Governments and large corporations often justify hosting Sports Megaevents (SMEs) as opportunities to enhance their global visibility. Yet little attention is paid to who actually controls the production and circulation of the national images promoted during these events. This paper examines how the mediaspace of SMEs is structured and who manages the symbolic forms that shape a country’s international image. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, as well as a broader analysis of the political economy of SMEs, I show that the profits of FIFA, the IOC, and their partners rely primarily on broadcasting and marketing rights. To sustain this economic model, sport governing bodies must ensure a mediated landscape in which symbolic forms are optimised for commercial valuation. Host states, therefore, play a central role in producing a landscape that grants these transnational corporations authority over the symbolic representations displayed during the event. As a result, national images are constructed within a mediaspace controlled largely by corporate actors, often in tension with the official image the state seeks to project. The SME mediascape is thus best understood as a conflictive symbolic field, where multiple actors dispute control over meanings under highly unequal conditions.