By Ben Nicholson
November 13 – While FIFA insist that sports and politics are separate, the US has been exposed as using sport to host patriotic displays honoring American soldiers. A government oversight report released information detailing that the Department of justice had paid $6.8 million to sports teams for military tributes.
Seattle Sounders were the greatest beneficiaries of eight MLS team beneficiaries, earning $128,000 for recognising and displaying compelling Army National Guard service messages at home games in 2012, 2013 and 2015.
Contrast this to the $25,000 paid to Pentagon neighbours D.C. United for 2014 alone.
Also worth noting is that the MLS received less in total and in average than the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL teams did, suggesting the soccer demographic is not the best audience for patriotism purposes (perhaps).
The Department of Defense defend that the payments were made for the purposes of boosting recruitment, which is a necessary stand to take since the very same department had banned paid patriotism earlier this year.
The theory for the ban, as reiterated in the report, is that “[g]iven the immense sacrifices made by our service members, it seems more appropriate that any organization with a genuine interest in honoring them, and deriving public credit as a result, should do so at its own expense and not at that of the American taxpayer.”
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2016 sought to address this issue by illegalizing the use of taxpayer money to honor soldiers at sporting events. However, the act was vetoed by Barack Obama on unrelated grounds.
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