New in knowledge Bank: Sport: A battlefield for value fighters

"If you think that a ball game is merely a game about a ball, you may have got it wrong. Sport as a whole is an intense, never-ending battlefield about the values that guide our lives," Jens Sejer Andersen, International Director at Play the Game states in this article. In the article he also looks into whether the ethical standards for sport are higher than for other cultural phenomena.

Is it fair to have much higher expectations to sport and its human and social values than to other cultural phenomena, asks Jens Sejer Andersen, International Director for Play the Game in this article. The answer is, according to Sejer Andersen, yes, because of the great potential and innate values that sport contain.

“Sport is held accountable to its values because it contains some potentially dangerous emotions: anger, frustration, aggression.”

“If you think that a ball game is merely a game about a ball, you may have got it wrong. Sport as a whole is an intense, never-ending battlefield about the values that guide our lives,“

So according to Sejer Andersen, sport is a special case when it comes to setting the ethical standards for several reasons, which is why Play the Game takes a special interest in raising awareness about these values and the way they are managed.

“At Play the Game, we believe the definitions and decisions are much too important to leave in the hands of small groups in the international political, sports or media elite,” he writes.

Criticism is an act of love
Although criticism is not always welcomed by sport leaders, Sejer Andersen underlines that it is necessary and a way of initiating a constructive dialogue.

“If Play the Game and our hundreds of speakers have sometimes criticised sport, something we cannot deny, it is not because we want to damage or destroy sport. It is because we believe that open and honest dialogue is the only way to healthy and sustainable development“, Sejer Andersen writes and concludes;

"It is because the future must build on a truth that we can all recognise, and this truth is approached only by hearing contrasting voices. It is not because we hate sport, but because we love it."

Read the whole article here:
Sport: A battlefield for value fighters