Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations

Bayle, Emmanuel Book Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations Routledge Research in Sport Business and Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Bayle, Emmanuel (2025) : Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations, Routledge Research in Sport Business and Management, ISBN 978-1-040-16472-3, Routledge, Oxford, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003462118 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/312731 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations This book is a bold and ambitious analysis of the challenges facing global sport in the 21st century and how those challenges can be met through good governance, management and regulation. Connecting the political and managerial dimensions of sport, from international governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee through to national governing bodies, leagues and professional sport organisations, the book offers a new way of thinking about the trajectory of contemporary sport. Adopting an innovative multilevel approach – across macro, meso and micro levels – the book explores the key challenges currently facing sport, including the rapid emergence of new sports such as MMA and adventure sports; the arrival of new actors in the international sport ecosystem, such as the Gulf states and private equity investment; the growth of new technologies, such as AI; and sociopolitical and developmental issues such as integrity, sustainability, demographic change and sportfordevelopment. It considers the interaction of actors at different levels, from states to athletes and across the public and private sectors, and explores different models of sport around the world, including the dominant European and North American models. Its findings support the argument that current and future international sports governance and regulation require a more complex and nuanced method of analysis. Offering a new vision for global sport, this is essential reading for advanced students, researchers, policymakers or practitioners working in sport management, governance or policy, or with a general interest in strategy, governance or public policy. Emmanuel Bayle is Professor of sports management in the Institute of Sport Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has published widely on sport management, CSR and nonprofit management and is a specialist in the governance, management and performance of Olympic organisations and national sport systems. He is currently leading a new Swiss National Research Fund project on performance management and measurement in international sport federations. Routledge Research in Sport Business and Management Sport in the Iberian Peninsula Management, Economics and Policy Edited by Jerónimo GarcíaFernández, Moisés GrimaldiPuyana and Gonzalo A. Bravo EU Antitrust Law and Sport Governance The Next Frontier? Edited by Jacob Kornbeck Implementing Sport Policy Organisational Perspectives on the UK Sport System Edited by Marc Keech, Iain Lindsey and John Hayton Global Sport Management Education Policy, Curriculum and Implementation Mike Rayner, Tom Webb, Ruth Sibson and Jacob K. Tingle Equity Crowdfunding in Sports Clubs ConsumerOriented Strategic Marketing Szczepan Kościółek Social Media in Sport EvidenceBased Perspectives Edited by Gashaw Abeza and Jimmy Sanderson Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations Emmanuel Bayle For more information about this series, please visit www.routle dge.com/ Routle dgeResea rchinSportBusin essandMan agem ent/ bookser ies/ RRSBM Governance, Regulation and Management of Global Sport Organisations Emmanuel Bayle First published 2025 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2025 Emmanuel Bayle The right of Emmanuel Bayle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Any third-party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library CataloguinginPublication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032611198 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032611204 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003462118 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003462118 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK Contents Introduction 1 I.1 Saudi Sportswashing 1 I.2 A System That Is Difficult to Change 2 I.3 An Unprecedented Strategy to Disrupt World Sport 2 I.4 Regulating International Sport 4 I.5 Beyond the Contrast between the European and American Models of Sport 6 I.6 Convergence between NonProfit and ForProfit Sport Organisations 7 I.7 Competition, but also Cooperation and Mimicry 9 I.8 A TwoPart Presentation 10 PART I Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 13 1 Olympic Governance under Pressure 15 1.1 More Assertive Leadership by the IOC 15 1.1.1 The Globalisation of Sport 15 1.1.2 Three Interconnected Forms of Governance 19 1.1.3 Thomas Bach’s Realpolitik Approach to Risk Management 26 1.1.4 An Institutional Balancing Act 33 1.2 The IOC’s Core Partners 40 1.2.1 International Federations 40 1.2.2 National Olympic Committees 46 1.2.3 Organising Committees of the Olympic Games 51 1.2.4 Athletes and NGOs 59 1.3 Conclusion 66 1.3.1 A FourSeasons Olympic Games? 67 vi Contents 2 Regulatory Systems within International Sport 79 2.1 A Systemic Framework for Analysing the Worldwide Regulation of Sports 79 2.1.1 A Global Explanatory Model 79 2.1.2 Four Types of Regulation: Social, Economic, Legal and Political 81 2.1.3 Principles Underlying the Model 84 2.1.4 The Four Key Variables in a Sport’s International Ecosystem 85 2.1.5 Resources and Competencies Needed for the Four Types of Regulation 87 2.2 Five Regulation Configurations for International Sport 91 2.2.1 Regulation Dominated by an International Federation 91 2.2.2 Regulation Coordinated by an International Federation 95 2.2.3 Parallel Regulation by an International Federation and Commercial Body 97 2.2.4 Regulation Dominated by a Commercial Operator 98 2.2.5 Totally Private Regulation by the Commercial Sector 101 2.3 Conclusion 104 3 Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 109 3.1 The Main Organisational Models of Sport 109 3.1.1 Three Traditional Models: American, European, StateControlled 110 3.1.2 New Actors Focusing on ‘Sport Power’: China, Russia, Gulf States 114 3.1.3 Fragility and Instability in LeastDeveloped Countries 116 3.2 National Sport Configurations in Europe 118 3.2.1 The Characteristics of National Sport Configurations 118 3.2.2 The Four Most Typical Configurations in Europe 119 3.2.3 Four Examples: England, France, Lithuania, Switzerland 123 Contents vii 3.3 Widely Differing Models Outside Europe 128 3.3.1 Australia and Canada: ‘Federated’ European Models 129 3.3.2 China: A StateControlled and Authoritarian Model Focused on Elite Sport 131 3.3.3 Tunisia: A Bureaucratic Model Weakened by Crisis 133 3.3.4 Uganda: A Neglected but Evolving Sports System 134 3.3.5 South Korea: A Bureaucratic Model at the Service of Nation Branding 135 3.3.6 Sri Lanka: A NonIntegrated and Failing Model in an Emerging Country 136 3.4 A Nation’s Sporting Success 138 3.4.1 The SPLISS Model 138 3.4.2 Countries’ Strategic Choices 143 3.5 Conclusion 148 PART II New Challenges for the Governance of International Sport Organisations 153 4 Managing International Sport Federation Performance in a Glocalised World 155 4.1 From Growing Sport to Overall Performance 155 4.1.1 Societal Performance at the Heart of Organisational Performance 155 4.1.2 Towards New Reporting and Accountability Tools 157 4.2 Strategic Capacity 161 4.2.1 Power Structures 161 4.2.2 The Quality of the Federal Network 165 4.2.3 Federations’ Business Sectors and Models 166 4.3 Operational Capacity 171 4.3.1 Key Success Factors 171 4.3.2 Failure Factors 176 4.4 Conclusion 178 4 Introduction Professional Fighters League. And in October 2023, Riyad hosted a unique ‘Battle of the Baddest’ between WBC heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury and former MMA UFC champion Francis Ngannou. • Esport and video games: By founding the Savvy Games Group, which spent an estimated $38 billion in 2023 to buy stakes in video games and esports companies around the world.4 When Riyad hosted the Gamers8 tournament, considered the world’s largest esport festival, in 2023, Saudi Arabia tripled the prize pool to $45 million, a similar sum to a tennis Grand Slam tournament. The IOC has chosen Saudi Arabia to host the first esports Olympic Games in 2025. • Cricket: By positioning the Saudi Tourism Authority as a main sponsor of the powerful Indian Premier League (IPL) and by putting up $5 billion to buy a 16% stake in the IPL’s holding company, which has an estimated worth of $30 billion.5 Indian cricket’s governing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, has, so far, turned down the Saudi offer. The Saudis sometimes present their actions as a way of bolstering the international sport and Olympic movement and sometimes as a way of supporting the international sport movement’s adversary, that is, the commercial sport business. In addition to trying to take control of spectator sport’s greatest assets, they have left hanging the spectre of even greater disruption in the future if world sport and the Olympic movement’s leaders do not meet their demands. Nothing seems impossible given that tiny Qatar, with a population of just 2.6 million, of whom only 300,000 are citizens, managed to stage the 2022 Football World Cup on its own, at an unprecedented cost of $200 billion (Bayle, 2022), and to shrug off Western concerns over corruption, sustainability and human rights. I.4 Regulating International Sport Saudi Arabia’s sports strategy, along with other strategies developed by China, Russia and Qatar on different bases,6 is a sign that the West is losing its hyperdominance over both the governance of international sport and its major events and their business model. In an international context riven by crisis (environmental, economic, wars, etc.), Saudi Arabia’s policy raises the question of the (geo)political, economic and ethical regulation of international sport as it becomes dominated by sport business and an increasingly globalised and consolidated entertainment industry centred round a complex and financialised set of actors. This book provides an overview of the governance, regulation and management of the international organisations that run the world’s main team and individual sports. Regulation is a term with several possible meanings. In general use, it refers to the formulation, application and interpretation of rules and norms to control an activity. In economics, it refers to attempts to achieve a permanent balance between the objectives of the actors in a system and the corrections needed to ensure the system functions ‘normally’. Such corrections are particularly necessary in freemarket contexts, where the prime regulatory mechanisms are market forces and Introduction 5 competition, which national governments/ supranational bodies (e.g., the European Union) may regulate to prevent abuses. In this book, I use regulation in a wider sense to describe the political, economic, legal and social functioning and adjustments used to maintain an (eco)system in balance (Commaille and Jobert, 2019). In the present case, these systems are the Olympic system (Chappelet, 1991, 2016) and each sport’s international ecosystem. Regulation can be analysed on three levels. Macrolevel analyses examine an (eco)system’s interactions with its global environment (political, economic, social, technological, environmental). Mesolevel analyses involve situating an organisation’s actions and relations within a business sector (specific ecosystem for each sport) by examining them from a perspective economists call industrial economics and sociologists call organisational fields7 (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Sport’s specificities (e.g., monopoly position of some organisations, the fact that the parties involved in a sport competition are both rivals for victory and economic partners in producing the sporting spectacle) mean that great attention must be paid to this level of analysis and to the necessary regulatory principles and tools. Microlevel analyses focus on a specific actor (organisation or person, e.g., sports executive or star athlete) and their role in macroand/ or mesolevel regulation. Governance, that is, an organisation’s institutional framework and decisionmaking mechanisms, plays a central role in regulation. Henry and Lee (2004) identified three types of governance: Systemic governance describes an organisation’s efforts to control the various actors within its system; political governance involves an organisation’s relations with public bodies; and organisational governance concerns an organisation’s internal leadership, administration and control framework. Management is the process of implementing practical policies within the framework set by an organisation’s governance and regulation (strategy, economic models, professionalisation, communication and marketing, social responsibility). Microlevel analyses of an organisation’s management focus on the behaviours of individual executives and managers. The following discussion of the functioning of international sport organisations combines analyses on all three levels. An international sport organisation is any entity involved directly in running supranational sports events and/ or developing sport internationally. These organisations include the International Olympic Committee (IOC), international sport federations (IFs), continental sport federations, international competition circuit owners and organisers of international sports events. Sports media companies, sports equipment brands and sports marketing agencies are part of the sport and entertainment industry and are not, therefore, considered international sport organisations. Nevertheless, they are key stakeholders in international sport. Indeed, the strategies and investments of major subscriptionbased entertainment companies (e.g., Canal+ , ESPN, Eurosport, BeIn Sports, etc.), streaming platforms (Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus, DAZN, etc.) and social media companies (Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) are severely disrupting the world of spectator sport and sports events. These companies also exert substantial 6 Introduction control (Mintzberg, 1986) over sport organisations, either directly (by buying stakes in them) or indirectly (via the resources they invest and their influence networks). Consequently, I examine how these organisations’ strategies impact those of international sport organisations. The following chapters also cover national and local sport organisations, including professional clubs and sport events, as these organisations are increasingly internationalising their activities by recruiting foreign players, adopting international strategies for marketing their brands, tickets, media rights, sponsorship and players, selling shares to international investors and attracting foreign fans, who follow a club remotely via the Internet, social media and phone apps. International sport organisations vary greatly in terms of their legal form (nonprofit organisations versus commercial companies), their size (from 1,000 staff to just a few employees), their professionalisation, their renown and their reputation. In this book, I view them as institutions, that is, as living organisms which deploy adaptation and survival strategies in response to changes in their ecosystem and in society. In fact, even the most firmly established international sport organisations must continually protect their status by ensuring they remain in step with society. This view is in line with neoinstitutional theory, which conceives an institution as a dynamic and changing social production whose boundaries move according to its stakeholder’s interests, relationships (competition/ partnership), conflicts and crises (Tournay, 2011). I.5 Beyond the Contrast between the European and American Models of Sport Historically, two contrasting models have dominated world sport: the Olympic and federated model (IOC and IFs) and the commercial, forprofit model epitomised by North America’s powerful professional leagues and certain international circuits (ATP/ WTA in tennis, PGA/ LPGA in golf, boxing