Some people suggest that international sporting events is capable of fostering global understanding and cooperation, while the others criticise that they primarily serve commercial interest and even fuel nationalistic tensions. Despite the benefits in promoting international cooperation and collaboration, easily do international athletic competitions cause hostile relationship among nations.
The supranational organisations holding international sporting events is able to spur participating nations to promote international cooperation and understanding. Acting as a higher level of authority than the participating states during the event, international sporting organisations, such as the International Olympics Association, can require states to promote its values and ideologies, such as peaceful relationships, friendly cooperations and deeply understanding between countries, mitigating the nationalistic tensions between states. For instance, during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the International Olympic Committee required China and Japan to ceasefire in the conflicts in the Diaoyu Islands during the Olympic Games, after agreeing to the International Olympic Committee, both China and Japan compete peacefully, if not friendly, during the matches. According to the University of Pennsylvania, the relationship between China and Japan had rectified and Japan decided to cooperate with China in the Chinese High Speed Rail Project. Nevertheless, if two countries suffering from severe domestic populism compete directly during the international sporting events, competitions are more likely to fuel the hatred between them.
Populism may trigger cpnflicts and wars sometimes between two states hating each other, if one of them is defeated by the other in the races. In order to reinforce national unity, ethnical pride and internal stability, usually do governments instill populist values to its citizens, if two states with populistic resentments towards each other compete directly in a game, this may abruptly rise the animosity of the populist of the losing side towards the country winning the matches, increasing the risk of ignition of wars. Take Serbia and Kosovo as an example, due to Kosovo outcompeting Serbia in the European Football Competition, Serbians thought that they are heavily disgraced, so Serbia invaded Kosovo so as to restore their national prestige.
All in all, although international sporting events can promote cooperation and understanding between nations, if populism is lacked, it may usually initiate resentment and conflicts between countries, even causing political disasters.