It is very difficult to assess this process even by experts. 

In my opinion, four of these changes are particularly consequential and require closer analysis and observation:

1. Especially in recent weeks, it has become obvious that the map of world sport and the centres of power it identifies has changed considerably. 

In the past, there were only two centres of power in professional high-performance sports, namely the USA and Europe, but for some time now another centre of power has been added with China, Korea and Japan.  

In the past two decades, the world map of sport and thus also its geopolitics has been radically changed once again, as the entire Arab world, but above all the Gulf states of the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, have formed another centre of power, which, with all its financial resources and economic resources at its disposal, has once again radically changed and will continue to change the existing situation between the already existing powerful sporting nations.

2. When it comes to changing power structures, two processes that appear to be contrary at first glance can be identified, which can be equally dangerous for the existing structural conditions of international high-performance sport. On the one hand, there is an increasing privatisation of high-performance sports. 

More and more sports clubs are becoming privately owned, private investors are buying into existing sports structures, even training centres and competition structures are being privatised. 

The Austrian beverage manufacturer Red Bull or a Swiss pharmaceutical company with its high-performance sports centre OYM are just two examples among several. On the other hand, there is an increasing process of nationalisation, in which some states are making use of private-sector organisational structures in order to seriously change the balance of power in world sport in their favour. 

This applies above all to the politically controlled appropriation of some Arab states, but also partly by states of the former Soviet Union and by Asian states of selected private-sector sports companies. 

The so-called Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), i.e., the voluntary associations that have essentially supported world sport for more than 100 years, fall by the wayside.

3. The two processes of change mentioned here go hand in hand with a questioning of all existing ethical and moral maxims of Olympic sport, the effects of which can hardly be overlooked. 

At the same time, the boundaries of what is allowed and what is to be prohibited are constantly shifted in favour of what is feasible. 

The overarching maxim "everything that is not forbidden is allowed" applies. Sport has become a field of experimentation in the natural sciences. "Enhancement" is the order of the day. 

The rules of fair play have thus outlived themselves and the sport and the high-performance athlete will be subject to "KI-object", although the outcome of this experiment is completely open.

4. For some time now, it has been observed that all those countries which, from their point of view, have been disadvantaged in the development of international sport for more than a century, are justifiably demanding that world sport -  operated as a high-performance sport - can and should take place at any time and any place on this earth. 

The US and Europe have sought to limit the staging of major international sporting events to the North American and European continents. 

They have received sustained support from the mass media which thy themselves did dominate, but this has been and is rightly condemned by many nations on other continents as "neo-colonialism" and "racism". 

The assumption that the four seasons that exist in northern Europe and the USA define the calendar for international sporting events is therefore becoming more and more clearly a thing of the past. 

The same applies to the assumption that international sporting events always have to align themselves with European entertainment wishes at Central European Time (CET). 

A World Cup can be held today and in the future in a country like Qatar with a desert landscape and with average daily temperatures of over 30°. 

In the future, however, a World Ski Championships could also take place in the same country, where the competitions will be held on artificial snow in a covered and air-conditioned artificial winter park. 

Europe must learn that when it is winter in the northern half of the globe, the southern half of the world  is in the summer months. 

Just as it used to be expected that athletes from New Zealand, Australia and the Caribbean would compete in the indoor arena of  European athletics, even though it is summer in their own countries, Europe is now expected to: that their athletes also take part in competitions all year round, regardless of the climatic conditions under which they take place.

Ecologically, this development is more than alarming. However, in view of the greed for money that has gripped the whole of world sport for a long time, environmental concerns are of secondary importance, or are they not even considered. 

World sport -  this is another dangerous aspect of its advancing globalisation - increases its CO2 "footprint" almost every year. 

The volume of traffic is growing unabated and the total number of participants in international multi-sport events who travel to these events by plane or private transport has increased immeasurably. 

In 2022 alone, there have been more than 850,000 sporting events where betting has been legal and illegal. Contrary to all reason and climatic warning signals, new international sporting events are constantly being added. 

"Mutual consideration" or even "abstinence" are unknown foreign words. The CO2 emissions caused by the spectators along the streets from France and all over Europe who have travelled by the entourage of the organisers reporting on the Tour de France and the mass media can show in an exemplary way how such large-scale events are questionable against the backdrop of climate change, which is being lamented by all sides. 

