Why Sport Matters is a project that John has been developing for many years. As he travelled and saw the world during his career in the international sport industry, John was repeatedly amazed at how sport has an impact and significance on society and culture that was unique to each place. In effect, sport is a cultural identifier. Why Sport Matters was created to capture these interesting stories throughout the world, and to show the fascinating relationship between sport and culture. These stories are then to be displayed and published in an engaging way and make them available to a wide audience.
We are traveling around the world to capture the amazing stories about sport and culture. Some of the things we are recording on film include: interviews with sports figures (athletes, organizing committees, heads of sports federations), international sporting events (Olympics, World Cup, national competitions), and interviews with historians and experts. We welcome all ideas and encourage you to let us know about the great stories which should be a part of this project. Contact us at anytime via email at info@whysportmatters.com
We are proud to use PANASONIC video equipment, which is easy to use and consistently produces great images. All footage is being captured in high definition. In addition, we will be using a high definition Flip camera to capture behind-the-scene footage as well as short video clips. For still photos, we use CANON Elph.
The team consists of the husband and wife team of John and Lisa Siner (nee Costantini).
John has 15 years experience working in the sports industry both in the USA and internationally, most recently spending six years with the International Olympic Committee. Previous experiences include Major League Soccer, adidas, CBS Sports, as well as collaborative projects with FIFA. John has a Masters degree in International Sport Management, and a published thesis on the subject of “Sport and Tourism”.
Lisa has 11 years experience working as writer, editor and photographer, most recently working in New York City with publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Parenting, and CosmoGIRL!. She has also written for Sherman’s Travel, New York Post, JPM Travel Guides, International Olympic Committee, Marie Claire, Glamour, Conde Nast, and many more.
The first leg of the trip will be approximately one year, from October 2009 to October 2010. Based on our itinerary, we will still have more continents to cover after the first year, so we will need to plan the second leg at some point.
The trip will start in October 2009 in Africa. See the detailed travel schedule and Itinerary for the exact route. You can see our exact location in the Where Are We Now? section of the site.
We have a couple of strategies for choosing our itinerary:
We want to go to places and continents where we haven’t been to and/or are much different culturally from us.
With the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, we realize that lots of people will be interested in stories coming from Africa, especially on the meaning and impact of hosting it for the first time in Africa. We are therefore starting our trip in Africa and will spend 4 months there. We will also return to South Africa during the event itself in June 2010.
We are choosing countries that are sure to have examples of sport and culture.
In addition, we hope to attend various sporting events along the way (World Cup in South Africa, u-17 Men’s World Cup in Nigeria, Commonwealth Games in India, Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, etc.).
This project has been in the making for many years. It is born out of John’s vision to further enhance cultural understanding through the power and impact of sport.
The goal of Why Sport Matters is to understand people through the theme of sport. It will try to answer what sport says about certain cultures, and how the rest of the world sees these countries as a result.
This is a personal project that is an independent business owned by John and Lisa. We provide content to interested organisations that are interested in collaborating and publishing the stories and content to be developed.
No. After more than six years working for the IOC, John resigned from his post at the IOC in order to pursue this project.
