Public sport funding in Brazil under the light of the punctuated equilibrium theory: the role of states (2002–2018)

ABSTRACT In the last two decades, Brazil has hosted some of the world’s greatest sports events, the Pan American Games (2007), the FIFA World Cup (2014), and the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games (2016). Thus, dealing with the funding for sports and leisure in Brazil, this article aims to study the public funding of sport and leisure in Brazil at the state level and test the adherence of state funding for sport and leisure to the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This quantitative research was based on data regarding resources allocated by the Brazilian states budget between 2002 and 2018. The comparison of the sports and leisure area of public policy across states and with other areas of public policy confirms the central hypothesis of the punctuated equilibrium theory. Our data and results show how sports mega-events, together with political and economic events, were decisive for the punctuation of state funding for sport in Brazil. Also, we discuss how factors typically noted by the theory of punctuated equilibrium were important in agenda setting and affected the pattern of sports investments at the state level in Brazil.