INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

sport. The barriers to labour mobility, for instance, are based on the
regulation of nation-states and influenced by variations social criteria
and it is significant to capture the resistance, reinterpretation or
adaptation processes of global and local culture.
Thirdly, international sporting events tend to reveal the
complexities of cultural and political identities, and it should be noted
that there is no single identity but multiple identities in accordance
with the lower-level of attachment such as ethnicity, gender or age.
Some argue the increasing ambiguity of nation and nationalism within
globalized sport (Maguire, 1999). It can be argued, however, that
nation or the concept of nationhood are still defining unit of
international sport as represented by, for instance, the expressions of
locality or regionality at the opening ceremony of the Olympic
Games, where athletes march behind the national flags and listen to
national anthem for their winning, although hosting the Olympic
Games can be represented the ideal of globalization to bring the world
and people together with the ideal of Olympic Movement (see Bairner
2001; Houlihan, 2003a). It should be emphasized that in so far as
international sporting events are organized on the basis of the nationstates
and taken place at a particular site, the significance of state can
still remain as the reference point for the organization of international
sport and for representation of athletes. Sport has both dimensions at
the holistic level of internationalized sport as a process and vertical
tension-balances in the ‘global/local dualism’ and in lower-levels of
attachment.
2.2 Economic Globalization and Sport
Sport can be a business form and a source of profit making on its
own right, but it can also be seen as a vehicle for the ‘globalisation of
consumerism’ (McKay and Miller, 1991: 93). The sport industries like
soccer clubs, broadcasting companies or advertisement agencies,
indeed, have become constituted with sport delivery services, sport
requirements, sport products and sport support services (Parks et al.,
1998). The intense sponsorship, involvement of such transnational
corporations as Nike and television rights are seen as the outcome of
commercialization/commodification of sport, which tend to
marginalize the importance of states. International sport organizations
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