promoters, UFC in MMA, Formula 1, etc.). These two models reflect the very different identities, motives and goals of the cultures in which they arose. Experts refer to the sportfederation/ IOCdominated model of sport as the European model8 and to the model dominated by commercial interests as the North American model. In the European model, federations maintain organic ties and solidarity between highperformance sport (national teams) and grassroots sport (sport for all). However, they must also adapt to European Union law. For example, a European Court of Justice ruling on the European Super League, handed down on 21 December 2023, allowed for the possibility of organisations other than UEFA running competitions involving European football clubs, if they include a solidaritylike redistribution of the profits. This unitary model contrasts with the commercial/ liberal but fragmented American model, in which there is a clear separation between professional sport and sport federations. These two models also differ fundamentally in their approach to money and business, as the European model is underlain by nonprofit principles in which federations reinject any surpluses back into their sport, whereas the American model Introduction 7 sees sport as a vehicle for making money for shareholders, independently of growing grassroots sport. The private, commercial model has also expanded within leisure sport (fitness, water sports, golf, horse riding, etc.) and now competes with, or even dominates, the nonprofit, federationrun model. In addition, the growing ‘Uberisation’ of sport through digital technologies (internet, social networks, influencers, virtual training apps such as Zwift, Mycoach, etc.) may also give rise to alternative organisational models for sport that will eclipse the traditional club/ federationbased model. Attempts by new geopolitical actors (especially China, Russia and the Gulf States) to use international sport to project their soft power have impacted both models since the 2000s. These authoritarian states have created a third model of sport based on sporting soft power, international diplomacy and largescale investment in sporting assets by the state, sovereign wealth funds and large public companies. This third model is both intermeshed with (partnerships/ investments) and impacts (controversies, alternative competition models) the two previous models. It has the power to seriously disrupt or even overturn the political, economic and social balances international sport constructed during the twentieth century. Since its invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s Russia also appears to want to establish a new model for world sport and overthrow the traditional Olympic system, some of whose members (notably World Athletics) have openly criticised Russia and opposed its participation in the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and some major competitions owned by IFs. Russia riposted by creating three new international events in 2024, inviting athletes directly and providing ample appearance/ prize money (in contrast to the Olympic/ Paralympic Games). Invitations will be channelled through the governments of countries which have not aligned themselves with the western nations supporting Ukraine against Russia. Russia’s political instrumentalisation of sport could sound the death knell for Olympic universalism and existing international competitions by establishing a new, governmentdirected model that bypasses IFs and national Olympic committees. Hence, international sport, whose events provide a unique blend of excitement and patriotism, is evolving in ways that are much more complex and subtle than a simple faceoff between nonprofit and forprofit, private and public, individual interest and public good. There are two main reasons for this. First, sport organisations are becoming increasingly similar due to a hybridisation process in which nonprofit organisations are taking on characteristics of forprofit companies and vice versa. Second, the phenomenon of ‘coopetition’, that is, the need to cooperate with one’s competitors, is homogenising sport organisations’ business models and management practices. I.6 Convergence between NonProfit and ForProfit Sport Organisations On one side of the spectrum lie sport’s nonprofit federations and Olympic bodies; on the other side lie commercial, forprofit companies. However, many nonprofit 8 Introduction sport organisations have begun implementing commercial strategies, sometimes to the detriment of their original identities, values and objectives. And having nonprofit status does not necessarily mean that an organisation will be exemplary in terms of ethics (political scheming and inertia, corruption, mistreatment and harassment of young athletes, failure to protect human rights) or social responsibility (racism, gender equality, inclusivity, sustainability, climate change). Nonprofit sport organisations also face criticism for not being professional enough to pursue their very ambitious societal missions and aims, notably the IOC’s objective of ‘building a better world through sport’. On the other hand, since the 2000’s private commercial organisations (e.g., NBA, NHL, ATP/ WTA, PGA/ LPGA) and their key stakeholders (franchises, star players, sponsors, public bodies, etc.) have developed more integrated and more professional social responsibility strategies in response to society’s expectations concerning sport’s positive social impact (solidarity, inclusion, education). All large organisations in both models of sport have become hybrid, either nonprofit associations controlling one or more commercial companies and/ or foundations or commercial organisations controlling one or more foundations and/ or nonprofit bodies. Hence, they now combine forprofit and nonprofit structures and objectives, which cut across, to varying degrees, three spheres of legitimacy: associative (promoting and defending values and an ‘ethic’ in and through sport), public (serve the common good, a community, a territory) and commercial (position and grow a business within a market). The credibility of their actions has become the key dividing line between nonprofit and forprofit sport organisations and a central factor in their success. According to Bayle (2007), there are four aspects to this hybridisation process: • The pursuit of nonfinancial, societal goals whose focus is not to generate profit and pay dividends to shareholders. Such goals allow some commercial sport organisations (clubs/ professional events) to register as social enterprises, missionled companies, or community enterprises serving their region or community. • The adoption of a mixedeconomy funding model combining commercial and noncommercial funding, including donations, membership fees and direct and indirect public subsidies. • The combination of professional managers and unpaid executives (and, in some cases, staff provided by the public authorities). • Membership of national and supranational regulatory systems (national sports configuration, continental sports bodies, IFs, IOC), while demanding autonomy from national and supranational governments (e.g., European Union). Hybridisation results in sport organisations’ managerial objectives (forprofit vs. nonprofit, public vs. private, social vs. commercial, common good vs. individual interest, autonomy vs. outside interference, etc.) being both contradictory and, paradoxically, complementary for ensuring an organisation’s continued functioning and Introduction 9 development. Pache and Santos (2013) showed that hybrid organisations aim to increase their legitimacy by ‘selective[ly] coupling’ strategies elements from ‘competing institutional logics’. The four characteristics Bayle (2007) identified apply just as much to commercial enterprises (e.g., professional football clubs, NBA franchises, WTA tennis tournaments, certain international events) as they do to IFs. Many professional clubs find it difficult to make a profit and pay dividends to shareholders. This is particularly the case in European football, where a lack of economic regulation has allowed players’ salaries to spiral out of control. Consequently, investors target indirect and/ or nonfinancial benefits (boost allied businesses, reputation, public relations, etc.) or attempt to obtain a return on their investment by selling all or part of their stake in the club. Nevertheless, professional clubs throughout the world, and IFs that create commercial events, face greater pressure than other businesses to root the club or event in its local area. They must show a commitment to serving their host community (social objective) in addition to serving their shareholders (financial objective) and their sport (redistribution of revenues to grow the sport). Their legitimacy, their existence and their performance model depend on this, as this book will show. I.7 Competition, but also Cooperation and Mimicry The second reason for the growing similarities between sport organisations is their reciprocal interests. As well as competing against each other, sport organisations must cooperate and create partnerships. This need for greater cooperation was triggered by the Olympic movement’s decision, taken prior to the 1984 Olympic Games, to abolish its rules on amateurism and admit professional athletes to their events. Since then, the world’s best professional tennis players and golfers have taken part in Olympic Games. Similarly, North America’s professional leagues have allowed their best players to compete in IFrun world championships and the Olympic Games (basketball, football and ice hockey are on the Olympic programme; baseball has been an invited Olympic sport), although leagues and franchises have sometimes prevented players from going to Olympic Games (e.g., Major League Baseball for Tokyo 2020, National Hockey League for Beijing 2022). The reasons for these protectionist decisions have included clashes in the sporting calendar, COVID 19, standoffs between a league and an IF and individual decisions by players and/ or clubs to prioritise their championship. As another example, an IF may have to find compromises to maintain its control over a professional international circuit dominated by independent commercial operators. This is the case in road cycling, whose IF (Union Cycliste Internationale) has run the sport’s most important professional circuit, the UCI World Tour, since 2005. In fact, there is a large degree of porosity between sport run by IFs and sport run by commercial sport leagues and circuits, as this porosity serves the interests of both categories of organisation. For North America’s team sport leagues, cooperating with IFs and the Olympic Movement is a way to globalise their businesses 10 Introduction (recruiting foreign players trained within federation systems outside the United States, demonstrating a league’s superiority and obtaining global exposure by winning world championships and Olympic medals). For federations, the presence of star players from major professional team sport leagues or individualsport circuits increases their flagship competitions’ sporting value, media coverage and earning potential. Thus, relationships between international sport organisations tend to be coopetitive, rather than purely competitive. Unsurprisingly, managerial and marketing practices in Olympic/ federated sport and in commercial sport are converging, especially in the case of their sports event business models. According to neoinstitutionalist theory, this mimicry between international sport organisations is due to the gradual homogenisation of international sport’s governance, regulation and management practices. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) formulated the concept of institutional isomorphism to describe the process by which practices within a business sector converge. This process is clearly visible in international sport, as, despite their different cultures and objectives, international sport organisations, whether commercial (e.g., NBA, ATP, professional football clubs, North America’s franchises) or nonprofit (e.g., IOC, FIFA, UEFA), draw inspiration from each other’s commercial, marketing, professionalisation and social responsibility strategies. I.8 A TwoPart Presentation The first part of this book shows that most international sport organisations, whether federations or private commercial entities, operate, either directly or indirectly, within three main sports systems: • The Olympic Movement and larger Olympic system, over which the IOC has asserted greater control since Thomas Bach’s election as IOC president in 2013. • A sport’s international ecosystem, which is shaped by its history and the balance of power between major stakeholders (media, sponsors, federations, athletes, event organisers, etc.). A sport’s IF is not necessarily the dominant actor in its ecosystem. • National sport systems, which vary greatly across the world. International sport organisations must work with these systems to position their events in a host territory and to increase participation in their sport. In addition, the governance of every IF and regulation of every sport is impacted by some states’ efforts to influence the regulation of certain sports and major events so they serve its interests (geopolitical, economic, media, etc.). Part II of the book looks at the regulation and management of IFs, professional team sports and professional individual sports in the light of international sport organisations’ interactions with these three ecosystems. To this end, it examines the following: Introduction 11 • Performance management and performance success factors for IFs, which work closely with their continental federations and, most importantly, their NFs, which play a vital role in supporting their clubs and individual members. IFs and NFs are ‘network organisations’ that develop sport on six tiers (global/ continental/ national/ regional/ infraregional/ local). • Differences in the regulation and management of North America’s and Europe’s biggest professional team sport leagues and clubs. These leagues and clubs have traditionally focused on their local markets, but they are increasingly trying to internationalise their brands. • The regulation and management of professional individual sports, whose specificities explain not only the functioning of the world’s major circuits but also the strategies of international event organisers and how elite athletes in different individual sports manage their careers. Notes 1 Saudi Arabia (2024) Human Rights Watch. Available at: www.hrw.org/ mid dleeast/ northafr ica/ saudiara bia 2 Bernarbeu, H. (2023) Benzema, Kanté, Ramos… le plan à 20 milliards de l’Arabie saoudite. Available at: www.sport.fr/ footb all/ benz emakanteramosleplana20millia rdsdelara biesaoud ite1038 704.shtm 3 Two terrorist attacks linked to the war in Yemen occurred during the 2022 Dakar race. 4 Defer, A. (2023) L’Arabie Saoudite se rêve en "plaque tournante" du jeu vidéo mondial, L’UsineDigitale, 2 July. Available at: www.usinedigit ale.fr/ arti cle/ lara biesaoud itesereveenpla quetourna ntedujeuvideomond ial.N2138 567 5 Business Today Desk (2023) Saudi Arabia Eyes up to $5bn Investment in IPL at $30bn Valuation, Says Report, 3 November. Available at: www.busine ssto day.in/ lat est/ econ omy/ story/ saudiara biaeyesmulti bill iondol larstakeiniplrep ort404 47520231103 6 China’s strategy also targets its huge domestic market. In contrast to Saudi Arabia, Qatar has focused more on hosting major sports events than on taking control of international sport by buying assets in highprofile sports. 7 DiMaggio and Powell (1983) defined an organisational field as ‘those organizations which, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life’ (p. 148). 8 A 2020 European Union resolution asked states ‘to support the key features of the European sport model, which include: freedom of association, a pyramidal structure, open system of promotion and relegation, grassroots approach and solidarity and community building’. Its recommendations for Member States included: ‘promoting values in sport and sport organisations, governed by fundamental principles such as: gender equality, solidarity, and respect for human rights, acknowledging and preserving the specific nature or sport and its structures based on voluntary activity’. It also asked sport organisations to ‘commit to financial solidarity between professional sport and grassroots sport’. https:// eurlex.eur opa.eu/ FR/ legalcont ent/ summ ary/ keyfeatu resofaeurop eansportmodel.html Bibliography Bayle, E. (2007) ‘La recherche en management des organisations sportives: objet, champ, niveaux d’analyse et spécificités des pratiques de management’, Revue Internationale en Science du Sport et de l’Éducation Physique, 75(1), pp. 59– 81. 