Sports Once United Us. Here’s How We Can Redesign Them to Bring Us Back Together
We treat institutions like they’ve always existed. Like they just happened. But every major organization—every tradition, every global movement—started as a design decision. Someone sat down, sketched a purpose, and built a structure around it.
Take the modern Olympic Games. Pierre de Coubertin didn’t wake up one morning and stumble into a stadium. He designed the Games with excruciating intentionality. His mission? Use sports to model fair play, international respect, and the ethics of effort over victory. He wasn’t building a revenue stream. He was building a moral framework.
In 1892, he delivered his first public lecture on athletic chivalry to a room full of French officials and academics. They weren’t expecting it. He was fighting against two dominant forces: the commercialism of the era and fractious national politics. Sound familiar?
Within two years, he convened global leaders to codify the International Olympic Committee. That first Olympic Congress led to the first modern Games in Athens in 1896.
Eight years later, FIFA’s founding charter echoed the same ambition. The goal? Administer the global game of soccer toward “friendly relations.”
Fast forward to today. The contrast is almost darkly comic.
De Coubertin worked without pay for decades. His spiritual successors at FIFA were convicted of accepting $150 million in bribes.
The original design intention has been buried under profit margins, political gamesmanship, and scandals. But the underlying idea—that sports can transcend political and cultural divisions—has never been more relevant. Or more needed.
The world’s largest shared cultural event, the FIFA World Cup, will draw an estimated 5 billion viewers this summer. It comes to the United States (cohosting alongside Mexico and Canada) at a moment when our collective capacity for shared civic experience is at a historic low.
That is either a tragedy or an opportunity.
Where we go from here depends on intentionality. On whether the people with influence over sports choose to ask, seriously: What are sports actually for?
The Original Design: Sports as Moral Architecture
De Coubertin wasn’t naive. He knew he was swimming against the current. The late 19th century was a time of wars, political violence, and technology-induced economic uncertainty (sound like anything we know?). The Industrial Revolution was reshaping society, and nationalism was tearing countries apart.
His core insight? Sports create moral architecture.
He borrowed from three distinct traditions:
- Classical antiquity – The ancient Olympic Games weren’t just athletic competitions. They were religious and political ceremonies that united warring Greek city-states under a sacred truce.
- British public schools – The Victorian era’s “muscular Christianity” movement used team sports to teach leadership, discipline, and character. Sports were a training ground for life.
- Native American ceremonial traditions – Tribes used lacrosse to settle disputes, honor shared beliefs, and practice diplomacy. It wasn’t about winning. It was about relationship.
De Coubertin’s thesis was simple: When people play by the same rules, concede defeat with dignity, and respect excellence in an opponent, they are practicing something rarer and more valuable than entertainment. They are practicing shared humanity.
That vision was designed. And it worked—for a while.
Where the Design Broke: Drift vs. Intentionality
Institutions don’t fail overnight. They drift.
The drift happens when the original purpose gets replaced by secondary objectives. Profit. Prestige. Power. When the system that was designed for connection gets repurposed for extraction.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- The IOC now operates as a multi-billion dollar enterprise with opaque governance and corruption scandals.
- FIFA’s leadership has been implicated in systematic bribery, money laundering, and human rights abuses related to World Cup hosting decisions.
- The commercialization of youth sports has created a $30 billion industry where access is determined by wealth, not talent or passion.
The original design decision—sports as a vehicle for international respect and fair play—has been replaced by a new, unspoken design: sports as a vehicle for profit and personal gain.
But here’s the thing: If sports were designed once, they can be redesigned.
Why Now? The Urgency of Shared Civic Experience
The 2026 FIFA World Cup lands in North America at a specific moment. We’re living through an era of:
- Polarized media ecosystems – We don’t watch the same news. We don’t trust the same sources. We don’t even agree on basic facts.
- Eroded social trust – Trust in institutions—government, media, corporations, even sports leagues—is at historic lows.
- Declining shared rituals – Fewer people attend religious services. Fewer people join civic clubs. Fewer people gather for anything that isn’t transactional or virtual.
This is the context for a global event that will be watched by 5 billion people.
Think about that number. It’s more than half the planet. Simultaneously watching the same competition. Experiencing the same highs and lows. Celebrating or mourning the same outcomes.
