Sports Governance

Sports Governance

Notwithstanding that the sport governance literature is very small it is also splintered, with different concerns to the mainstream corporate governance literature. It is has already been indicated that the sports law literature does not deal with well with the organisational governance issues. The first text to claim to treat sports governance was not concerned with governance but sport event management and marketing (Thoma and Chalip, 1996). Most attention that has governance implications has been paid to individual GSOs. These include work by journalists such as Jennings (2000), concerned with the actions and ethics of IOC members and by implication with internal governance. Among important academic works concerned with individual GSOs are those by Sugden and Tomlinson (1998) and Giulianotti (1999), both dealing with FIFA. The emphasis on individual GSOs has led to the commonalities of the GSOs being ignored. It is these commonalities that are a major concern here. The international relations literature has only slightly more concern with the GSOs, noting the significance of international sporting organisations and then ignoring them. Examples are Boli and Thomas (1999, 2001) and Strange (1996). Boli and Thomas (2001, p. 85) analyse the growth and development of INGOs dismiss sport organisations in a single paragraph. Strange (1996, p. 96) emphasises their importance gave the reason for her lack of analysis as her lack of expertise in sports. Ronit and Schneider (2000, p. 20) refer to “private organisations in the area of sports.” to illustrate the concept of self-regulation, but then refer only to the IOC. This is unfortunate as the GSOs operate as a network of organisations, creating and maintaining a mutual legitimation and authority.

Katwala (2001) argues that the present supreme governing bodies are inadequate for the present structure of the sport industry as they were developed in a different, i.e. amateur, world. Forster and Pope (2004) have similar concerns. Brewer (2001) and Katwala (2001) first indicated the lack of published audited accounts by these organisations and this is echoed by Forster (2004). A conference on sport governance organized by the industry itself did little to either analyse or change the situation (Governance in Sport Committee, 2001). Hums and Maclean (2004) appear to be the first teaching text with respect to sports governance. Other works, such as Michie (2000), while explicitly concerned with sport governance are restricted to national level analysis and to soccer in Britain in particular.

Among the GSOs the IOC and FIFA individually have by far the strongest literatures and it is FIFA that is considered here. Unfortunately little of it is explicitly concerned with governance. While the IOC is atypical in being an event GSO, FIFA is a crucial GSO as soccer is the most global of commercial team sports, as well as having enormous formal and informal participation at the grass roots level.

Sugden and Tomlinson (1998, pp. vii-viii) in common with most studies of individual GSOs take a political-sociological approach to FIFA. Nearest to a governance approach is the third chapter, “FIFA: an organisational and ...