The Southeast Asian Games

Abstract

In purely sporting terms, the biennial Southeast Asian (SEA) Games is a third-tier mega-event positioned beneath both the Olympics and the Asian Games. Yet this formal status has done nothing to limit the growth and consolidation of the event on the regional sporting calendar over the past 60 years. Nor has it diminished the seriousness and enthusiasm with which the 11 Southeast Asian nations approach the event. This chapter examines how the SEA Games, all but ignored outside the region itself, came to dominate regional sporting culture in Southeast Asia through distinctive norms of regional cooperation in sport, In doing so, it argues the event should not be considered a subregional derivative of larger regional and global events but as a highly adapted regional cultural form embedded in regional history and international relations.