In addition,  each of these major sporting events, which usually last  several weeks, requires an enormous  amount of preparation and follow-up, which also requires a considerable amount of flight. 

In my opinion, world sport with its climate-damaging effects should therefore have long since been publicly pilloried and any further growth, i.e., any new event, should be banned. 

However, whether those responsible in the world sports organisations are learning that "less can also be more" in view of the climate crisis seems highly questionable in view of their greed for money.

The strange and simultaneous mixing between nationalisation and "pseudo-privatisation" that can be observed these days, as it is being promoted above all by the Gulf States, seems to me to be particularly influential and dangerous. 

The state takeover of world sport is camouflaged by upstream companies and funds and pseudo-private companies, in which, however, either the "royal family" in Saudi Arabia or  the ruling "emir family" of the respective emirate have the "say". 

Qatar was the first country in the Persian Gulf to successfully find its way into world sport. It invested in tennis, Formula 1, in the International Handball Federation, athletics, Asian Games and World Championships in almost every Olympic sport. In 2014, it began with the World Championships in swimming, followed by boxing and handball in 2015, cycling in 2016, and artistic gymnastics and athletics in 2018 and 2019. The highlight was the 2022 FIFA World Cup. This was Qatar's greatest success in world sport, as this country is now involved in almost all major sports in the world.

Almost all Arab states followed this path and so today the Tour de France is dominated by two teams from the Gulf region and the series of sports whose responsible sports officials have offered their competitions for sale to the rulers from the Gulf states is getting longer and longer. 

What is most striking these days is the role of Saudi Arabia, which is currently overtaking its once reviled neighbour Qatar with a unique catch-up programme and is deliberately flaunting its claim to a leading role in world sport. They do this even in regions of the world that are not at all happy about  it. 

In addition, Saudi Arabia is now even cooperating with its former arch-enemies Iran and Qatar on issues of world sport. Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo now play in the Saudi football league and another 20 "soccer-world stars" too. It is a league of legionnaires in which one in five is a Brazilian. 

Saudi Arabia has set up its own golf tour, the so-called LIV Golf. The name corresponds to the number 54 in the Roman script and refers to three rounds of golf à 18 holes. 

In this way, the company differentiated itself from the American PGA Tour, which was now integrated into its own "license rights portfolio" and could be bought from the US American owners for a higher amount. 

In addition to the acquisition of the rights to the Rallye Dakar, it now organises Formula 1 races annually, will host the first Asian Winter Games in 2029, and was the first to host Formula E races. 

Already in 2013 and 2019, a Spanish and English football club was acquired. For both countries the Arabs will also host their Super Cup. Aston Martin, the Formula 1 racing team, is owned by Saudi Arabia as well as WWE wrestling. 

The world market leader ESL Gaming in e-sports is controlled and financed by Saudi Arabia. The desert state has spent $1 billion on this company. The vehicle is the "Savvy Gaming Group", a 100 percent subsidiary of the sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF). This fund is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

The United Arab Emirates is no less active. They have now acquired eleven football clubs in England, USA, Australia, Uruguay, France, India, Italy, China, and Brazil. For this purpose, a "City Football Group" was established. There are also plans to enter the American basketball league NBA after it abandoned its former strategy policy and signaled to the Gulf states that it could acquire shares.

Dubai is the venue for the world's most lucrative horse race and the world championship in horse racing every year. At the Meydan race-course, which surpasses everything in architecture with its many facilities, the best horses in the world start. At the same time all the international "horse dealers" who have rank and name have their most important annual meeting.

All this is possible because the governing bodies of the key organisations of world sport are dominated by officials who are driven by an excessive greed for money and whose intellectual competence is totally inadequate to recognise the dangerous developments that are thus affecting the existing structures of  the whole of world sport. And thus ultimately saw off the chair on which they themselves sit with their irresponsible actions.

The Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, play the same role in the field of sport that they have previously played in various sectors of the economy. They act as "stone-rich" investors who are generous and sometimes even help when other means that have been exhausted. 

In the economic sports model, which was largely influenced by the USA, it was common for investments in sports clubs to be made with the aim of skimming off profits  through annual income and sponsorship.  

In the Arab sports model, the sports industry detaches itself from all financial consequences. It's not about profits and losses. First and foremost, it is a matter of ensuring that the Gulf states achieve their desired place on the important political map of this world through sports investments. 

