What can be counted, and what cannot be claimed.
The Map was built around a distinction that comes from soft-power theory itself: you can count the strategy; you cannot measure its outcome in any replicable way. This page explains where that line sits and why it is the project's foundation.
1. What the Map counts
Observable, verifiable facts: the inputs of a power strategy in sport. Four vectors. Ownership: who buys a club, league or circuit (sovereign funds, states, multi-club groups). Hosting: who wins the right to host a World Cup, Olympics, GP or tournament. Sponsorship: state money (state oil company, flag-carrier airline) stamped on sport. Naturalization: switching sporting nationality as state policy. Each leaves a public trail: press release, contract, figure, date.
2. What the Map does not claim
That the investment bought admiration, shifted perceptions or "generated soft power." Joseph Nye, who coined the concept, separates the resource (gauged by opinion polling) from the outcome (the change in others' preferences, which he says must be judged case by case). Serious soft-power indices are all perception-based: Brand Finance surveys over 170,000 people across 100+ markets; the former Soft Power 30 combined objective data with polling. None measures soft power by counting news — and the sport-and-power scholarship (Grix, Chadwick) treats the investment→attraction conversion as nearly impossible to prove. So the Map counts the strategy and stops there. The reading of meaning happens in the analysis, always declared as interpretation.
3. How a fact gets in
The rule is simple: a fact in doubt does not get in. Each line needs a citable public source (serious press, official release, report) and is graded on two levels. High confidence: name, year, stake and value checked against a solid source. Medium confidence: the fact is real, but the figure is a press estimate or is disputed — in which case it is flagged as "estimated figure" and the text explains the caveat. Where there is no reliable public value, the field is left empty rather than filled with an invented number.
4. Declared limitations
The Map is a selection, not a census. It prioritizes the cases with the greatest geopolitical weight and keeps growing; the absence of a case does not mean it doesn't exist. Sponsorship and mega-event cost figures are notoriously inflated in the press, which is why so many enter as estimates. Contracts are often confidential. And the very criterion of "what counts as power" is an editorial choice, open to debate. None of this is hidden: the data is open precisely so you can check and challenge it.
5. Open data and use
The entire Map is downloadable in JSON and CSV, with the sources for each line. You may use, cite and republish it, with credit to Tales Matta and a link to each fact's original source. If you find an error or have a case to add, write in: corrections are welcome and the record is public.