The Pitch as a Laboratory: Global Development at Georgia Tech

Posted March 23, 2026

As Atlanta prepares to host its 2026 World Cup matches, the world is focused on the spectacle, the economic impacts, and what might happen on the pitch during the tournament’s June and July run. 

Amid all the excitement, researchers at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts are also leveraging the "world’s game" as a sophisticated lens for understanding and advancing global development.

In his recent edited book, Soccer, Globalization, and Innovation, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs Professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur Kirk Bowman argues that soccer provides a unique "contested space" to show how communities can use innovation and collective action to achieve unexpected outcomes.

For instance, soccer’s global dominance is often attributed to practices such as the system of promoting and relegating teams to higher or lower leagues based on their performance, its unique way of using single-elimination tournaments to create drama, and the evolution of the fluid and aggressive “total football” style of play. 

“Why is football the people’s game with 4 billion fans?  It’s because of these and other innovations,” Bowman said.

For more about the book and global development at Georgia Tech, read the full story.