That is not just a TV event. That is a shared civic experience.
And at a moment when we have so few of those left, the design of the World Cup matters more than the final score.
The 3 Design Principles for Rebuilding Sports as a Unifying Force
If we want sports to unite us again, we don’t need to tear everything down. We need to redesign the key decisions that shape how sports function. Here are the principles:
1. Rethink the Purpose: From Entertainment to Civic Practice
Most sports organizations define their purpose in terms of entertainment metrics: ratings, attendance, revenue. But entertainment is a means, not an end. The end should be connection.
Actionable shift: Every league, federation, and club board should answer this question: “What is the civic outcome we want to create?” Then design the incentives to match.
For example, the English Premier League could tie a portion of broadcast revenue to community engagement metrics rather than just viewership. FIFA could require hosting nations to demonstrate measurable improvements in youth sports access as a condition of bid approval.
2. Redesign the Economics: Align Incentives with Impact
The drift toward corruption and commercialization wasn’t accidental. It was incentivized. When the only metric that matters is profit, people optimize for profit.
Actionable shift: Introduce multiple bottom lines. The IOC should publish annual reports on social cohesion metrics, anti-corruption measures, and athlete welfare—alongside financials.
The Nordic sports model offers a template: In Finland, the government funds sports based on participation rates and health outcomes, not medal counts. The result? Higher overall physical activity, lower youth dropout rates, and stronger local community bonds.
3. Reframe the Narrative: Tell Stories of Connection, Not Just Competition
Media coverage of sports is overwhelmingly about winners and losers. But a 5-0 blowout in a group stage match has zero narrative value. The real stories are the ones that happen between the games.
Actionable shift: Broadcasters can allocate 20% of coverage to “connection content”—stories of athletes from rival nations training together, fan exchanges across borders, and community impact projects tied to events.
The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang featured a unified Korean women’s hockey team—a symbolic but powerful moment that generated more global viewership and positive sentiment than any medal ceremony.
The Counterargument: Isn’t This Naive?
Every time someone proposes redesigning sports for civic purpose, there’s pushback:
- “Sports are just entertainment. Let people enjoy them without the weight of social responsibility.”
- “The genie is out of the bottle. You can’t un-commercialize a $600 billion global industry.”
- “You’re asking for idealism when the market demands pragmatism.”
Fair points. But history disagrees.
De Coubertin faced the same critiques. He was told the Olympics were a romantic fantasy. That nationalism was too strong. That commerce would always win.
He didn’t listen.
And 130 years later, the Olympic rings remain one of the most recognized symbols on earth. The World Cup remains the largest shared cultural event in history. The infrastructure—both physical and cultural—already exists.
What’s missing is intentionality.
A Practical Playbook for Leaders in Sports
If you hold influence over sports—as a team owner, league executive, brand sponsor, athlete, or broadcaster—here are three specific actions you can take this year:
| Domain | Action | Expected Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Governance | Add a “civic impact” director to your board with veto power over major decisions | Accountability for purpose alignment |
| Economics | Tie executive bonuses to measured social cohesion outcomes (e.g. cross-community participation) | Incentive redesign |
| Narrative | Launch a “connection campaign” featuring 50% coverage of off-field stories | Audience engagement and trust recovery |
The data backs this up. Studies from the Aspen Institute’s Project Play show that communities with higher youth sports participation report stronger social trust, lower crime rates, and higher civic engagement. The link between sports and social cohesion isn’t theoretical. It’s measurable.
The Final Design Decision: What Are Sports Actually For?
This summer, 5 billion people will watch the World Cup. Most of them won’t think about design. They’ll think about goals, saves, and late-game drama.
But behind the scenes, a set of design decisions will shape who gets to play, who gets to watch, and who benefits.
The question isn’t whether sports can unite us. They already do—sporadically, imperfectly, and in flashes.
The question is whether we want them to unite us intentionally.
Every institution was once a design decision. The Olympics. FIFA. Every league, every tournament, every rulebook.
They were designed by people who believed sports were about more than winning.
We can redesign them to mean that again.
Or we can keep drifting—and keep wondering why nothing feels connected anymore.
The choice is ours. The opportunity is now.