Pol­i­tics has nev­er mat­tered as much as sport does. Peo­ple en­gage with sport and talk flu­ent­ly about it with a cer­tain kind of pas­sion and light in their eyes.  Peo­ple do not con­gre­gate in pub­lic hous­es to talk about pro­cure­ment bills as much as the FA Cup or CPL (Caribbean Pre­mier League) T20 fi­nal. Sport has been way ahead of the po­lit­i­cal curve and has set agen­das and changed poli­cies.

Sport com­mands lev­els of re­spect and loy­al­ty not al­ways af­ford­ed to politi­cians and con­tin­ues to be the most ef­fec­tive agent of so­cial change now grown in­to a cul­tur­al move­ment.

Arthur Ashe, the black US ten­nis play­er ranked world num­ber one at the time, was re­fused en­try to a tour­na­ment in South Africa in 1970 be­cause no black legs were to be al­lowed to walk on the whites-on­ly Jo­han­nes­burg court. In re­sponse, Ashe set up the Artists and Ath­letes against Apartheid move­ment and his group at­tract­ed the sup­port of the biggest sport­ing and show­biz names. All of this oc­curred while politi­cians pon­dered over mean­ing­less sanc­tions. This was proof that sport reach­es ar­eas that pol­i­tics can’t.

What has been ev­i­dent in the past few months is that many spon­sors are now re­ward­ing ath­letes who take a stance in­stead of hav­ing these su­per­stars pay a com­mer­cial price. With the grow­ing promi­nence of the Black Live Move­ment (BLM), in­di­vid­u­als such as Man­ches­ter Unit­ed’s Mar­cus Rash­ford and LA Lak­ers' Le­Bron James have been more out­spo­ken in their po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism.

Last Mon­day, we saw our own two na­tion­al foot­ballers Kevin Moli­no and Jo­evin Jones wear­ing T-Shirts dur­ing the warm-up car­ry­ing mes­sages which plead­ed for there to be an end to vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren in our coun­try. The tim­ing was per­fect as the Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) West­ern Con­fer­ence Fi­nals was aired live to mil­lions on the Fox net­work and not on­ly did it catch the eyes of lo­cals but it cre­at­ed aware­ness to many who didn’t have a clue what the print­ed mes­sage was about.

Sev­er­al of my con­tacts in Fox and MLS were tex­ting that same night to ask what was go­ing on in T&T. The League gave clear­ance for the play­ers to dis­play such mes­sages while Adi­das had no is­sues with it be­ing dis­played on their shirts.

“The bal­ance of in­flu­ence [for an ath­lete] has shift­ed quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly, in every sport and every ter­ri­to­ry”, says Phil de Pic­ciot­to, founder and pres­i­dent of Oc­ta­gon, a glob­al tal­ent agency. “The val­ue of an ath­lete brand is high­er than ever. Now ath­letes are be­ing very care­ful, as care­ful as com­pa­nies are, in choos­ing [en­dorse­ment] part­ners.”

The NFL, the NBA and oth­er leagues be­gan in­cor­po­rat­ing so­cial jus­tice slo­gans on fields of play and on uni­forms at the re­quest of play­ers. The leagues, com­pa­nies, spon­sors and agents have recog­nised the need to in­cor­po­rate the ath­letes’ mes­sages in their ad­ver­tis­ing.

“This sea­son the league has al­lowed us to broad­cast cer­tain mes­sages against so­cial in­jus­tice and oth­er press­ing mat­ters in con­junc­tion with the BLM move­ment,” Moli­no told me.

“And on this par­tic­u­lar day, both my­self and Jo­evin felt it would be the per­fect plat­form to is­sue a plea to the peo­ple be­cause of the cur­rent is­sues be­ing faced in our coun­try. The mur­ders and vi­o­lence against so many women and our chil­dren is a ma­jor prob­lem for us right now.”

The tim­ing couldn’t have been bet­ter as Moli­no’s mes­sage was on dis­play with­in the first 30 sec­onds of Fox’s live broad­cast as the cam­eras fo­cused on him dur­ing the pre-match build-up.

It is be­ing said that these ath­letes are stick­ing their necks out for a greater cause and it's about more than just mon­ey. They’ve seen a sliv­er of change as a re­sult and are hop­ing for more. There’s no go­ing back even if it seems that stand­ing up will not make much of a dif­fer­ence. Will protests, boy­cotts and shirts with mes­sages put an end to all the trav­es­ty?

The Dal­las News pub­lished re­cent­ly, "Not even uni­ver­sal po­lice re­form could ac­com­plish that, at least not in the short term. Not when it’s in­grained in so much of our so­ci­ety. What else are ath­letes to do? Shut up and drib­ble? Even if you think so, you should know we’re way past that now. We're in it for the long haul!"

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com