How Trump has turned sport from brand to power

Decades of self-promotion through sport have become the foundation of Donald Trump's political theatre.

On his first day back in office on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders at a makeshift desk set up in the middle of the Capital One Arena, home to the Washington Wizards NBA team and the Washington Capitals hockey team. 
 
With each executive action signed, Trump would pause for dramatic effect before holding up the signature before the estimated 20,000 supporters, who roared and cheered in approval. He then tossed his signing pens to the supporters, promising to sign plenty more at the White House. 

The spectacle foreshadowed the central role that sports would play in Trump’s second term.  
 
In the first few months back to the White House, he has attended multiple marquee sporting events – including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, NCAA Wrestling Championships, UFC fights, and international football finals – while simultaneously issuing executive orders that directly reshape the sporting landscape.  
 
Trump has treated sports not as a sideline diversion but as a central stage for his political theatre. 

He has prohibited transgender girls and women from competing in female categories and tied compliance to federal funding. He has reasserted federal control over college athletics and revived the Cold War-era Presidential Fitness Test. And he has launched a White House task force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup and another task force for the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles. 
 
This level of presidential engagement matters because it fuses Trump’s cultural instincts with his MAGA agenda to make America great again. Where past presidents used sports for ceremonial appearances or soft diplomacy, Trump turns them into battlegrounds in the culture wars. 

By tying federal education funding to sex-at-birth athletic rules, appointing professional wrestling executives to national fitness councils, or showcasing World Cup trophies in the Oval Office, he transforms sports policy into a vessel for his political messaging.  

Sports are part of Trump’s political infrastructure 

The spectacle of sports – already deeply woven into American identity – becomes another channel through which Trump reasserts authority and nostalgia by redefining concepts of fairness and strength to exclude some groups from taking part. 
 
For Trump, then, sports are not just entertainment or policy – they are political infrastructure. They allow him to amplify grievances, mobilise identity, and project a vision of America rooted in toughness, discipline, and global visibility on his terms.  
 
This is why his unprecedented entanglement with sports cannot be dismissed as mere publicity. It is a deliberate extension of the MAGA project, which harnesses stadiums, athletes, and executive orders to reinforce the cultural foundations of his power. 
 
No previous U.S. president has embedded himself so deeply in the nation’s sporting life, especially to consolidate power, amplify culture-war narratives, and erode democratic norms. 
 
By transforming sports into a platform for his authoritarian-leaning MAGA agenda, Trump risks reshaping not only the role of athletics in American life but also the broader fabric of U.S. society and politics.