Amid the turbulent events the world finds itself in today, there is a glimmer of hope that sports diplomacy still offers a pathway to connect states that may have distanced themselves from one another due to unsettled bilateral issues. Sporting events have been tested and proven historically to open up barriers and unlock borders even in the bleakest of times.

Ping-pong diplomacy thawed relations between the United States and China in 1971 in ways that formal channels could not. Nelson Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to accomplish something no legislation could have achieved overnight — giving a fractured South Africa a shared moment of common identity. These are not sentimental footnotes. They are case studies in how sport opens doors that politics keeps locked.

Sports diplomacy has been used for decades as a tool to reduce tensions, strengthen international relations, promote trade, encourage cultural exchange and enhance a nation’s image. Some events were created specifically for diplomatic purposes, while others became diplomatic platforms because of their international significance.

But there remains a notion, still common in our public discourse, that treats sport as a pawn of governance — a diversion we fund when the budget allows and cut when it doesn’t. That view is increasingly out of step with how the rest of the world does business. Sport has become a serious instrument of statecraft, and the Philippines has been slow to notice.

The political scientist Joseph Nye called this soft power, and few arenas generate it as efficiently as sport does. A country does not need an embassy to make an impression when it can host an Olympics or field a competitive delegation in any recognized international tournament. Soft power sits at the crossroads of international relations, economics, and cultural policy, built on the premise that nations can advance their interests through attraction rather than command.

The evidence is not abstract. There is also, unavoidably, a commercial dimension. The global sports industry is now valued north of $600 billion, spanning broadcasting, sponsorship, tourism, and increasingly, sports technology. Hosting rights bring airport upgrades, hotel investment, and infrastructure spending that outlast the closing ceremony. Countries are not chasing medals for their own sake — they are chasing the multiplier effect that comes attached to them.

For the Philippines, I believe this opportunity is being undervalued.

We already have credible assets: a genuine following in basketball, a growing footprint in pickleball, a boxing tradition that needs no introduction, and a golf and volleyball base with real regional standing. What we lack is the connective tissue — the policy architecture that treats these assets as instruments of foreign policy, tourism strategy, and economic development, rather than isolated federation concerns.

Currently, the most interesting frontier on which sports diplomacy can be anchored is the crafting of artificial intelligence policy for sport — pairing athlete development and sports analytics with the same digital governance questions that intertwine with my favorite field of study, telecommunications. Data governance, athlete data privacy, wearable technology, and talent identification systems are regulatory questions as much as sporting ones, and very few countries have staked out a position on them yet. That gap is precisely the kind of opening a mid-sized, digitally ambitious nation like ours should be moving not only to fill but, more importantly, to lead the discussion on — rather than waiting for the frameworks to be written elsewhere and only cascaded to us after the fact.

None of this requires abandoning the basics — grassroots participation, coaching development, university sports programs that actually function as pipelines rather than afterthoughts. But it will require our sports officials, our diplomats, and, frankly, our regulators to start talking to each other with some regularity.

Sports diplomacy will not build itself out of enthusiasm alone. It needs institutions willing to treat the playing field as a genuine extension of foreign and economic policy — and a government willing to fund it accordingly, not as charity, but as strategy.