12 Introduction Bayle. E. (2022) ‘Qatar 2022: retour de boomerang pour la FIFA’, Le Temps, 31 October. Available at: www.lete mps.ch/ opini ons/ qatar2022unret ourboomer angfifa (Accessed: 12 March 2024). Bayle, E. (2023) ‘Arabie Saoudite 2034: Le jeu décomplexé de la FIFA’, Le Temps, 4 December. Available at: www.lete mps.ch/ opini ons/ chr oniq ues/ ara biesaoud ite2034lejeudec ompl exedelafifa (Accessed: 12 March 2024). Chappelet, J.- L. (1991) Le Système Olympique. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Chappelet, J.- L. (2016) Jeux Olympiques: Raviver la Flame. Lausanne: PPUR. Commaille, J. and Jobert, B. (2019) Les métamorphoses de la régulation politique. Paris: LGDJ. DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1983) ‘The IronCage Revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields’, American Sociological Review, 48(2), pp. 147– 160. FIFA (2022). Annual Report. Available at: https:// publi cati ons.fifa.com/ en/ ann ualrep ort2022/ Henry, I. and Lee, P.C. (2004) ‘Governance and ethics in sport’, in Beech, J. and Chadwick, S. (eds.) The Business of Sport Management, London: Pearson Education, pp. 25– 41. Mintzberg, H. (1986) Le Pouvoir dans les Organisations. Paris: Éditions d’Organisation. Pache, A.C. and Santos, F. (2013) ‘Inside the hybrid organization: Selective coupling as a response to competing institutional logics’, Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), pp. 972– 1001. Tournay, V. (2011), Sociologie des Institutions, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. DOI: 10.4324/9781003462118-2 Part I Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems International sport currently has three interconnected regulatory systems: • The Olympic movement, whose governance has been made more complex by recent changes in the world (Chapter 1). • Sport ecosystems, which are the product of a sport’s history and the economic and political balances of power between its stakeholders (Chapter 2). • National sport configurations, which vary greatly between countries but with which the two previous systems must interact. 20 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems Putting on the Olympic Games is not, therefore, an end, but a means for achieving this goal. The IOC has historically called upon a central core of partners to stage the Olympic Games, develop sport and promote the Olympic values of ‘excellence, friendship and respect’. NFs select elite athletes for the Olympic Games according to criteria set out by the sport’s IF and depending on the quota of athletes it has been allocated. NOCs send delegations of athletes to the Olympic Games, which are organised by OCOGs comanaged by the host country’s sports movement and public bodies (host city, host region, state) but subject to close IOC control via its evermore detailed specification for the Games and its funding allocations. Providing funding to Olympic organisations is another important aspect of the IOC’s systemic governance. Continued growth in its income from the Olympic Games allows the IOC to keep increasing the amounts it redistributes and to claim that it ‘redistributes 90% of its revenue to the wider sporting movement’ (IOC 2018). These sums are redistributed for fouryear cycles, with 50% going to summer and winter OCOGs; 38% to NOCs, Olympic IFs and Olympic Solidarity; and 12% to the Youth Olympic Games and sporting integrity,7 notably the World AntiDoping Agency (WADA). Skyrocketing revenues from TV rights have allowed the IOC to massively increase the sum it redistributes to IFs, which has risen from $37.6 million in 1992 ($1.5 million for each of the 25 Olympic IFs) to $540 million for the 2016/ 2020 cycle, a 14fold increase since 1992. However, the amount each IF receives depends on criteria introduced in 2004 to enable the IOC to allocate more funds to the IFs of sports with the highest profiles and greatest marketing potential (athletics, gymnastics, swimming) (see Table 1.2). The arrival of new actors (professional leagues, athletes’ unions, NGOs, social networks, etc.) has complexified the Olympic system and increased the number of stakeholders the IOC must deal with. For example, it must persuade professional leagues, especially those in North America, to allow their players to compete in the Olympic Games and world championships/ cups owned by IFs. In addition, the number of international sports events outside Olympic Games and world Table 1.2 Amounts (Cash and Benefits in Kind) Redistributed to NOCs and Olympic IFs Redistributed after NOCs (million) IFs (million) Beijing 2008 $301 $297 London 2012 $520 $520 Rio 2016 $540 $540 Tokyo 2020 $540 $540 Turin 2006 $136 $128 Vancouver 2010 $215 $209 Sochi 2014 $199 $199 PyeongChang 2018 $215 $215 Source: Adapted from Chappelet (2023). Olympic Governance under Pressure 21 championships has exploded in the last 30 years, and the calendar now includes innumerable commercial multisport events (e.g., X Games, GKA Big Air World Championships, International Festival of Extreme Sports World Series), nonprofit multisport events (e.g., World University Games,8 World Masters Games, Gay Games, Asian Games, World Urban Games) and singlesport events (e.g., Ultimate Fighting Championships, Formula 1, World Surf League, Red Bull events, Ironman). Moreover, most international events and all of North America’s major leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, etc.) have adopted global marketing strategies. To adapt to young people’s expectations and ensure the Olympic Games remain attractive, the IOC has added several new sports to the Olympic programme, such as 3×3 basketball (added at Tokyo 2020) and kayak cross (which will replace a lessspectacular slalom discipline as of Paris 2024). Sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding will still have additional sport status at the 2024 Olympic Games, but they will become part of the official programme as of 2028. These sports, which long saw themselves as part of a counterculture outside the Olympic movement, have now become institutionalised, either by setting up a new IF (sport climbing9) or by joining an existing IF (skateboarding10). Breaking, governed by World Dance Sport, will be the fourth additional sport at Paris 2024, but it will not be present at Los Angeles 2028, for which the IOC has chosen five sports with powerful closed leagues, notably the NFL (flag football), MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball (baseball is the no. 1 sport in Japan) and the Indian Premier League (cricket, by far India’s biggest sport). The five sports chosen for Los Angeles 2028 – squash, lacrosse, flag football, baseballsoftball and cricket – typify the American sportbusiness model and interest the IOC’s two most important markets: North America and Asia. India is undoubtedly the most underexploited market for Olympic sport. For example, Viacom 18 (Reliance Group)11 obtained the Indian media rights to the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympic Games for just €10 million and €15.6 million, respectively, even though India has a population of 1.4 billion and a professional cricket sector worth $20 billion. With India as a potential host for the 2036 Olympic Games, these figures show why it is essential for the Olympic programme to include cricket. To make room for three new sports (Summer Olympic Games may include no more than 10,500 athletes), the IOC has reduced the number of disciplines and athletes in rowing, boxing and weightlifting, which attract relatively little media attention. This decision was a reprieve for boxing and weightlifting, which, along with modern pentathlon, came close to being removed from the Olympic programme due to their poor governance and failings in terms of integrity (doping, infighting, financial problems). Adding three new sports will increase the number of Olympic IFs from 28 to 31, but the new IFs will not, for the moment, receive IOC funding. This was the case for the IFs for rugby and golf, whose sports became part of the official Olympic programme in 2016. The 2026 Winter Olympics will see the debut of a new federation governing ski mountaineering. Not redistributing Olympic revenues to these new sports was a compromise decision taken to satisfy the oldest Olympic sports, which did not want to see their allocations reduced. 22 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems At the moment, the IOC is still feeling its way with respect to esports, which have become immensely popular among young people. In 2021 it created the Olympic Virtual Series, bringing together five video games simulating cycling, rowing, baseball, sailing and motorsport, played via each sport’s publisher platform, although the first two also require players to have a turbo trainer or rowing machine. Events are broadcast on the Olympic Channel (olympics.com/ fr/ olympicchannel). The IOC’s next esports initiative was the Olympic Esport Week, launched in Singapore in June 2023, which was the first time the IOC accorded the Olympic label to an event combining a gaming festival, exhibition, competitions and a conference. Nevertheless, the IOC’s continued uncertainty about esports is reflected in the decision to include only games linked to an Olympic IF,12 even though they are less popular than esports’ leading games (League of Legends, CounterStrike, etc.). Thomas Bach used the IOC Session in October 2023 to announce a new step in the IOC’s engagement with esports, which, as he reminded delegates, are played by three billion people around the world. With this in mind, he set up an Esports Commission to look into creating an esports Olympic Games involving games that respect Olympic values. In other words, players may shoot at targets but not at people. To maintain its leadership over the increasingly complex Olympic system, the IOC must build alliances and fight off challenges to its authority. Such challenges may even come from inside its group of core stakeholders, as illustrated by its conflict with the IFs over its decision not to remunerate athletes for competing in the Olympic Games and its refusal to meet SportAccord’s 2015 demand to increase the amount it redistributes to IFs. Established in 2009 to represent all IFs, SportAccord became a powerful counterweight to the IOC by staging multisport events (e.g., World Beach Games, World Combat Games) and by strongly defending individual sport’s interests, but Bach finally managed to remove this thorn in the IOC’s side in 2017 when he succeeded in replacing SportAccord with the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). At the end of 2022, he obtained the dissolution of the GAISF and passed the important function of representing IFs back to a revamped SportAccord under IOC control, which does no more than hold an annual congress of IFs. Over the last 20 years, elite sport and Olympism have become subject to evercloser scrutiny from the media, NGOs, academics and the public, especially with respect to integrity, athletes’ wellbeing, human rights and sustainability. In return, the IOC has tried to avoid or overcome criticism from these sources by introducing new regulatory mechanisms to combat doping, violence, racism, athletes’ psychological wellbeing, match fixing and corruption. To achieve this, it has had to adopt a new approach to political governance. 1.1.2.2 Political Governance Political governance concerns the IOC’s and Olympic movement’s relations with (inter)governmental organisations: United Nations, European Union, Council of Olympic Governance under Pressure 23 Europe, national governments and cities/ regions that support sport and sports events organised by official sports bodies. These relations have often centred around sport’s difficult relationship with politics, epitomised by government boycotts of sports events, government meddling in the governance of national sports bodies, authoritarian regimes using sport as a tool for soft power, and so on. At the same time, staging the Olympic Games and funding for Olympic sport depend greatly on sport’s partnerships with public bodies, as most Olympic sports rely heavily on direct and indirect public support to fund sport facilities, NFs, clubs and elite athletes (subsidies, help with building and renovating facilities, provision of staff, tax exemptions, support with hiring and professionalising staff). This public partnership gives the IOC legitimacy and allows it to negotiate dispensations from national laws for the Olympic Games in the form of tax exemptions, legislation protecting federations and athletes and the application of ‘Olympic laws’ during Olympic Games. Also in the legal field, the IOC established the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne in 1984 to provide a mechanism for resolving sporting disputes without exposing sport to the risks associated with national justice systems (slowness, media coverage, cost, failure to understand the specificities of sport). All IFs, even FIFA, now recognise the CAS, which has discreetly and efficiently resolved numerous internal disputes between athletes and their federations. Most of the cases it hears involve doping (approx. 60% of cases) and football (59% of cases). Thanks to the CAS, few sporting disputes now go to national or supranational courts (European Court of Justice), unless they involve criminal acts, which automatically fall within the jurisdiction of the criminal courts. The CAS even holds an adhoc tribunal during the Olympic Games. In addition, some countries have set up national sport tribunals, alongside other conciliation and mediation mechanisms for resolving sportrelated disputes. The need to protect sport’s credibility and athletes’ health from the scourge of doping led the international sport movement to join forces with national governments in 1999 to establish a global antidoping body (WADA) (Chappelet and Van Luijk, 2018). WADA refers disputes relating to its World AntiDoping Code (drawn up in 2003) to the CAS and encourages individual countries to set up national antidoping agencies (62) and regional antidoping agencies (14). All these agencies are members of the iNADO network, although the resources they have at their disposal vary greatly. However, these mechanisms have failed to stamp out doping, as shown by the statesponsored doping of Russian athletes, notably in Sochi 2014. Facing intense pressure to take action against Russia, the IOC suspended Russia’s NOC from the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 Olympic Games, but then diluted its sanction by allowing Russian athletes who met criteria set by their IF to compete under the Olympic flag. It also set up a new regulatory body – the International Testing Agency (ITA) – in 2018, to provide more independent (from national governments and IFs) antidoping controls in certain sports, especially those with small IFs that do not have wellestablished antidoping systems. Crises relating to integrity have also impacted many larger IFs 24 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems (e.g., athletics, football, tennis, biathlon) and led several of them to set up internal integrity units since the early 2020s.13 These units have varying remits and often cover other breaches of sporting integrity, including match fixing, psychological/ sexual harassment of athletes, violence, racism and corruption, as well as doping violations. The IOC’s strategy on integrity is more fragmented. For example, in 2022 it established a ‘Safe Sport’14 unit specifically to deal with the harassment of athletes. Australia, Denmark and Switzerland have created national sport integrity agencies to oversee all issues relating to integrity, although their modest resources mean they tend to focus primarily on doping. Nevertheless, numerous cases – the bestknown being the 1995 Bosman ruling – have highlighted the difficulties that arise when trying to reconcile sport’s specific system of rules and regulations (which some specialists call the