Jamaica have a mad passion for sports; be it the man who plays community football every Sunday or the woman who goes all out in our local netball leagues, we indulge in sports. Even if they have never played on an actual team or ever kicked a ball they watch with baited breath Manning Cup matches and Jamaican national trials. In a nutshell Jamaica is a sports-happy nation that is also home to some of the world’s best athletes and coaches.

Yet here we are, some 13 years since the start of our prolonged athletic dominance (see Veronica Campbell Brown at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece) and some 20 years since our qualification for the World Cup and we are still yet to realise that sports is so much more than a game.

Sports is both an industry and entertainment, it is a multi-billion-dollar entity which we as a nation are failing to tap into. Staying with the obvious (track and field) Jamaica has been at the top of the pack for over a decade, yet we have not truly tapped into the real financial earning potential for all intents and purposes. We do not, for example, have a world-class training facility at which foreign athletes can come down for some intensive training, treatment, or even some rest and recovery, nor do we have in place a training programme for foreign coaches so that they can tap into our methods (and we can tap into their wallets). If we are to not only retain our position as kings of the track, but also leave a lasting mark on the sport then we need to seriously monetize track and mimic what they have in Eugene, Oregon — a hub of track and field where international athletes and coaches are hosted

Football isn’t spared from this insanity. In fact, it is the poster child for Jamaica’s failure to adjust to the realities and potentials of the modern sports industry nd world. Now football has been drunk on money since the 90s, more so in the past five years, and Jamaica is a nation where football is king, yet we for some reason refuse to tap into that rich vein. We refuse to professionalise our league system; we have only recently become semi-professional and we (as individual clubs) refuse to become feeder clubs to European clubs in Belgium and the Netherlands, where work permits are easier to come by, thereby seriously limiting the potential finances that the clubs could make. More to the point, in this day and age, where clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid travel the world on summer tours and pre-season tournaments, Jamaica with its tourist pedigree and its passion for sports cant seem to organise even a one-off tournament with these teams that are both available and actively looking to expand there market base, plus it would both boost our tourism product while improving our standard of local football.

We see the same in netball where we continue to rest on our laurels while failing to realise that we are sitting on a potential gold mine. With a national team that averages a global ranking of between third to fifth in the world while still having no professional league, we refuse to take advantage of the fact that we possess some of the best athletes and coaches. We could — just as in track and field — share our knowledge and nous of the game. We should be creating a league that seeks to attract the best players in the region and then televise it through SportsMax, for example, which is highly under-supplied with local content. In one fell swoop we would have cemented the regional viewership and expanded our product (the Jamaican netball league) to foreign shores while ensuring that we remain as one of the hubs of the game globally.

Sports could and should be placed on the front burner by both political parties, and especially by any person who wishes to be a tourism minister. With so much money just sloshing around, literally begging to be pocketed, we refuse to monetise sports. We have a perfectly good multi-purpose stadium on the north coast that we have allowed to become a white elephant rather than expanding into the sports tourism market. We don’t use it to host cricket — we could host the subcontinental teams and tap into their massive diaspora in the states — and we don’t use it to host football matches, through which we could integrate our football product with our tourism product. Instead of doing these obvious movements towards getting involved in the international sports market we continue to dither and laud the fact that we have got some third-rate International Association of Athletics Federations-sanctioned meet while The Bahamas hosts the premier world relay meet.

We need to wise up and realise that sports is about more than running up and down, more than having fun and winning; it is an industry, one that we are a part of but not taking full advantage of. Failure to do so is just insane. And then we talk about First-World status and development. A change must be made in how we view sports and how we integrate it into our economy. Too much chatting has been done and not enough action when it comes to monetising sports and that has to change. The private sector, along with the State, must realise that there is a massive amount of money that we are not sharing in — an industry that has been tailor-made for us. Let us push our politicians to promote and push sports. Let us see the private sector realise that the sporting industry can be and is profitable, and let us finally harness the sporting potential that this nation has. To not do so would be criminal.

Alexander Scott is a political and social commentator, legal clerk, sports enthusiast, and proud graduate of St George’s College. Send comments to the Observer or alexanderwjscott90@gmail.com.