Decline of 20th Century empire

The 2010 Asian Games, which will take place in China, has attracted a record 28 sponsors, who are paying in total more than four times the revenue generated from sponsorship for the last Asian Games (in 2006, in Qatar). And all this, despite the markets for sport sponsorship having collapsed in countries like the US, Britain and Spain. What should we therefore read into the magnitude of sponsorship revenue secured for 2010? Is it a significant commercial opportunity for sponsors to associate themselves with such a sporting event, especially as it is taking place on the world's most populus continent? Or is it a case of sponsorship reflecting relative economic health in a part of the world where the downturn has had a much less profound effect? Is it actually that something much more profound is happening? Is this the next phase in the eastward shift of global sporting power? Are the figures presented above clear evidence that the 20th Century sporting model, in which a North American commercial model of sport came to the fore, is now at an end? Does what is happening signal the final death-knell for the 19th Century socio-cultural, European model of sport? Above all, do the figures confirm that 21st Century sport will be dominated by the emergence and power of an Asian, nation-state model of sport?