Are World Cups history?
I have no research to back this up, but I reckon we’ll soon be seeing the death of World Cup competitions … with the first being the soccer world cup. With the success of club competitions such as the EUFA Champions League, where the best clubs in Europe compete, loyalty is shifting from allegiance to one’s country towards the club one chooses to support. Some clubs even enjoy estimated supporter stats of roughly 43 million … or more. The thing about clubs is that they have no borders, they are brands. Loyalty is changing. We are seeing that one no longer need to originate from, or have some tenious link to a geographic region to be a supporter of that team. Sure, clashes between countries still draw millions and one’s nationality still rouses fueds of old. However, the power held within one’s nationality is not as potent as it was in days before global connectivity and globalisation.
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Great thoughts, Aiden. Reminds me of the view held by some that multi-national business is redefining national loyalties. There were those a few years ago who believed that governments and nations are losing power to corporations and CEOs. I haven’t heard much more about this in a while, but it does raise the question of how the changes in organisations are affecting the larger human organisations we call nations.
Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of VISA, speaks at length of institutional failure around the world and in every sphere. Essentially he claims that the complexities of human organisation and relationship have gone beyond the ability of our centuries-old organisational structures to cope. Thus he advocates severe organisational overhaul.
I guess what we’re seeing in things like the sports events you speak of, virtual organisations and communication technology is that new kinds of human organisaiton are developing anyway. The challenge is whether the old organisations will notice, reflect and do what is needed to keep up.
Being the young sprite I am, I was never really aware of the “Organisations will take over the world” hype. I am however acutely aware of how organisations are becoming their own ecologies. For example, when referrign to Google as a company, people often refer to the Google Economy that it creates and thenc ompare it to the GDP’s of whole countries. I can;t remember the figures, but Google generates more income in a year than many developing 3rd world countries.