  With the ubiquitous reach of social media, influencers are increasingly
central to articulation of political agendas on a range of topics. We curate a
sample of tweets from the 200 most followed sportspersons in India and the
United States respectively since 2019, map their connections with politicians,
and visualize their engagements with key topics online. We find significant
differences between the ways in which Indian and US sportspersons engage with
politics online-while leading Indian sportspersons tend to align closely with
the ruling party and engage minimally in dissent, American sportspersons engage
with a range of political issues and are willing to publicly criticize
politicians or policy. Our findings suggest that the ownership and governmental
control of sports impact public stances on issues that professional
sportspersons are willing to engage in online. It might also be inferred,
depending upon the government of the day, that the costs of speaking up against
the state and the government in power have different socio-economic costs in
the US and India.
