
Abstract
Throughout United States history, foreign investment has played a key role in stimulating the national economy and supporting domestic businesses. But foreign investment can also imperil national security, such as by enabling an adversary to enhance its own ‘hard power’ capabilities at the expense of our own. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was created to combat such threats, flagging and preventing deleterious investment when it might pose a national security threat. Today, CFIUS operates pursuant to a flexible statutory scheme. And increasingly, in response to an evolving threat landscape, CFIUS has utilized that broad authority to combat ‘soft power’ threats posed by foreign investment, including influence threats enabled by data collection or false-front surveillance operations.
This Comment argues that foreign investment in domestic sporting institutions presents a novel, legitimate threat justifying executive attention. This Comment posits that sports are not simply a form of entertainment and instead cultivate a uniquely salient form of identity for the individuals and communities that comprise their fandoms. And rather than simply an innocuous economic enterprise, ownership of sporting institutions may present bad actors a powerful means of exerting control and malign influence over significant domestic populations. And when the sports investor is a foreign government or their proxy, such ownership may present a particularly potent threat to national security. Incorporating these theoretical considerations, this Comment seeks to present an actionable analytical framework for CFIUS, reviewing courts, and policy makers to consider and evaluate the potential threats to national security posed by “sportswashing”: foreign direct investment in domestic sporting institutions, through which foreign state or near-state actors leverage the popularity of sports and communities of sports fans to cultivate political and economic capital.
Start Page
369
Recommended Citation
Bianco, Luke
(2025)
"“Sportswashing” as a National Security Concern: The Role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS),"
University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2024, Article 11.
Available at:
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2024/iss1/11