Geopolitics on a Jersey: Gazprom's Sponsorship of FC Schalke 04 and its Soft Power Implications
| dc.contributor.author | Schepps, Caden | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-04-11T23:53:55Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-04-11T23:53:55Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-12-07 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Throughout the past two decades, elite sports, especially soccer, have seen an onslaught of lucrative investments by authoritarian states. Media outlets have branded these investments as “sportswashing,” while contemporary scholars have adapted soft power theory to sports in order to measure the geopolitical implications of these state-backed investments. However, scholarship intersecting sports and soft power is limited to a broad, transnational scale, and primarily focuses on the diplomatic efficacy of mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup and Olympics. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill a gap in the literature and measure the soft power gains from a sports sponsorship on a regional level. More specifically, this paper analyzes Gazprom’s sponsorship of German soccer club FC Schalke 04 to determine if the state-backed sponsorship successfully increased Russia’s soft power among FC Schalke fans. With minimal scholarship in this area, I draw from social psychology theory to develop a unique and nuanced causal mechanism to measure soft power gains from a sports sponsorship. I then apply this causal mechanism to my FC Schalke case study and test two distinct hypotheses in order to identify soft power indicators from Gazprom’s sponsorship. I first examine FC Schalke club politics to determine whether Schalke fans experienced a ‘good-will effect’ towards Gazprom and Russia, then track voting data from four Bundestag elections to measure if this ‘goodwill effect’ became a motivating bias for pro-Russia political behavior among the FC Schalke constituency. With both confirming and disconfirming evidence for pro-Russia bias among Schalke fans, my ultimate soft power implications are ambiguous. However, this paper still provides a more nuanced mechanism to measure soft power as a result of a sports sponsorship and illuminates the need for future studies to further measure the geopolitical implications of sports investments by authoritarian regimes. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Schepps, Caden. "Geopolitics on a Jersey Gazprom's Sponsorship of FC Schalke 04 and its Soft Power Implications." Cornell International Affairs Review Vol. 16, Iss. 2 (Spring 2023). https://doi.org/10.37513/ciar.v16i2.729. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.37513/ciar.v16i2.729 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1813/115041 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | Cornell University Library | en_US |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | * |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | * |
| dc.title | Geopolitics on a Jersey: Gazprom's Sponsorship of FC Schalke 04 and its Soft Power Implications | en_US |
| dc.type | article | en_US |
| schema.issueNumber | Vol. 16, Iss. 2 (Spring 2023) | en_US |
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