Lex sportiva) with national legislation and/ or European directives. For example, international sport has been unable to free itself from European rules regarding the free movement of workers within the European Union, or sport federations abusing their dominant market position in negotiations with the media (Weatherill, 2017). More recently, the European courts have ruled that IFs such as the International Skating Union contravened European competition law when they used their regulatory autonomy to introduce rules aimed at preventing private operators from holding iceskating competitions (Szyszczak, 2018). The European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed this ruling on 21 December 2023. However, the IOC believes that sport deserves special consideration and has therefore fought hard to persuade international bodies (United Nations, European Union, Council of Europe) to recognise the specificity of sport in international treaties (Nice Declaration in 2000 and, most importantly, the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, whose article 165 gives the EU an explicit competence for sport and which provides the basis for a common European sports policy). Its efforts have been quite successful, as numerous international resolutions and European directives now recognise sport’s social and educational role (e.g., the European Commission’s 2007 white paper on sport and European Parliament resolution of 23 November 2021 on the EU’s sports policy). Furthermore, a 2023 ruling by the ECJ suggests that sport is exempt from Europe’s antitrust laws, as it found that UEFA had the right to impose legitimate and proportionate sanctions on clubs wishing to take part in a projected league ‘European Super League’, set up in competition to UEFA’s Champions League.15 However, following an appeal by the Super League, the ECJ overturned this decision on 21 December 2023, when it ruled that FIFA’s and UEFA’s ‘rules on prior approval of interclub football competitions, such as the Super League, are contrary to EU law’. This new ruling opens the door to new actors wishing to set up European club competitions, as had already occurred with basketball’s ‘private’ Euroleague. Nevertheless, the ECJ also ruled that ‘it is for the Commercial Court, Madrid, to ascertain whether those rules might nevertheless benefit different stakeholders in football, for example, by ensuring a solidaritylike redistribution of the profits generated by those rights’. Hence, the ECJ appears to have given its blessing to a solidaritybased model for distributing revenues to football’s stakeholders. Olympic Governance under Pressure 25 Europe’s sports ministers, apart from Spain, published a joint letter on 9 February 2024, in which they repeated their opposition to a European Super League in the name of ‘the principles of openness’, ‘sporting merit’ and sport’s ‘educational and social functions’. The main aim of the Olympic movement’s political strategy, supported by intense lobbying (mostly by the IOC and UEFA towards the European Union) and a large legal arsenal, is to protect the European model of sport and its widely recognised positive impacts in areas such as education, health and social inclusion. This strategy has given rise to two frameworks for protecting sport’s integrity: the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, ratified in 2014, and the IOC’s Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions, adopted in December 2015. The IOC continued down this path in 2017 when it launched the International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport, whose aim is ‘to bring together international sports organisations, governments, intergovernmental organisations and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen and support efforts to eliminate corruption’.16 In 2009, the United Nations General Assembly accorded the IOC observer status, which allows it to contribute directly to United Nations programmes and to promote sport to national governments. However, public authorities have begun placing more explicit conditions on these symbolic, political and legal international recognitions, most notably by requiring international and national sport institutions to continually improve their organisational governance. 1.1.2.3 (‘Good’) Organisational Governance The IOC, a notforprofit organisation under Swiss law, has a very specific form of organisational governance because it is a closed club with a maximum of 115 members (99 active members in 2023) who are coopted by existing members. These members meet at the IOC’s annual general meeting, known as the Session, whose main powers are to approve annual reports, choose host cities for the Olympic Games (summer, winter and youth) and elect the IOC’s president. The IOC is run by its president, who has had an executive role since 1980, in conjunction with a 15member Executive Board (equivalent to a board of directors) that includes 4 vice presidents. Twentynine commissions (e.g., Athletes, Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, Olympic Programme), composed of experts and IOC members, advise the Session, Executive Board and/ or president on specific issues. Daytoday operations are carried out by the IOC Administration, which has become much more professional since the 2000s and now employs almost 1,000 permanent staff (Chappelet, 2022). Approximately 100 of these employees work at Olympic Broadcast Services’ headquarters in Madrid for the Olympic web TV channel (OCS), which the IOC set up in 2016 to broadcast archive footage of Olympic competitions and preOlympic tournaments. Huge increases in the administration’s payroll, and especially its directors’ salaries,17 have raised questions about whether 26 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems it still offers good value for money. Although the IOC has undertaken to keep the cost of running its head office to below 10% of its revenues, the actual percentage appears to be much higher than this.18 The IOC’s organisational governance works on the principle that the coopted members elected to the Executive Board19 run the institution, its salaried managers implement the board’s policies and the Session controls the results through annual activity and financial reports, which have become more detailed and more transparent since 2014. NOCs, IFs, continental federations and NFs have similar governance structures. The scandal that erupted following revelations of corruption in the attribution of the 2002 Olympic Games to Salt Lake City was a turning point in the IOC’s organisational governance (Chappelet, 2001). Facing intense political and media pressure, the IOC’s ‘institutional riposte’ (Rayner, 2007) was to make major changes to its governance, based on the recommendations of a specially convened ‘IOC 2000 Commission’. These reforms included reducing the age limit for IOC members from 80 years to 70 years and changing the composition of its membership to include 15 Olympic IF presidents, 15 NOC presidents and 15 athletes. Athletes may serve for a maximum of eight years; Olympic IF and NOC presidents serve until the end of their terms as presidents. This new rule changed the social makeup of the IOC’s membership, which became much younger, more feminine (38 of the 99 members in 2023 were women) and more directly connected to the world of international sport. The greater turnover in members (45 members are elected for just eight years) also made it more difficult for the IOC’s president to control the organisation’s membership. IOC presidencies are now restricted to one eightyear term followed by a fouryear term if a president is reelected. The reforms also included introducing a code of ethics overseen by an ethics commission. However, this commission has not been very proactive in sanctioning breaches of ethics, including those committed by IOC members, as the bestknown IOC members tainted by corruption (J. Blatter and J. Havelange at FIFA, L. Diack at the International Association of Athletics Federations and H. Verbruggen at the Union Cycliste Internationale) resigned as IOC members to avoid being sanctioned by the commission.20 When Thomas Bach took over as IOC president in 2013, the IOC faced numerous contentious issues that threatened to weaken its position and overturn the political balances within sport and the Olympic movement. When responding to these issues, Bach showed himself to be a master of realpolitik, adapting his approach to each set of circumstances. 1.1.3 Thomas Bach’s Realpolitik Approach to Risk Management During his 21year tenure as IOC president (from 1980 to 2001), JuanAntonio Samaranch oversaw a veritable revolution in the Olympic Games that took them far from Coubertin’s original ideals and turned them into a global brand (Miller, Olympic Governance under Pressure 27 1993). When Jacques Rogge took over from Samaranch in 2001, the most pressing issues facing the IOC concerned sport’s integrity and ethics, along with the increasing use of sport to project a nation’s soft power, especially by the BRICS countries and Gulf States. By the time Rogge made way for Thomas Bach, a lawyer by training and an Olympic gold medallist in fencing, Olympism was facing a crisis of legitimacy, as were other major institutions (religion, democracy, etc.) in many Western countries. Bach adopted a pragmatic, realpolitik approach to address this crisis, which had arisen due to the conjunction of several problematical issues: • Public scepticism in Western countries about hosting the Olympic Games, especially the Winter Olympics (‘no’ votes prevailed in 18 of the 31 referendums on whether to bid for the Winter Olympic Games between 1968 and 2022 and in several referendums on the Summer Olympic Games – Chappelet 2021). • The fight to protect sport’s integrity (doping, match fixing, corruption by international sport leaders, physical and psychological wellbeing of elite athletes) and new issues such as how the Olympic world should embrace LGBTQI+ athletes. • The instrumentalisation of sport by autocratic countries and failures of major international competitions to respect human rights.21 • Geopolitical questions such as whether to appoint sport leaders from authoritarian and nondemocratic countries to positions of power and how to respond to Putin’s Russia (the war in Ukraine) and its use of sport (statesponsored doping, intention to host three international sports events in 2024: the Future Games, a ‘phygital tournament’ combining physical and digital competitions) in February/ March; the BRICS Games in June; and the World Friendship Games in September, which hope to attract at least 70 countries, including members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.22 • Criticisms of major sports events’ impact on the climate and their lack of environmental sustainability. • Competition from new forms of sports and from sports outside the Olympic movement (e.g., esports, mixed martial arts, outdoor sports, extreme sports, survival sports). • Behaviours of generations Z (born between 1997 and 2010) and alpha (born after 2010) characterised by their use of virtual platforms and their lessactive lifestyles, which may presage major public health problems (Mountjoy et al., 2019; WHO, 2021). These younger generations have very different ways of con - suming spectator sport: According to a 2023 report by the Capgemini Research Institute (‘A Whole New Ball Game’), 77% of generationZ respondents and 75% of generationY respondents said they prefer watching sport outside sports venues, compared with 32% of people over the age of 70. Bach’s responses to these issues involved astute risk management based on assessing when and with whom the IOC could take a forceful position and when it needed to adopt a more conciliatory approach. He strenuously defended the IOC’s 28 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems position, using arguments based on two main premises – ‘responsible autonomy through good governance’ (Bach, 2013) and the benefits sport and Olympism bring to society. However, both of these premises are open to question. 1.1.3.1 Responsible Autonomy through Good Governance Bach first used the expression ‘responsible autonomy through good governance’ in a speech he gave to the United Nations in 2013, shortly after being elected IOC president. The following year, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution supporting sport’s independence and autonomy and the IOC’s leadership of the Olympic movement. Here, autonomy signifies the right for sport organisations to be selfgoverning and selfregulating and free from interference from governments and other external actors, including private financers (sponsors, broadcasters), as set out in Article 5 of the Olympic Charter: Organisations within the Olympic movement shall apply political neutrality. They have the rights and obligations of autonomy, which include freely establishing and controlling the rules of sport, determining the structure and governance of their organisations, enjoying the right of elections free from any outside influence and the responsibility for ensuring that principles of good governance be applied. This definition of autonomy may have meaning and value in democratic states, but it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to apply in authoritarian countries where freedom of expression is either nonexistent or highly restricted. In many cases, the sport movement is subject to political control, as its leaders are appointed by the state, are serving politicians or are placed under government control, as Garcia and Meier (2022) showed with respect to national sport governance in developing countries in the Global South. Some countries’ NOCs are led by the country’s president (Azerbaijan, Gulf States) or the minister for sport (some communist countries). The IOC embodied the concept of responsible autonomy in three new governance and management principles introduced following Bach’s election as IOC president: announce clear strategic lines for the IOC and Olympic movement; solidify the business model; and better control and report its actions in a global spirit of greater transparency, efficacity and social responsibility (Bayle, 2016). Bach set out his vision for the Olympic movement’s future development in two strategic road maps – Agenda 2020 (40 strategic recommendations), published in 2014, and Agenda 2020+ 5 (15 recommendations), published in 2021. The IOC claims to have implemented 88% of the 40 recommendations for 2014– 2021. However, the IOC relies on IFs and NOCs to implement its recommendations and not all IFs and NOCs have the resources to implement them effectively. Bach and his teams next focused on consolidating the IOC’s business model and ensuring the ‘balanced’ redistribution of an everlarger proportion of its revenues Olympic Governance under Pressure 29 to key stakeholders within the Olympic family (OCOGs, NOCs, IFs). Bach’s concern was that the IOC still relies on Olympic Games broadcasting rights for 60% of its revenues, a large proportion of which comes from the United States due to the huge sums US networks pay for broadcasting rights (NBC paid $7.65 billion for the period 2020– 2032). In addition, twothirds of the IOC’s 15 TOP sponsors are Western companies, so it obtains 80% of its revenues from the West, despite the multipolar nature of today’s world and the United States’ reduced dominance. Media rights from other parts of the world have increased, but they are still modest (Table 1.1) compared with the IOC’s American contract. For example, the Australian media group Nine Entertainment paid just $191 million for 2024– 2032, even though this period includes an edition of the Olympic Games (Brisbane 2032) in the broadcaster’s home territory. Describing this sum as ‘staggeringly low’, Olympic business expert Patrick Nally urged the IOC to ‘reinvent’ its ‘ageing’ business model (Nally, 2023). Nevertheless, the IOC generates sufficient revenues to spend almost $200 million on a new headquarters in Lausanne that opened in 2019. Moves to gradually consolidate its business model, while remaining dependent on American finance and the NBC contract in a context of falling audiences, have been accompanied by attempts to secure the Olympic Games’ geopolitical position. Bach’s first moves in this respect were designed to protect the Olympic Games’ reputation, which had