Sport Diplomacy

As part of ASU’s broader engagement in Mexico, the Great Game Lab has been very active in Mexico, organizing events on the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games with the Sports Diplomacy team at the US Embassy, and prominent Olympic athletes, as well as conferences on the business and geopolitics of sport with Mexican partner universities and COMEXI, the country’s leading foreign affairs think tank.

The Great Game Lab partnered with Ireland’s Consulate in Los Angeles to host together an event on women in sports to commemorate the Irish holiday St. Brigid’s Day. Speakers included athletes, business and media leaders, and academics, who shared insights about the importance of advocacy, the power of excellent athletic performance, and the bright future of women’s professional and Olympic and Paralympic sport.

The Great Game Lab participated in a roundtable discussion with visitors from Kazakhstan on a U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to Arizona. The conversation with adaptive and united sports stakeholders highlighted the role of schools in the American sports ecosystem to improve access and inclusion and government policy interventions to support both top of pyramid elite sports development and the massive grassroots base of sport for all. 

The Sports Diplomacy team at the US Embassy in Warsaw organized a week-long visit to Poland for Great Game Lab Co-Director Andrés Martinez, who gave talks at five different Polish universities and held discussions with national Olympic authorities, foundations, and executives at three different American football clubs seeking to develop the sport in the country.

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The Great Game Lab facilitated a roundtable discussion with visitors from Armenia on a U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to Arizona. The conversation with Armenian girls basketball players and coaches highlighted the U.S.’s educational gender equity law, Title IX, and its importance in helping girls and women, both in the U.S. and from around the world, find their power through sport.

On the sidelines of the NFL’s first game ever in South America, the Great Game Lab co-hosted an event with São Paulo’s Museu do Futebol, the US State Department’s Sports Diplomacy program, and the Brazilian American Football Confederation entitled ‘One Hemisphere, Two Footballs’.

Great Game Lab co-director Victoria Jackson helped facilitate “Ten Days of Women in Sports,” a program sponsored by the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates. Engagements included visits to intercollegiate competitions, talks with students, a community run at Abu Dhabi’s Formula 1 track, and, best of all, “Katching Kosgei,” an evening community event in which relay teams ran 200-meter segments to try to run a relay-team marathon faster than Brigid Kosgei’s (at the time) recently set world record of 2:14:04.

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