Photo by Omar Prestwich on Unsplash

By Amy Parks

“[T]his isn’t about countries, this isn’t about the borders, to me it’s about continuing to shine the light on that we need to do better in police brutality area, we need to do better in the systemic racism area…. That’s not just Canada, America, that’s a lot of places, so we treat that as one long song tomorrow.”

-Toronto Raptors Head Coach, Nick Nurse (quoted by Michael Grange in “Raptors Enter Restart as Unique Team, Perfectly Suited for Remarkable Times.” SportsNet.ca, August 1, 2020)

The @Raptors and @Lakers kneeled for both the American and Canadian national anthems ahead of tonight’s game. #RapsOnSN | #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/rsDmr1WRW7

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) August 2, 2020

In a press conference ahead of the Toronto Raptors’ first game in months, head coach Nick Nurse expressed his and the franchise’s thoughts on how to approach the playing of the Canadian and US national anthems while participating in a broader conversation about activism and protest. Their position took shape on game day, when the Raptors resumed their season against the Los Angeles Lakers in an empty basketball court located safely within the virus-free Orlando “bubble,” ESPN’s Wide World of Sports, a Disney Corp property. From the isolation of our personal television viewing spaces, basketball fans witnessed the pared-down professional sports television production kick-off with a contemplative presentation of the two national anthems. Uniformly dressed in Black Lives Matter shirts, Lakers and Raptors knelt, linking arms to form a single line of players. The words “BLACK LIVES MATTER” were painted in black on the court, oriented away from the line of kneeling athletes and toward the slowly roving camera.

For a significant part of early 2020, professional sports matches were put on hold and dramatically adapted under the conditions of a global pandemic. That they could be cancelled on such short notice to prevent viral spread does not suggest sporting events are “just a game” or unserious, trivial activities easily set aside. On the contrary; as the solemn images of the two teams,  nearly indistinguishable without their affiliated jerseys and refusing to stand at attention during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Oh Canada” shows, sports publicly engage with, and are transformed by societal crises. In fact, the logic of disengaging from professional sports because, at this moment of global anxiety and activism, they seem a tone-deaf distraction, misses the point. Sport is not only politicized, but articulates as politics on a number of levels and in a number of forms, from the national narratives staged at the Olympics to the use of celebrity-athletes as ambassadors of charities, cities, nations, and multinational brands. As Scherer and Rowe (Sport, Public Broadcasting, and Cultural Citizenship, 2014) argue, sport fosters “cultural citizenship” among interconnected and transnational communities. In this blogpost, I consider the possibilities and limits of professional sport’s ability to do just this.

Nick Stevenson (Globalization, National Cultures and Cultural Citizenship, 1997) defines cultural citizenship as the ability to access the “semiotic and material cultures necessary in order to make social life meaningful, critique practices of domination, and allow for the recognition of difference under conditions of tolerance and mutual respect.” In this conceptualization, as “cultural citizens” of a “nation” defined by an interest in a professional sports franchise, fans or supporters and their team of choice are able to exercise agency in the development of a different kind of “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) that can interact with and influence more traditional place brands or democratic processes, and thus bring about real social change. Branding efforts that connect Toronto, Canada and the Raptors to a set of ideals shape the identity of this “nation” of Raptors supporters, but the extent to which it empowers them as “cultural citizens” will be explored.

Professional sports teams are nearly always associated with a geographically rooted polity, such as a city, state, or nation. So, as team marketers develop and communicate their brand through rhetoric, imagery, and consumer goods, this brand works in concert with broader state and corporate place branding efforts to represent a place’s identity and character both outwardly and to local residents. Often discussed in terms of economy or trade, this nexus of place branding become intertwined with the realm of public diplomacy, in which the corporate sports team brands associated with a particular city or nation are leveraged for intra- and international appeal. In short, when we watch a professional sports team play, we also consume aspects of its associated city’s brand or Simon Anholt’s concept of “competitive identity” (Places, Identity, Image and Reputation, 2010). In the case of the 2020 Toronto Raptors, while the team’s own marketing videos and game-day coverage foreground the Canadian city in ways that speak to Toronto’s relationship with civil rights and global movements, government, tourist, and foreign investment firms also draw on the spectacle of the reigning NBA champs to boost the city’s appeal.