been tarnished by the controversy over attributing the event to authoritarian regimes (Beijing 2008 and 2022, Sochi 2014) and by political problems and/ or accusations of corruption (Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020), which also affected recent Football World Cups (Brazil 2014, Qatar 2022). Unlike FIFA, which continued to attribute its flagship competition to authoritarian countries (Russia 2018, Qatar 2022), the IOC has attributed all forthcoming editions of the Olympic Games to Western countries or democracies. Although FIFA has attributed the 2026 and 2030 World Cups to democratic countries, it did so in a way that opened the door for Saudi Arabia, its new political and financial partner, to host the 2034 tournament. Thus, the United States and its Canadian and Mexican partners will host the 2026 World Cup, but the centenary World Cup in 2030 will be split between three continents (Africa, Europe and South America) and six countries (Morocco, Spain and Portugal, which will host most of the matches, but with three matches played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay). Paradoxically, the paucity of candidates for the forthcoming Olympic Games has made it easier for the IOC to attribute the event to democratic countries, as, for the first time in its history, in 2017 a single IOC Session was able to attribute two editions of the Summer Games, which went to Paris (2024) and Los Angeles (2028). This move was part of a new ‘winwin’ rationale (for the IOC and for candidate cities) aimed at avoiding what Andreff (2012) called ‘the curse of the winning bid’.23 Similar reasoning, and the opportunity to award the Games to another Western country, led the IOC to attribute the 2032 Summer Olympics (to Brisbane) many years in advance,24 without inviting other bids. This focus on the West is reassuring to the IOC’s Western stakeholders (respect for human rights, bid quality, use of 36 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems Table 1.3 Strategic Responses to Institutional Processes Strategies Tactics Examples Applied to the IOC Acquiescence Adapt Adapt to invisible norms, taken as given Societal changes (gender equality, disabilities, diversity, etc.) Imitate Mimic institutional models UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals Ethical conformity practices used by multinational companies Submit Follow rules and accept norms Bach’s slogan: ‘Change or be changed’ Accept European law but demand recognition for the specificity of sport (mobilising political support) Compromise Balance Balance the expectations of numerous stakeholders Redistribute Olympic revenues to OCOGs, IFs, NOCs (redistribution scale) Appease Appease institutional stakeholders Olympic Truce during Olympic and Paralympic Games (armed conflict) CAS (resolve legal disputes more quickly, discreetly and efficiently than national courts) Involve governments in the fight against doping (WADA) Negotiate Negotiate with institutional stakeholders States/ governments for organising Olympic Games (application of ‘Olympic law’) Avoidance Hide Nonconformity Do not apply the Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance (2009) or good governance measures for IFs (ASOIF, 2016) No real support or coercion from the IOC on this issue Cushion Relax institutional ties Accept media/ financial demands (timing of some events at OlympicGames imposed by NBC, e.g., for swimming events at Tokyo 2020) Refuse to compensate athletes but relax rules on individual image rights Flee Change objectives, activity, or field National justice systems (‘don’t wash the dirty laundry in public’ by creating a sports justice system and by selfregulation via an internal ethics commission) Olympic Governance under Pressure 37 and Paralympic Games, so they need the IOC and Olympic movement, even if these institutions are imperfect (as are politics and business). Sport is doing its best and trying to improve, even if it is on a small scale. Olympism and sport have beneficial impacts in numerous fields, including education, inclusion and health, and are therefore essential for society. Because the Olympic movement is founded on democratic, nonprofit principles and on volunteerism, Olympism is a common good for society and humanity.28 Neither total privatisation of sport nor total state control would be in society’s interest. The former would risk excluding many people from sport; the latter would require massive public investment to ensure Strategies Tactics Examples Applied to the IOC Defiance Ignore Ignore norms and explicit values Public opinion and NGOs (human rights and sustainability, depending on the countries hosting Olympic and Paralympic Games) Challenge Deprecate practices and demands Denounce some forms of political interference (but accept others) in the name of sport’s autonomy and political neutrality Attack Attack sources of institutional pressure Manoeuvre to dissolve SportAccord (2017) and then the GAISF (2022) – IF umbrella bodies and historic counterweights to the IOC Manipulation Coopt Incorporate into influential bodies New IOC members (external lobbying/ internal geopolitical balance) and new Olympic sports (attract young people and new markets, especially India, China and Indonesia) International Testing Agency (independent antidoping body) Influence Influence values and criteria Myths relating to the Olympic Games’ origins and their revival by Coubertin Ideology around the universal nature of Olympic values and their effects Control Dominate aspects of society and institutional processes Olympic Charter (constitutional framework) Position the Olympic brand as a socially responsible brand Agendas 2020 and 2020+ 5 (strategic roadmaps for the Olympic movement) Source: Adapted from Oliver (1991). Table 1.3 (Continued) 38 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems everyone has access to sport. Everyone, especially national and international political leaders, must keep these threats in mind. So far, the entire world has generally accepted this historically constructed system of beliefs and meanings, which Bach and his communication teams promote. IFs and NFs push this message internationally and nationally, with UEFA lobbying particularly hard to implant it within the European Union. These efforts have enabled the IOC to hold on to its right to selfregulation in many areas. Since 2014, the IOC has used speeches and documents, combined with decoupling practices on issues such as ‘good’ governance, sustainability and integrity, to build a social meaning around a new form of IOCled regulation for the Olympic system. It has tried to homogenise the Olympic organisational field’s practices,29 despite having neither the capacity nor the means to impose its will on Olympic IFs and NOCs, which continue to be very varied in their functioning and professionalisation. Moreover, in the name of respecting IFs’ and NOCs’ autonomy, the IOC refuses to become involved in their governance and functioning. Instead, it relies on institutional isomorphism (Dimaggio and Powell, 1983) to converge and homogenise the behaviours of IFs, NOCs and even OCOGs. Dimaggio and Powell (1983) identified three types of institutional isomorphism, all of which can be seen in the IOC’s actions towards the Olympic system’s core organisations: • Normative isomorphism, which can occur via increased professionalisation brought about by the revenues the IOC redistributes and by interorganisational staff mobility between OCOGs, IFs, NOCs, the IOC and professional Olympic experts, strengthened by associations of professional sport managers.30 Professionalisation is also fed by IOCapproved sport management training organisations and programmes, such as the International Olympic Academy, AISTS31 and MEMOS.32 The IOC often recruits senior managers and staff from these programmes.33 • Mimetic isomorphism: the copying of good governance, sustainability and integrity practices. Olympic organisations may imitate other Olympic organisations, international bodies (e.g., UN frameworks on sustainability, refugees, etc.) and the IOC’s multinational partners (e.g., ethical conformity practices). • Coercive isomorphism: formal and informal political pressure by the IOC via the Olympic Charter and Olympic revenue redistribution criteria. Faced with the great heterogeneity in Olympic organisations’ professionalism, the IOC addresses problems, inconsistencies and crises as they arise. Its strategy tends to be very flexible, allowing it to bend to political realities, which sometimes involves sidestepping sensitive international issues by leaving IFs to make their own decisions. The IOC has taken this approach with respect to Russia’s statesanctioned doping (allowing each IF to set its own criteria for reintegrating Olympic Governance under Pressure 39 Russian athletes after the Rio Olympics), intersex and transgender athletes, and the war in Ukraine (allowing Russian athletes to compete under certain conditions but giving each IF the power of veto for its sport. World Athletics is the only sport to have used this veto). This results in IFs taking different positions, preventing Olympic sports from speaking with a single voice and leading to inconsistencies. For example, the International Fencing Federation disqualified a Ukrainian competitor from its 2023 world championships because she refused to shake hands with her Russian opponent. The IOC immediately called on the federation to revoke the sanction and allow this athlete to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games. Even Ukraine adopted a lessrigid stance in the summer of 2023 by no longer asking Ukrainian athletes to boycott all competitions involving Russian athletes. This is why the IOC’s institutional work can be described as a balancing act in which it must manage the paradoxes and contradictions that arise from the numerous ethical dilemmas facing educational and humanist movements such as Olympism: business versus ‘purity’ of Olympic values; elite sporting performance versus integrity of competitions versus athlete health; exemplarity of leaders versus conflicts of interest and corruption; sport’s political neutrality versus geopolitical instrumentalisation; autonomy of sport versus political interference in sport, the United Nation’s universal human rights and Olympic humanism versus attributing Olympic Games to authoritarian regimes guilty of human rights abuses and so on. Hardy and Maguire (2008) identified three possible states for organisational fields: emerging, stable mature and mature in crisis. Olympism can be considered a mature field in crisis, a category characterised by contradictions and struggles between actors. Challenges to practices and forms augur a possible decline and a process of deinstitutionalisation followed by institutional innovation and reinstitutionalisation (Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). Using institutional entrepreneurship to affirm its leadership leaves the IOC open to criticism and increases the pressure it faces to conform to social norms, which restricts its ability to act freely. This is why it tends to react to changes in society, rather than taking proactive measures to lead societal change. Other types of social evaluation, notably an organisation’s status (position in a hierarchy of organisations), its reputation (an indicator of the quality of its services/ products) and whether it is stigmatised or subject to public disapproval (see Roulet, 2019) also impact an organisation’s legitimacy. This raises the questions of whether these positive and negative social evaluations effect an organisation’s performance and whether they are linked to and consistent with its social responsibility (Bayle, 2016) and sustainability (Moon, Bayle and François, 2021) strat - egies. Adopting a strategic management perspective, Ben Slimane and Leca (2014) drew up a framework combining the resourcebased view (resources/ competencies required to build a competitive advantage) and the concept of institutional work. Their framework shows how actors in a field use four key institutional competencies (understanding the environment; construction of justifications and rationalisation; 40 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems mobilisation of political support; mobilisation of material resources) to develop institutional resources and capacities that are vital to steering the organisation’s legitimacy. Applying this framework to the IOC shows that its prime reason for defending its legitimacy is to ensure its economic performance. A more fundamental question is to determine the main objective of the IOC’s institutional work. Is it to maintain the IOC’s and Olympic movement’s current position, and that of its individual actors (leaders, directors, etc.), or is it to give institutional and Olympic sport a new place (‘vision’) in society? This question touches not only on the future of sports policies but also on sport’s role in society. For Olympic sport to achieve its societal objectives, the IOC must work with its network of core partners. 1.2 The IOC’s Core Partners The IOC’s core partners – IFs, NOCs, OCOGs, athletes and NGOs – form a very heterogeneous group whose members do not necessarily have the same interests. IFs and NOCs differ greatly in size and resources and have differing aims depending on the nature of their sport (IFs) or sport’s place within their country (NOCs). At the same time, the way the Olympic Games is staged is evolving in line with host governments’ interests and in response to increasing demands from athletes and stronger criticism from NGOs. 1.2.1 International Federations Most IFs are run as nonprofit associations34 and are based in Switzerland, where they enjoy exemptions from income and wealth taxes, especially in the Vaud canton, home to the IOC’s headquarters.35 They are the guardians of their sport’s rules and responsible for its growth. The IOC recognises two categories of IFs – those whose sport (or certain disciplines) are on the Olympic Games programme (32 IFs for Paris 2024 and 8 IFs for MilanCortina 2026) and those whose sport could be added to the Olympic programme (e.g., squash, karate, orienteering). The 40 IFs in this latter category form the Association of Recognised International Sport Federations. In 1982, the Olympic IFs came together to form the ASOIF and the Association of Winter Olympic International Federations (AWOIF). The number of international events created and marketed by Olympic IFs has increased greatly over the last 50 years. According to the ASOIF, in 1975 the 25 summer Olympic IFs ran 160 events, whereas in 2013 the 28 summer Olympic IFs ran 216 events. More recent figures show that the 28 summer Olympic IFs and 7 winter Olympic IFs ran 351 world championships and international circuits in 2020. In cycling, for example, the Union Cycliste Internationale’s (UCI) World Tour comprises 35 events and its calendar includes around 1,500 races, whose organisers pay a fee to the UCI. Generally, little is known about how IFs are run, in contrast to NFs, whose legal frameworks and funding are often controlled by the state. Olympic Governance under Pressure 41 IFs have greatly expanded their commercial activities and revenues since the 2000s, notably by marketing their world championships, which has made it possible and necessary for them to recruit professional staff. In fact, many IFs have set up companies, sometimes in conjunction with commercial partners, to better manage their commercial activities (efficient governance, professional expertise, etc.). The speed and intensity of this professionalisation vary according to an IF’s size and situation. FIFA, the world’s largest IF, increased its payroll from 13 staff in 1975 to 250 staff in 2003, around 450 staff in 2015 and more than 800 staff in 2023. UEFA’s expansion since the beginning of the twentyfirst century has been even more spectacular, with employee numbers rising from 105 in 2003 to 780 in 2023. Similarly, the UCI’s payroll has increased from just 3 staff in 1992, when Hein Verbruggen became president, to 55 staff at the end of his term in 2005 and to 111 staff in 2023.36 Other IFs that have substantially increased their payrolls, albeit on a smaller scale, include the Fédération Internationale de Hockey (14 paid staff in 2010, 36 paid staff in 2015), World Rowing (3 paid staff in 1992, 19 paid staff in 2015) and