The built sport spectacle and the opacity of democracy

Abstract

In 2004, city leaders in Washington, DC approved the construction of Nationals Park, in order to encourage Major League Baseball to relocate the Montreal Expos to the city. With public funding of the stadium exceeding $611 million, this became the most generous stadium subsidy in the United States at that time (Sports Facilities Reports, 2008). In this revealing action, city leaders clearly demonstrated their priorities by funding a project that primarily benefits visitors and corporate interests over the pressing needs of the city’s residents. Nationals Park is, thus, a spectacle, which, in David Harvey’s (2001b) terms helps to mask Washington’s ‘rot beneath the glitter’ (p. 140). Furthermore, and given the idiosyncratic political governance operating within Washington DC, this article utilizes a combination of Debordian and Lefebvrean theorizing in identifying and examining Nationals Park as a sporting edifice whose symbolic and aesthetic presence is rooted in the city’s pseudo-democratic aura, but whose socio-structural derivation and effects actively perpetuate Washington’s constitutional disenfranchisement and the locally iniquitous status quo.