This dynamic branding process boldly underscores transnational identity. Considering the globalized, interconnected world in which professional sport is played, the circulation of coaches, players, fans, and ideas is a necessary dimension of sport as diplomacy. In this moment of activist rhetoric, the Toronto Raptors’ brand flexes social justice ideals of ethnic diversity and inclusion, highlighting Toronto’s image as a diverse city nested in a multicultural nation, and in a world that, as former US President Obama and celebrity-activist Bono alike have proclaimed, “needs more Canada.”

Canadian sports media has been receptive to the Raptors’ branded identity, amplifying and further legitimizing these associations. In his article for SportsNet.ca (“Raptors Enter Restart as Unique Team, Perfectly Suited for Remarkable Times”), sportswriter Michael Grange draws on this brand as he stokes his readers’ anticipation for the Raptors’ re-entry into the NBA season. Grange insists that, for its Canadian connection, its ethnic- and gender-diverse hiring practices, and its underdog line-up, the Raptors are a “unique team, perfectly suited for remarkable times.” He features players who claim nationality beyond North America, Masai Ujiri, the Raptors’ “Black, African-born president,” and nods to Toronto’s Caribbean diaspora represented by assistant coach and local high school legend Jamaal Magliore. By casting the Raptors as not only racially diverse, but transnational in nature, Grange favorably distinguishes this NBA team as especially worldly, and thus “perfectly suited” to tap into to the wider social context of activism and resistance.

A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) profile (July 30, 2020) of the Raptors’ recently hired staffer responsible for “Organizational Culture & Inclusion” extends a similar narrative. With John Wiggins in this newly created role, claims Lori Ewing, Canada’s only major league basketball team is poised to use its visibility, “one of the strongest platforms across Canada,” for social justice ends. Wiggins is concerned not only with bolstering the BLM movement in the United States but also with addressing violence in Toronto, and Canadian Indigenous issues. The team embodies globalized identities and takes on movements whose calls for change span borders. Wiggins sees Toronto’s team working against social inequities, unbounded by racial or national allegiances, echoing Coach Nurse’s framing of the two northern North American national anthems as “one long song.” These statements and performances of solidarity remind fans and various publics that Canada and the United States, linked by land and shared histories of colonialism and immigration, are also enmeshed in grappling with inequality and racial violence. The transborder gesture of refusal described above, enacted cooperatively by opposing teams, simultaneously represents the ideal of sport as a unifier in the service of liberation, and acknowledges shared experiences of oppression and resistance.

It easy to spot the limits to the argument that professional sport creates new transnational affinities amongst fans galvanized simultaneously by team loyalties and a unified social justice movement. Although we are examining this moment in a globalized world, local contexts matter. Safe access to platforms and visibility are unevenly distributed; in the midst of a global pandemic, kneeling side-by-side with opponents in a sanitized “bubble” on Disney Corp. property may inspire fans, but it obscures the inequalities inherent in the NBA’s access to such a safe haven. As “Imagineers” of Disneyworlds, Disney specializes in dream-making. By offering to host the NBA’s top twenty-two teams, the company has provided a utopic site for the remaining season to play out. After adhering to increasingly restrictive phases of quarantine and testing, athletes from the top twenty-two NBA teams are now accommodated at Disney-owned hotels, with exclusive access to a wide variety of amenities, entertainment, and outdoor spaces. Outside of this sanctuary, the coronavirus spreads unchecked in Orlando, throughout Florida and beyond. Kneeling in unison in a pristine arena marked only with league-sanctioned activist slogans does not carry the health or political risks that a similar gesture of protest carries in the packed, police-lined streets of Orlando, Los Angeles, or Toronto. Thus, fans may find inspiration, meaning, and belonging in the imagined community of “We the North,” but their ability to actively critique power, and the varying effectiveness of this critique, does not reflect an egalitarian community.

Amy Parks is a PhD student in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Her current research considers the  intersection of mass visual culture, sports, and identity in a g/localized context. In 2019 Amy explored the role of place branding in city diplomacy as a research fellow with the MITACS Accelerate funded project “Toronto’s City Diplomacy: Arts, Culture and Heritage.” She holds a BFA in Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Lethbridge and a BA in History at the University of Calgary.