United World Wrestling (10 paid staff in 2012, 24 paid staff in 2015). However, it is difficult to assess the professionalisation of the competencies of elected executives and volunteers on IFs’ boards and commissions because these appointments depend as much on politics as on an individual’s competencies and available time. The professionalisation of IFs is linked to their ability to attract external revenues (growth in media rights, fees paid by host countries/ cities, sponsorship from marketing their world championships), increases in their IOC funding and their internal management strategies (leadership and specialisation and standardisation needs linked to the diversification of tasks and activities: marketing, sustainability, antidoping, digital communication, etc.). For example, FIFA’s income from World Cup media rights rose from $110 million in 1994 to $2.4 billion in 2014 and $3.4 billion in 2022. As another example, although the IOC began redistributing revenues in 1992, it was not until 2012 that the sums involved became large enough to allow small IFs to recruit significant numbers of professional staff (see Table 1.4). Three other factors have pushed IFs to increase their technical expertise over the last few years: the development of and through sport (via solidarity programmes for their national federations), the fight to protect sport’s integrity and the need to harness digital technologies (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and overthetop broadcasting of competitions) to build fan communities and associated marketing opportunities. Indeed, IFs now compete to build the largest possible fan base, as this is one of the criteria the IOC uses to determine an IF’s share of redistributed Olympic revenues. These criteria also include the extent to which an IF applies the IOC’s good governance principles, its actions to grow its sport and its contribution to the Olympic Games’ popularity and economic success (e.g., ticket sales, television audience). Internally, it is an IF’s leaders who decide whether to start or accelerate a professionalisation process. Presidents and/ or general managers draw up and implement management 42 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems tools such as strategic plans, commercial and marketing strategies, digital strategies and a strategy for growing the sport around the world. To this end, they recruit experts from inside and outside sport to meet new demands (e.g., communication, legal, human resources, commercial) and to further optimise activities likely to increase revenues, such as marketing and events. This specialisation of functions has complexified IFs’ organisational structures and led to a need for standardisation. Everincreasing revenues from TV rights and continued growth in the sums redistributed from the Olympic Games have impacted every IF’s business model and resource structure. The total amount redistributed to summer Olympic IFs every four years has risen from $37.6 million in 1992 to $523 million for 2012– 2016 (athletics receives the largest sum – $39.5 million, the ‘smallest’ IFs receive $13 million). A similar sum was redistributed for the following fouryear cycle, awarded after the Tokyo Olympic Games. At the same time, small Olympic IFs have become dependent on these redistributed revenues. As Clausen and Bayle (2018) showed (see Table 1.4), IFs such as World Rowing and the International Canoe Federation depend on Olympic revenues, whereas the Fédération Internationale de Hockey and International Ski Federation have ‘mixed’ business models centred around a combination of Olympic revenues and marketing international events (TV rights and sponsorship). FIFA’s and World Rugby’s business models are based on a single, extremely lucrative mega event whose globalised media rights have skyrocketed in recent years. Indeed, revenue from the Men’s World Cup enables FIFA to finance all its other international events (women and juniors), which currently make losses, redistribute a minimum of $1 million to each of its 211 national federations to grow football and invest several million dollars in its FIFA Forward football development programme. The UCI has an unusual business model in that it obtains a large proportion of its revenues (40%) from royalties and licence fees paid by event organisers (calendar taxes, organisation fees) and professional teams. Such eventsbased strategies have resulted in many IFs having increasingly commercial objectives, which is not without risk should an IF become overly dependent on commercial income (as shown when the COVID19 pandemic led to the cancellation of most sports competitions). An overly commercial focus may also result in an IF losing sight of its mission and values and increase the risk of it spending excessive sums on operating costs (e.g., luxurious offices, plush banquets, exorbitant travel expenses) and too little on important but often costly issues such as protecting sport’s integrity, an issue that often consumes 30% or more of an IF’s budget.37 Looking beyond business models and professionalisation, an analysis of IFs’ strategies and structures reveals four general categories of IFs. 1.2.1.1 Four Categories of IFs Clausen and Bayle (2018) analysed the structures and strategies of 22 Olympic IFs, focusing on three structure variables and four strategy variables. The structural Olympic Governance under Pressure 43 Table 1.4 Structure, Revenues and Expenditure of Seven IFs IF Structure Revenue (2016– 2019) Expenditure (2016– 2019) Members Employees 2019 Total Ol. Ev. Adm. Ev. Dev. Model based on a mega event FIFA 211 >600 $6.6 billion 0.4% 96% 14% 45% 35% World Rugby 120 150– 200 $459 million - 73% 27% 39% 34% Model dependent on Olympic revenues World Rowing 148 19 $29 million 56% 32% 57% 29% 14% International Canoe Federation 171 10– 12 $18 million 85% 5% 43% 11% 1% Mixed model Fédération Internationale de Hockey 132 36 $45 million 34% 27% 56% 28% 17% International Ski Federation * 128 60– 70 $84 million 41% 50% 44% 10% 24% Taxcollector model UCI 174 >100 $190 million 13% 65% 45% 44% 11% Source: IF annual reports. Notes: Revenues from: Ol. = Olympics; Ev. = events. Expenditure on: Adm. = administration; Ev. = events; Dev. = development. *2015– 2018 (for Winter Olympic IFs). newgenrtpdf 44 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems variables were federation size, measured by the number of salaried headquarters staff in 2016/ 2017; business model, measured by the ratio of commercial revenues (e.g., TV rights, sponsorship) to other revenues (e.g., redistributed by the IOC, membership fees) between 2012 and 2015; and solidarity, measured by the percentage of total expenditure an IF redistributed to its members in 2012– 2015. The four strategy variables were: image/ reputation, based on whether the press had reported scandals involving the IF since 2005; strategic plan, evaluated by whether an IF has a publicly available strategic plan; communication, especially its digital strategy for 2016/ 2017, evaluated via the rankings contained in REDTORCH’s Sport on Social 2017 report; and accountability. In line with Chappelet, Bayle and Clausen (2020), this final variable combined financial transparency (i.e., publication of financial audits), athletes’ contributions to the board’s decisions (i.e., right to vote), publication of official reports (i.e., regular publication of activity reports and minutes of meetings) and the existence of an ethics commission. It also included the presence of term limits for the IF’s president (maximum of three 4year terms). Clausen and Bayle’s analysis of these seven variables revealed four ideal types of IF: market dominant, marginalised, innovative and traditionalist. • Marketdominant IFs have substantial financial resources, an image tarnished by numerous scandals, a formal accountability system and a welldefined longterm strategy. They invest large sums in growing and globalising their sport, conquering new markets and supporting their member associations. Most IFs of this type have a strong social media presence and engagement. Their large commercial revenues make these IFs more susceptible to corruption during leadership elections and when attributing major events to host countries/ cities. To regain credibility, legitimacy and their stakeholders’ trust, they are more likely to adopt formal accountability standards and to develop a longterm strategy. In addition, they have the necessary human and financial resources in communication and crisis management to respond effectively when problems arise. IFs in this category include FIFA, the International Volleyball Federation, World Athletics, World Rugby and the UCI. However, the UCI’s revenues are quite small compared with cycling’s total economy and the richest cycling teams have larger budgets than the UCI. Hence, the notion of market domination is relative. • Marginalised IFs are at the opposite end of the scale to marketdominant IFs. They generally have low revenues, a good image and a vague strategy with no formal strategic plan. Many IFs in this category govern sports that are expensive to do, so they have quite small global communities. Because they are highly dependent on redistributed Olympic revenues, these IFs try to strengthen their positions within the Olympic movement by aligning themselves with the IOC’s expectations, as set out in the Olympic Agenda 2020. Scandals in these IFs are rare, but their weak business models make them vulnerable to political or geopolitical ‘takeovers’, as occurred when a rich Russian patron was elected president of the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime in 2008. This risk led World Olympic Governance under Pressure 45 Rowing to add a clause to its statutes to prevent anyone from outside rowing becoming the federation’s president. IFs in this category include the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime, International Canoe Federation, World Rowing and World Sailing. • Innovative IFs work hard to expand their community of member associations and to grow their sport. This strategy, which is often driven by a powerful president or general manager, leads these IFs to provide (very) large amounts of support to their members and their sport and to be very active on social media. IFs in this category are dynamic and proactive and set out their mediumand longterm objectives in a strategic plan. Despite their efforts to attract new investors and enter new markets, redistributed Olympic revenues still account for a substantial proportion of their revenues, so they have to comply with the IOC’s injunctions while trying to meet their partners’ demands. IFs in this category include the Fédération Internationale de Hockey, International Ski Federation and World Wrestling Union. • Traditionalist IFs are the polar opposite of innovative IFs. They depend largely on redistributed Olympic revenues and spend a large proportion of their budgets on administration and very little on growing their sport and supporting their members. Many of these IFs have had the same leader for many years and have tarnished images due to problems of integrity (doping and corruption) or poor governance (independence/ quality of leaders). These problems tend to be the result of outdated structures and procedures, deficient governance and a lack of professionalism. These IFs are more intent on maintaining the status quo than on evolving, and they attach particular importance to preserving their sport’s traditions. Hence, they do not tend to have mediumto longterm strategic plans. IFs in this category include the World Curling Federation, International Wrestling Federation and International Shooting Sport Federation. This typology can be used to identify which Olympic IFs have modified the way they operate since the COVID19 pandemic. At the same time, many changes to a federation’s structure and strategy are based on formal criteria whose implementation must be studied casebycase to determine how well these criteria have been applied and whether changes have real effects. The fact that FIFA came out top in the Sports Governance Observer’s 201538 ranking of IFs’ governance at the same time the FIFAgate scandal erupted illustrates another problem: IFs often use their institutional ripostes to ward off criticism (from the media, NGOs, public authorities and other stakeholders) of how they are governed, rather than to implement real change. Hence, it can be difficult to reliably evaluate the true impacts of reforms on an organisation’s governance and management tools and systems. Indeed, many IF executives’ prime concern is to maintain their positions and their geopolitical and commercial power within the federation, an attitude that can lead to tensions with the federation’s professional administrators. In periods of crisis, this friction can result in significant numbers of employees leaving, taking with them considerable knowledge and expertise. For example, almost 50% of the UCI’s staff either 52 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 1.2.3.1 Funding and Delivering Olympic Games Once an edition of the Olympic Games has been attributed and the IOC, local NOC and city council have signed the Host City Contract, the future host sets up an OCOG. Since 2012, summer and winter OCOGs have been required to stage the Paralympic Games under the auspices of the International Paralympic Committee, in addition to the Olympic Games. In 2021, the IOC modified the TOP programme, so its partners also sponsor the Paralympic Games, and the International Paralympic Committee receives a proportion of the programme’s revenues. Centralising the rights to and management of the Paralympic Games in this way generates more revenues for the International Paralympic Committee by raising the Paralympic Games’ profile and reducing costs. One of the biggest changes to how the Olympic Games are delivered is the increasing use of public– private partnerships, ‘with a greater or lesser inclination to the public sector (Beijing 2008, Sochi 2014) or the private sector (Salt Lake City 2002), depending on the host country’s traditions and its NOC’s autonomy’ (Chappelet, 2020). Most OCOGs are private, nonprofit associations (e.g., Paris 2024) but financed by commercial resources (revenues awarded by the IOC, domestic sponsorship and ticketing). They must work closely with the host city and other public bodies, which want to maximise the returns on the public investments made in connection with the Olympic Games. All host nations since 2000 have introduced specific legislation for the Olympic Games (often called ‘Olympic laws’) covering areas such as tax exemptions, rules on advertising hoardings and planning requirements. Also since 2000, host countries have created adhoc public agencies to build or renovate the facilities required for the Olympics and to organise services such as transportation. Governments generally appoint a Games Minister and sometimes set up an adhoc body to coordinate the country’s Olympic stakeholders. 