Abdul Malik is a screenwriter and journalist based in Edmonton, Alberta. He is cohost of The Off Court Podcast.
In 1972, the Soviet Union beat the US in men’s Olympic basketball. The controversial victory has overshadowed the story of Cuba’s bronze medal at the very same games, and the remarkable socialist sports infrastructure that made the island nation’s win possible.
NBA players and other athletes have repeatedly faced bans for their use of recreational drugs. These policies are a racist holdover from the war on drugs. It’s time we scrapped them.
Alberta’s politicians want to graft a tech sector onto the province’s unsustainable petrostate economy. Instead of combining Big Oil with Big Tech, they should be using public investment to foster green development and a just transition.
The bodies that govern international sport are riddled with corruption and in need of drastic change. We need an alternative socialist vision for how sports should be run that gives priority to social well-being and international cooperation over nationalism and private profit.
Team owners in Canadian football made record profits while many of their players had to work second jobs to make ends meet. Now they’re using the pandemic as an excuse to claw back wages even further — a player fightback is the only way to change the game.
The NHL’s superrich owners tried to shift the burden of their pandemic-related losses onto players. But the hockey players’ union has successfully faced down their demands, setting an example that should ring out beyond the sports arenas.
The multibillion-dollar luxury sneaker market increasingly seems like something out of a sci-fi novel. But for all its bizarre quirks, there’s no better illustration of the way modern capitalism works, and the direction that it’s going.
From Calgary to Los Angeles, everyone knows that sports arenas are a bad deal for cities. But the problem isn’t just the use of public subsidies for private profit: the whole multibillion-dollar sports venue industry is built on the backs of poorly treated, underpaid workers.