methodology........................................................................................................................................................... 8Ranking.................................................................................................................................................................. 10Case studies .......................................................................................................................................................... 12 This study examines the relationship between sport and soft power, the outcome of which is a global The ranking, which is based upon the involvement of sixty experts globally, consists of twenty-five Undertaken over a period of twelve months, ten criteria were used as the basis for this ranking According to our research, the top twenty-five is: This project is motivated by our perception that, in today’s globalized world, sport and soft power arelinked. Indeed, sport is a subject of great expectations on the part of the States, and it has become a According to the OECD, in 2024 the sports market represented around 2% of global GDP, and it is setto grow in the coming years. Furthermore, countries are massively investing in sports. For the past couple of years, the Gulf states have been increasingly investing in international clubs andhosting international sports events. In Europe, France just hosted the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in On the other side of the Atlantic, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will, for the first time in its history, takeplace in three locations - United States, Mexico, and Canada. Countries from Australia and Thailand to Rwanda and Brazil are all now playing a game of sport andsoft power, albeit in different ways and with varying degrees of success (which our ranking captures). Given the significant interest of states in this field of sports, we found it relevant to create a sport and As an independent international think tank that anticipates tomorrow’s societal and geopoliticaltransformations, sport is one of SKEMA Publika’s areas of expertise, and the ambition is to contribute The underpinning question that has guided our research is: Which countries are the world's best at The concept of soft power was theorized by the American political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1980s. “The ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment1”. At the state level it is the ability of a country to get what it wants through cultural and politicalattraction. He noticed that, in the second half of the 20thcentury, power was changing in world politics. Traditionally, it was understood as controlling others and getting them to do what they otherwisewould not, in general, through means of war. This is called hard power. However, in today’s globalized world, power has become multifaceted, involving less emphasis onmilitary force and more on technology, education, culture, and economic growth. According to Nye,power relies on the ability of an actor to change the behavior of states. Thus, as power evolves, so dothe strategies to exercise it. This evolution suggests a more attractive and subtle way to exerciseinfluence since the powerful countries are less able to use their traditional power resources to achievetheir purposes than in the past and this leads us to the concept of soft power2. Soft power is important to measure, as it is just as important to measure hard power. Measuring thecapacity of a state to exercise soft power allows us to understand its ability to influence and to makeits power seem legitimate in the eyes of other actors. It’s clear thatif a country’s culture and ideology As Claude Revel highlights in the SKEMA Publika report, Influence and Counter-Influence in 2023:Forms, Actors, Excesses, and Strategies,the globalization of the 1980s and 1990s exacerbatedcompetition, and in a highly competitive environment, influence is key since it is a weapon to take political and economic power as well as t