1.2.3.2 The Paris 2024 OCOG The French government continued this tradition in May 2022 by appointing a Minister of Sport and the Olympic Games for Paris 2024. In addition, an interministerial commissioner to the Paris Olympic Games, with delegates in several ministries (culture, education, health), represents the French government and coordinates its work with the OCOG (Figure 1.1). The company responsible for delivering Olympic and Paralympic facilities (SOLIDEO) is an industrial and commercial public institution presided over by the mayor of Paris, who represents the local authorities involved, which, in conjunction with the state, provides half of the OCOG’s budget (€4.4 billion). France’s auditor general (Cour des comptes) checks the OCOGs’ and SOLIDEO’s accounts every year, as required by the Olympic Act parliament passed on 26 March 2018. Separating roles and budgets in this way makes costs more transparent by showing symbolically that the OCOG has private funding and that the other bodies are investing this public money for the future and Olympic Governance under Pressure 53 for the Games’ legacy. Sharing and presenting the cost of the Paris Olympics in this way makes the expenditure more acceptable to the media and the public. The IOC oversees the whole process via a Coordination Commission, chaired by an IOC member, which can apply pressure should problems arise (late delivery, security measures, etc.) or suggest modifications and arbitrages (budget, competition sites, transportation, etc.). Given their differing interests and political manoeuvring, governing and coordinating the actors involved is complex, as is controlling the OCOG’s and SOLIDEO’s budgets. A year before Paris 2024, the French government gave a clear message that it was taking in hand key aspects of the Games, notably their cost, announcing there would be no ‘Olympic Games tax’.50 It will also supervise the key issues of transportation and security (the government is responsible for security outside competition venues, and the OCOG is responsible for security inside venues). These two aspects of Paris 2024 are particularly sensitive as, for the first time, the Olympic Games opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium but along the banks of the Seine, thereby allowing up to 326,000 spectators (reduced, for security reasons, from the 2 million spectators announced in 2021) to watch the event. Most of the OCOG’s public funding is earmarked for the Paralympic Games, in line with commitments included in the bid. Successive reevaluations of the OCOG’s budget due to inflation and increases in certain items, notably security, have seen the total increase from €3.8 billion in 2018 to €4.38 billion. The OCOG obtains most of its funding from three private sources: the IOC, ticket sales and domestic partners. The IOC’s contribution to OCOGs, set out in the Host City Contract, includes both cash (€1.22 billion, with €750 million from TV rights and €470 million from TOP partnerships) and services in kind (airline tickets, provision of vehicles and sports equipment, specialist consultancy services). Figure 1.1 Bodies Responsible for Delivering the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. 54 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems Ticketing, corporate hospitality and tiein products are expected to raise €1.56 billion, with most of this sum (€1.1 billion) coming from the sale of 10.5 million tickets for the Olympic Games and 3.4 million tickets for the Paralympic Games. London 2012 sold 97% of available tickets, but the COVID19 pandemic prevented any tickets from being sold for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022. Ticket sales for Paris 2024 will be centralised through the IOC’s exclusive worldwide hospitality supplier, the American company On Location, with income shared between the IOC, the OCOG and France’s NOC. The OCOG also receives income from its licencing programme for using the Games’ logo, especially its Olympic mascot (€127 million). The OCOG has defined three levels of domestic partner (premium partner, official partner and official supporter) with different levels of contribution, exposure and rights. Paris 2024 will have a total of 62 sponsors, including the IOC’s 15 TOP partners (AB inBev, the world’s biggest brewer, joined the original 14 TOP partners at the beginning of 2024), who have the same rights as the five premium domestic partners. Paris’s objective is to earn €1.2 billion from its partners, a similar sum to that earned by London 2012 and Rio 2016 but almost twoandahalf times less than the recordbreaking $3.24 billion earned by Tokyo 2020’s domestic sponsorship programme. This resource structure means the Olympic Games is a commercially funded event, whereas the public perceives it as a commons with substantial public commitments and funding. This can lead to contradictions between the OCOG presenting the Games as an inclusive event for all (it’s slogan is ‘Games Wide Open’) and certain oftcriticised aspects of the event, including high ticket prices;51 the ban on drinking alcohol in Olympic venues for most spectators but not for VIPs in hospitality lounges (a result of French law, not Olympic rules); the high salaries paid to the OCOG’s executives, even though it is a nonprofit association and reliant on the work of 50,000 volunteers; the high cost of the Olympic Torch relay for the départements it goes through (€180,000 of public money for one day) compared with the generally modest benefits it brings; and the relay’s private partnerships with two of the IOC’s TOP partners (CocaCola and AirBnB) and a Paris 2024 premium partner (the French banking group BPCE). An OCOG’s primary role is to deliver a wellorganised mega event and make it a unique festive occasion for all. But, as France’s auditor general noted in 2023, the event’s legacy is another ‘major condition determining the Olympic Games’ acceptability’ (Cour des comptes, 2023). 1.2.3.3 The Controversial Issue of Impacts and Legacy Legacy is the term the IOC, media and politicians use to describe an Olympic Games’ mediumto longterm impacts. These impacts can be divided into seven categories: • Accelerating the construction or renovation of urban infrastructure and facilities. Most of the urban development associated with Paris 2024 will be in the Olympic Governance under Pressure 55 SeineSaintDénis département. Urban renewal projects associated with the 2000 and 2012 Olympic Games transformed, respectively, the Western suburbs of Sydney and the East of London (Wolfe et al., 2021). • Increasing participation in sport and strengthening the host country’s sporting culture. • Improving the efficacy and efficiency of a country’s sport system (medals, participation in sport, registered players). In France, this will require more professional, more effective and more responsible governance of NFs, from their headquarters to individual clubs. • Providing economic benefits (increase tourism through shortterm windfall effects, despite the impact of evictions) and psychosocial benefits (national pride and cohesion), which experts often contest over the longer term due to the difficulty of measuring these benefits and establishing clear causal relationships (Scheu, Preuß and Könecke, 2021). • Setting up specific bodies and policies to build/ renovate sports facilities. • Creating formal and informal partnerships and building expertise (Chappelet, 2016). • Raising the host city’s/ country’s international profile, by building the city’s image, marketing the country and/ or using sport as an instrument of soft power/ diplomacy. Host cities/ countries can achieve these objectives and effects more easily if they are associated with support policies drawn up and implemented long in advance (notably by the sports sector and public authorities). They are also easier to justify and achieve for an emerging country. Whether a host city/ country builds a successful Olympic legacy depends on the country’s political, economic and social situation (Rio 2016 took place during a severe political and economic crisis in Brazil; COVID 19 cast a shadow over Tokyo 2020;52 Paris 2024 could be marred by the violent social protests that have afflicted France since the late 2010s) and even on the international context (wars in Ukraine and Gaza for Paris 2024). France is already the world’s most popular tourist destination, a leading sporting nation, an experienced organiser of major sport and cultural events, and one of the world’s most influential countries in terms of soft power. Moreover, it is historically and culturally a ‘Terre de Jeux’, a label launched by the organisers to promote the Olympic Games to their partners and the public. 1.2.3.4 A Catalyst for Transforming a Country? France and the 2024 Olympic Games The first question to ask when a city and a country decide to bid for the Olympic Games is why. What do they expect to achieve? The Olympic Games can and should be the heart of a 20to 30year project to meet a territory’s and/ or community’s needs. Before entering their bid, candidates must find a political and social consensus on how to fulfil these needs. It is an opportunity for a country 56 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems to unite behind a major project and to affirm its power and influence to the whole world. So how can France use the Olympic Games to bring about the desired political, economic and social transformation? France must overcome three main challenges if it is to achieve this objective: • It must build a sense of community by obtaining a consensus ‘from the bottom up’, which means involving ordinary citizens, as well as the public authorities, businesses, unions and community organisations.53 • It must get actors to work collectively by breaking down ‘silo politics’ (within levels and sectors: public, private, charitable) and overturning centralism, conservatism, boundaries and statutes. • It must stop viewing sport and physical activity in terms of performance, measured by indicators such as annual growth and numbers of medals, and start seeing them as a longterm means to improving people’s lives. Do countries do enough to meet these challenges when they host the Olympic Games? The Paris 2024 OCOG promised a ‘revolutionary Games’, symbolised by a series of mascots in the shape of Phrygian caps (which have come to symbolise the French revolution), but its efforts to promote sport initially went little further than repeating the slogan ‘Move More’, in line with President Macron’s desire to ‘get France into sport’. The Olympic Games can incarnate much more and overcome political divides by making sport a key tool for meeting future challenges in areas such as digitalisation, sustainability, gender equality, sedentary lifestyles (Neville et al., 2022), ageing and giving young people confidence in the future. To this end, the ideas of bringing the nation together through sport54 and building a sporting nation began featuring more regularly in the sport ministry’s and OCOG’s communication in the final year before the Olympic Games. Bringing the nation together through sport means using sport to promote national unity, encourage positive values and stimulate social and economic development. To achieve this, Olympic Games host countries (and countries in general) must take a longterm view of sport as an essential tool in the fields of: • Education: Not only ensure minimum daily amounts of physical activity at primary school (set at 30 minutes in France) and minimum weekly hours of sport at secondary school (four hours at junior high school and two hours at high school) but also generalise, and not just during the Olympic year, the use of games, sport and Olympism as tools to develop young people’s selfawareness and to encourage them to accept others and their differences. A more ambitious project would include modifying the school day to leave afternoons free for extracurricular sport (as in Germany and Scandinavia) and expanding sportstudy programmes and highschool sportstudy sections. • Youth and intergenerational ties: Support and promote volunteerism and encourage young people to help others (community service, voluntary work, Olympic Governance under Pressure 57 international volunteering, intergenerational teams, etc.). These activities create solidarity and form an essential base for society and democracy. • Health: Revise the health system to incorporate sport as a preventive and therapeutic tool (e.g., France’s 500 sporthealth centres programme, launched in 2019; doctors prescribing sport as therapies (Dalla Pria, Andrieu and Mikulovic, 2021), although health insurance policies encouraging this approach need to be generalised. • Economic development: Create jobs, use sport and voluntary work in innovation, entrepreneurship and management training courses and improve working conditions for employees. • Social inclusion: School of life and second chances for people who dropped out of the school system or who are on the margins of society; improve the integration of people with disabilities (Charrier, Éloi and Joing, 2021). • Planning: Use town planning and territorial development to promote active mobility, which can almost immediately reduce both modern lifestyles’ impact on the environment and the incidence of many nontransmissible diseases (WHO, 2021). For London 2012, in addition to the actions taken by LOCOG, the British government set five ‘legacy promises’ for the Games (Chappelet, 2020). These five promises, set out in a document published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, were as follows: • Make the United Kingdom a worldclass sporting nation. • Transform the heart of East London (the site of the Olympic Park). • Inspire a new generation of young people to take part in local volunteering, cultural and physical activity. • Make the Olympic Park a blueprint for sustainable living. • Demonstrate the United Kingdom is a creative, inclusive and welcoming place to live in, visit and for business. In 2009, the government added a sixth objective ‘Bring about lasting changes to the life experiences of people with a disability’. These promises were reformulated slightly and then encapsulated during the Games in the very general and motivating slogan: ‘Inspire a generation’. This type of prospective legacy can be perceived as hollow words if it is not accompanied by concrete policies and funding or by the cultural changes needed to achieve it. For example, studies have shown that: • The renovation of East London led to the eviction of lowerincome people and the area’s gentrification (Watt, 2013). • The London Olympic Games were not followed by actions in favour of school sport, which received less support from public bodies (Kohe and BowenJones, 2016). 58 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems • Governance of the London 2012 legacy was too topdown and did not sufficiently involve local actors (Girginov, 2012). • Disabled people’s organisations have criticised the Games’ impacts on people with disabilities (Brittain and Beacom, 2016). • Brexit and the economic crisis have greatly reduced public funding for grassroots sport. Paris 2024 has already made some symbolic commitments: • Ensure gender parity, as promised by the IOC. There will be strict gender parity among the 10,500 athletes qualified for the Games, which will include eight new mixed events. • Deliver the ‘greenest’ Games in history by halving greenhouse gas emissions compared with London 2012 and Beijing 2016. This will involve adopting innovative policies using the circular economy, but most of the ‘reduction’ will be achieved through carbon offsetting. • Implement a widereaching legacy and sustainability plan. The 170 measures listed in this plan, adopted in 2019, include actions to improve sports infrastructure; increase participation in sport, employment and volunteering; improve transportation and accessibility; address societal issues (gender equality, disability, discrimination, etc.); develop the sports economy; and improve France’s image. To help build this legacy, the OCOG has set up a ‘Paris 2024 endowment fund’ to advise and support sportbased community projects promoting health, wellbeing, the pleasure of learning, civic engagement, social inclusion, solidarity, equality and the environment. It is presented as a platform for social innovation through sport. In addition, the OCOG has launched a multidisciplinary ‘cultural Olympiad’ involving several thousand arts and culture events between 2021 and 2024, run in conjunction with cultural organisations and designed to bring together the worlds of culture and sport. For sport to play the societal role currently expected of it, it must go beyond existing schemes to increase its social efficacy (social return on investment) and efficiency (less expenditure on security, health, energy, etc.). This will require new modes of funding to complement public funding, such as solidaritybased/ green/ responsible finance, social bonds, public– private partnerships, patronage and microcredit. A common fear is that private and public investment in sport will fall after the Olympic Games, given the intense focus and growth of sports investments in the run up to the event. Clearly, the Olympic Games cannot cure all of society’s problems and overcome declinist rhetoric, but it can provide hope for a new way of living and working together. It can be the catalyst and nucleus of a more ambitious sporting project over a period of 20 to 30 years, as Brisbane 2032 hopes to achieve through its ‘Elevate 2042’ legacy project.55 To achieve these goals and go beyond delivering a highquality but ephemeral sports competition and festive occasion, multilevel/ Olympic Governance under Pressure 59 multisector funding must be combined with partnership policies and individual/ collective participation aimed at making physical activity a nation’s ‘beating heart’. This movement could build on everexpanding worldwide initiatives to increase physical activity’s role in health and wellbeing. To this end, in 2020 the International Society for Physical Activity, whose mission is to make physical activity a global priority, published a report appealing for investment in physical activity in eight areas: wholeofschool programmes; active transport; active urban design; healthcare; public education, including mass media; sport and recreation for all; workplaces; and communitywide programmes. In the 2010s, the Association for International Sport for All and Evaleo drew on pioneering work by the city of Liverpool to set up the ‘global active cities’ programme. Supported by the IOC since 2017, this programme encourages cities to promote health and physical activity.56 Moreover, some IFs have moved away from focusing solely on competitive sport and joined the global fight to encourage physical activity for all. Such initiatives include the International University Sports Federation’s ‘healthy campus’ programme, launched in 2020.57 Although countries/ cities do not need the Olympic Games to put into practice the idea of ‘living better together through sport’, the Olympic Games can trigger and/ or boost efforts to achieve a transformation in people’s attitudes towards physical activity. Another important issue for the Olympic Games (and other major international sports events) is how to respond to other stakeholders’ increasingly vocal demands. 