Nowadays, due to the internet, sports are followed worldwide by millions of people. The huge audience of the big sporting events may be enough for someone to say that those moments are a great way to resolve international problems and to increase patriotic feelings, but I do not think that is the case.
In my opinion, those big sporting occasions do not really affect politics, surely not in a good way, and most of the times, they do not even help the unification of ideas of a nation.
Firstly, we can all remember some hatred moments in sports which led to countries disliking each other. For example, the 2006 football World Cup final between Italy and France, where Zidane hit Materazzi with his head, is still remembered today and brought up in discussions when Italians talk about France. People may argue that this is just a bizarre moment, but there are a lot of examples even worse than that, just this year in the Olympic Games was possible to see the tensions between countries in war and how the sport did not help to end them.
Secondly, there are scandals even inside a country during these big sporting events which do not allow the releasing of patriotic emotions in a safe way. Just look at how Noah Lyles, American gold winner at the Olympic Games, was treated by his own people after saying that NBA winners are not world champions.
In conclusion, even though big sport moments are not really harmful most of the times and even if they are incredible to watch, they surely do not have a big and positive impact on politics and neither on the patriotic feelings of a population.