ORGANISATION AND LEGISLATION OF SPORT IN THE UK

Organisation and Legislation of Sport in the UK

Organisation and Legislation of Sport in the UK

Introduction

Sport is intermediated, controlled and contested by great numbers of organisations, headed by what can be termed global sports organisations (GSOs). The GSOs can be defined as the supreme organs of governance in sport whose authority is global. Pre-eminent among the GSOs are organisations such as The International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), respectively the supreme governing bodies for soccer, the Olympic Games, athletics and anti-doping (see Appendix for details of all GSOs discussed). Equally GSOs but among the less prominent are the World Arm-Sport Federation (WAF - arm-wrestling), the International Federation of Sports Acrobatics (IFSA - acrobatics), the International Federation for Robo-Soccer (FIRA - robot soccer) and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF - ice-hockey).

Organisation and Legislation of Sport in the UK

A systematic approach to sport governance has been lacking and is overdue. One reason is sufficient and that is the perception of corruption associated with several of the major GSOs. The IOC has been dogged by such accusations coming to a head with the Salt Lake City bid for the Winter Olympics. The then President of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch blamed individuals rather than any systemic fault in the organisation, saying, “My apology is for the actions of those IOC members who violated the bidding process for the 2002 Winter Games.” At the same time he argued that those members recommended for expulsion - six IOC members were eventually expelled - had not broken “any laws” (Bowser, 1999).

Despite this the growing body of international sports law is concerned more with the governance of athletes' behaviour, and their relationships with their organisations and rules than with the organisations themselves (for examples see the International Association of Sports Law, 2004). Partly this is unavoidable as corrupt financial practice is a matter for criminal or corporate law within national jurisdictions. In addition the corruption is often political rather than directly financial. Thus the President of a GSO can use financial patronage to poorer national associations to secure votes their in presidential elections. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), founded by the IOC, does not cover such practices but is concerned with the governance of athletes. It examines athletes and hears their appeals, often against the rulings of competition judges or against exclusion from competition for performance enhancing drugs offences rather than to deal with organisations (as an example case see Court of Arbitration for Sport, 2002).

The most important are almost certainly ICAS and CAAS (sport arbitration), WADA (anti-doping) and FIMS (sports medicine). Other than the Olympics belonging to the second group the major commercial areas lie in the first group. For this first group of GSOs the global governance monopolies they each have provides legitimacy for holding world championship events. This blurs functions by providing commercial opportunities for the ...