"Sport has become" -  as Felix Haselsteiner rightly points out in his economic analysis in the SZ of 8 July 2023 - "a  vehicle in a great construct". 

For Saudi Arabia, this means being recognized as a world power among the leading world powers. 

"Saudi Arabia is deliberately abolishing competition here, not only economically but also in terms of sport." 

This applies equally to the salaries of the Saudi-Arabian football league and all other leagues in the Gulf states as well as to the prize money and bonuses paid in the various sports. So even the last golf pro at an LIV Golf  event still receives thousands of US dollars in prize money.

None of the many international sports organisations has spoken out against this development, or even tried to hinder it.  

It must now be painfully understood that all those who greedily brought the money into their sport have always given up their power. 

It was the major federations of world sport such as FIFA, the International Handball Federation (IHF), World Athletics, the International Cycling Union (UCI) etc. who invited the Gulf states to buy up everything possible from the world of sport that was up for sale. 

Presumably, they would not have been able to exclude investors on the basis of existing laws, but they could at least have slowed down the increasingly rapid development processes by protecting the core of their sports through new regulatory structures. 

Today, due to the changes that the Gulf States have brought about in the world of sport, it is necessary to speak of a "story of the end of sport".  

But analyst Haselsteiner also sees a small glimmer of hope: "It's pure fatalism, but the only way that sport will ever become just sport again would possibly be the crash of the system. Football clubs are not big banks and a sport is not 'too big to fail'. You won't bail out sports clubs with billions of taxpayers' money if something goes wrong at some point, which also means that there is still hope."

In relation to the ethical and moral decline of world sport indicated above, however, less hope seems to be appropriate.  

The global process of "totalisation of high-performance sports" is advancing faster and faster. The announcement that next year the so called "Enhanced Games" are to take place is just one symptom among many. 

The  time-results and speeds achieved at the Tour de France and some more cycling races indicate that the training science, medical, pharmaceutical and biomechanical interventions in high-performance sports, that the "higher, faster, further" maxims are limitless, at least from the point of view of most of the protagonists of the social system of "high-performance sport". 

Even three tragic deaths caused by falls in professional cycling in recent season are unlikely to change anything. There have been several similar warning signs in recent years. But those responsible for such major sporting events always immediately moved on to planning the next major event if they could be sure that the short-term mass media rebellion would quickly come to a standstill again. 

You can be sure that your sporting entertainment event, as a "spectacle" and "excess", will continue to be visited by spectators in the future.

But if there were a consensus on the ethically and morally desirable values that should characterise high-performance sport, these dangers would at least be to master and manageable. 

However, all stakeholders - athletes, coaches, sports- officials, scientists, organizers, sponsors, sports journalists, politicians, etc. - are further away than ever from this consensus.

Additional to this, for the third danger described above, for a high-performance sport that has to seek its future under the looming climate change, there are virtually no insightful findings on how sport could deal with it. 

The general warming will call into question all events of international sport that are intended as open-air events in the medium and long term. 

Winter sports, as a sport practiced in natural snow, have been showing signs of decline and decay for a long time and continue to do so today. 

The staging of the Winter Olympics is substantially endangered to an extent that is not yet entirely clear. 

Due to surprising climate catastrophes, extreme precipitation, floods, water shortages, energy shortages, famines, prolonged droughts, changes in vegetation, etc. not only can individual sporting events be endangered, but entire sports will also lose their meaningfulness and thus their attractiveness. 

Some of them are far too expensive to carry out and may have to be restricted by Government bans because they increase the already very dangerous effects of climate change on the daily lives of human societies.

The changes outlined in this essay, which I believe are dangerously affecting world sport these days, are threatening in many respects.

They are a danger to athletes because they are increasingly becoming the plaything of interests whose observance they cannot influence.  

The marginal utility of athletic performance for athletes is becoming less and less and the risk of long-term damage from the exercise of peak athletic performance is continuously increasing.

But the changes are also threatening to our society.  

A sport that not only loses control of itself in its greed for money, but also becomes a threat to the environment with its growth ideology, means a social danger. 

This danger can certainly be exacerbated considerably in the face of climate change that is already observable.

Finally, however, these changes are also extremely threatening for a desirable sports culture, as they also indirectly affect "sport for all", school sports, club sports and all other informal forms of sport.

The appeal to reason and responsibility of the officials in the organisations of sport associated with this essay is intended, but unfortunately it cannot be expected that it will be heard and heard.