Sports as Rules of Conduct and Sports Mega Events as a Mirror of a Nation: the Strength and Importance of the Olympic Legacy

In this article, we discuss how sport and its rules of conduct can be used as an instrument of domain and control, but they are seen as a citizenship right and leisure within a society, by failing to take into account that most rules of sports are created by an elite that exercises power over the population in general. We also emphasize how sports mega events transcend this context and start to be used by countries and large companies to generate profit, drive the economy and as an instrument of influence in international relations. For this, we first point out theories of power relations by Nye (soft power), Duroselle (repetition and regularity) and Bourdieu (sport as docilization) and then explain how they can be observed in the importance given to the Olympic legacy. It also seeks to understand how sports mega -events are used in the international context, by influencing relationships inside and outside sports spaces.