1.2.4 Athletes and NGOs Athletes and large NGOs have gained much greater influence within the Olympic movement over the last few decades, largely due to the attention the media give to these two key stakeholders’ declarations. As a result, the IOC and IFs can no longer afford to ignore their demands and criticisms. 1.2.4.1 Athletes’ New Demands The world’s best athletes competing against each other is what makes the Olympic Games so spectacular and prestigious. While it is the athletes who give the Olympic Games their value, the Olympic Games’ prestige gives value to elite athletes. To a much greater extent than other international sports events, the Olympic Games’ symbolism goes beyond sporting performance (assembling the best athletes from all five continents, parading with one’s national Olympic team at the opening ceremony, building friendships between thousands of athletes in the Olympic village, etc.). This is why the biggest stars from the world’s most lucrative professional sports (basketball, football,58 golf, tennis,59 etc.) want to compete in the Olympic Games and, if possible, win a (gold) medal. They are looking to add a little soul, through the Olympic dream and magic, to their sporting lives and achievements in a unique moment of patriotic (con)fraternity shared with the best athletes in the world’s biggest sports. Consequently, the Olympic Games is unique among major 60 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems sports events in that the balance of power lies with the organisers, rather than these stars, and business appears to take a back seat, although star athletes’ IFs and NFs have to iron out certain legal details to ensure their participation.60 In less professional and less rich sports, the Olympic Games are essential to an elite athlete’s fame and finances (bonuses paid by states, regions, cities, NOCs, federations and sponsors if they win medals). Many Olympic athletes, especially those in emerging countries, have very low incomes and are in precarious socioeconomic positions. Athletes in individual sports also lack social security protection.61 Their dependency on the Olympic Games increases their sociopsychological vulnerability when they are off form or injured and when they perform badly or are unable to compete, which increases the risk of isolation, depression and doping (Hughes and Leavey, 2012). The Olympic Games’ exceptional nature and rarity (every four years), elite athletes’ youth and insouciance and the lack of a collective body to defend their interests help explain why athletes have rarely insisted on their rights and revenues from the Olympic business. In contrast to world championships, where most IFs have begun paying bonuses to medal winners, World Athletics is the only IF to have indicated its intention to reward medallists at the Olympic Games. Despite this decision’s potential impact on other IFs, World Athletics has decided to award a $50,000 prize to each of the 48 athletics gold medal winners at the Paris 2024 Olympics and to expand the programme to silver and bronze medallists as of the 2028 Olympic Games. World Athletics’ president defended this decision, saying: ‘I think it is important we make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is’.62 For the moment, the IOC has been able to head off demands for it and/ or OCOGs to remunerate the 10,500 athletes who take part in the Olympic Games by arguing that it is up to NFs, NOCs, governments and/ or sponsors to compensate athletes for their Olympic performances, that it provides services to athletes during and after their careers via the Athlete365 platform, launched in 2017, that it supports NOCs and athletes who are the most in need via Olympic Solidarity grants and that it redistributes 90% of its revenues to its members. Nevertheless, this position is likely to collapse one day, as shown by the 2023 Women’s World Cup. FIFA used to pay compensation/ bonuses to NFs who took part in the competition, but not to players, and some NFs, but not all, redistributed a proportion of these sums to their players (30% in France). After taking their NF to court for sex discrimination, in 2022 the United States’ women’s football team obtained an agreement guaranteeing them the same pay as players on the men’s national team. Faced with such legal risks and the socioeconomic precarity of professional women footballers around the world (according to FIFPro the mean annual salary of a professional woman footballer is €13,000), FIFA decided to pay its performance bonuses directly to players, with sums rising from €30,000 for players in teams eliminated after the first round to €270,000 for players on the winning team. In other words, FIFA compensates the 22 players in every team that competes in the World Cup finals (704 players in total). Olympic Governance under Pressure 61 Athletes, often advised and influenced by their entourage (coaches, friends, parents, marketing, legal and financial advisors, etc.) and requiring evermore financial resources to remain competitive, are becoming more vocal in their demands. Athletes in team sports belong to clubs/ professional leagues and some athletes in individual sports belong to academies or have private managers (e.g., distance runners, especially those from Africa). They may be required to skip some major international competitions either for sporting reasons (recovery, protect their health) or for financial/ contractual reasons (so they can compete in more lucrative events or events stipulated in their contracts). It is for these reasons that some athletes in North America’s professional leagues do not take part in the Olympic Games or world championships. Athletes may skip some major international competitions (e.g., Commonwealth Games, football’s Africa Cup of Nations) to protect their financial interests or their careers. Together with geopolitical issues, these commercial aspects increasingly raise the question of who truly ‘controls’ athletes and their participation in competitions: the Olympic movement and sport federations? Governments? Commercial stakeholders? Athletes’ demands cover numerous issues, including conditions for competing in the Olympic Games (training conditions, remuneration, social security and retirement provision, insurance against injury, etc.), involvement in governance decisions (election of executives, designation of host cities and countries for competitions), the way competitions are run (changes to rules, timing and conditions of competitions, equipment used, etc.) and the sponsors with which they will be explicitly or implicitly associated. They also want the freedom to express their opinions on political and social issues, notably via social media. In theory, athletes now have more say in the governance of Olympic organisations, notably through the athletes commissions that have become quasiobligatory for large sport organisations (which is a way of controlling athletes internally and avoiding them forming external unions) and, in some cases, through reserved seats for athletes on an organisation’s executive body. This is the case for numerous IFs, NFs and NOCs who reserve (only) one seat for an athlete. According to Chappelet (2023, p. 55), ‘Some countries have passed legislation requiring a higher quota (e.g., athletes must be granted a third of the seats on the United States Olympic Committee’s board)’. A growing number of former athletes are going on to occupy senior positions in the governance of world sport. Prominent examples include Thomas Bach, who became president of the IOC; Michel Platini, who became president of UEFA; Sebastien Coe, who became president of World Athletics; Samuel Eto, who became president of the Cameroon Football Federation; JeanChristophe Rolland, who became president of World Rowing; and Tony Estanguet, who presided the OCOG for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Following the lead set by NOCs and Olympic IFs, since 2000 the IOC has coopted 15 members from among Olympic athletes.63 These advances give athletes more opportunities to express their opinions and demands, but their power remains limited as power in most IFs, NFs, NOCs and the IOC remains centralised in the hands of the organisation’s president. The risk for the IOC and IFs is that 68 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems process for the 2030 Winter Games. A new framework for staging the Winter Olympics is needed in today’s warming world. Although the international community can be proud of the Olympic Games and their ability to bring together young people, countries and cultures from all around the globe, the conditions (governance, funding, sustainability, integrity, etc.) in which these Games are held must change. Holding an Olympic Games for each of the four seasons, with one season per year over a fouryear cycle, would have several advantages. It would • Open the Olympic door to new sports and new types of sport (the Olympic label would increase these sports’ exposure, funding and professionalisation, internationally and nationally) and thereby expand and strengthen the Olympic movement by not abandoning sports to commercial organisations or selforganisation. • Encourage the cohosting of the Olympic Games by several cities and countries and thereby reduce building costs and travel by spectators. • Allow more territories on the four continents to host the Olympic Games. • Make the Olympic Games more inclusive and more diverse by holding competitions involving men/ women/ transgender people, people with and without a disability and older people, and by explicitly mixing sport and culture, sport and technology, and sport and the environment, and creating multinational and multicultural teams. • Be better for the climate and more sustainable by being attributed to host regions that meet key environmental criteria (altitude and greater guarantee of snow, preserving ecosystems, etc.) and which have existing facilities. • Revitalise the Olympic business model, which currently relies heavily on American companies (media rights and TOP sponsors). By seeking new sources of funding, the two new Olympic Games could generate billions in revenue for the IOC and Olympic movement. • Allow the IOC to position the Spring and Autumn Olympic Games as ecoresponsible events by redistributing a proportion of their revenues to disadvantaged countries for use in sport development and sport for development projects led by local NGOs. • Regenerate the Olympic project and its goal of building a better world through sport. Each of the four Olympic Games could be awarded to a territory on one of the four continents, and this territory could host three successive editions of the Games to avoid building facilities for each edition. This new 4season, 4continent, 12year rotation would breathe new life into the Olympic spirit, reduce costs, reduce carbon emissions and favour organisational learning. It would also enable host territories to turn the Olympics into a heritage event and thereby optimise their legacy, both regional and universal, as desired by the Olympic community. It could be argued that holding an Olympic Games every year, which is already almost the case with Olympic Governance under Pressure 69 the two Olympic Games and two Youth Olympic Games, would depreciate the ‘Olympic product’. But these fourseason Games would not necessarily be of the same size or have the same targets and goals. They would be placed in the international calendar in such a way as to leave appropriate slots for IFs’ world championships and for the other international multisport games the IOC sponsors (World University Games, Asian Games, Mediterranean Games and Commonwealth Games). Notes 1 Some of the information and analyses included in this section were drawn from: Bayle, E. (2024) ‘Changes to the IOC’s governance during Thomas Bach’s presidency: Intense institutional work to achieve balance and compromise’, Sport in Society, pp. 1– 25, doi: https// doi.org/ 10.1080/ 17430 437.2024.2310 696 2 In 1987, Bennis and Nanus proposed the acronym VUCA for these four adjectives, which have influenced the strategic leadership of organisations in numerous business sectors. 3 3.6 billion viewers for London 2012, 3.2 billion for Rio 2016 and 3.05 billion for Tokyo 2020. 4 In August 2023, the BRICS group invited Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina to join them to form a powerful rival to the United States. This new grouping will come into being on 1 January 2024. 5 India’s candidate will probably be Ahmedabad, which has already undertaken to invest €721 million in building sports facilities in the prospect of hosting the Olympic Games. 6 www.ins idet hega mes.biz/ artic les/ 1141 743/ patr icknallybigreadiocfinanc ial 7 According to the Council of Europe’s 2021 European Sports Charter, sport integrity encompasses personal, competitive and organisational integrity. 8 The biannual Summer World University Games, formerly known as the Universiades, are one of the world’s biggest sports events, behind the Summer Olympic Games and Men’s Football World Cup. The 12 days of competition involve 10,000 athletes and receive 300 million internet views, as do the Winter World University Games, which last 11 days and involve 2,500 athletes. www.fisu.net/ fisueve nts/ fisusum merworlduni vers itygames/ 9 International Federation of Sport Climbing, created in 2007. 10 The IOC added skateboarding to the Olympic programme to bring the sport within the Fédération Internationale de Roller Sports (renamed World Skate in 2017), which governs other rollerskate disciplines, including artistic roller skating, speed skating, rink hockey and inline hockey. However, only skateboarding, which began as a counterculture sport, will be on the official Olympic programme. 11 In comparison, Viacom 18 paid FIFA €54 million for broadcasting rights to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. 12 Zwift (cycling), Just Dance (dancing), Gran Turismo (motor sport), Virtual Regatta (sailing), Chess, WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros (baseball), Virtual Taekwondo, Tennis Clash, Fortnite (shooting), Tic Tac Bow (archery). 13 One of the first was the Tennis Integrity Unit, created in 2018. 14 IOC (2024) Safe Sport. Available at: https:// olymp ics.com/ ioc/ safesport (Accessed: 12 March 2024). 15 EU Advocate General Rantos: The FIFAUEFA rules under which any new competition is subject to prior approval are compatible with EU competition law, Communications Directorate Press Release 205/ 22, December 2022, Unitcuria.europa.eu, CaseC333/ 21. 16 IPACS (2024) About IPACS. Available at: www.ipacs.sport/ aboutipacs 70 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 17 A major NGO has criticised the IOC’s senior managers’ remuneration: $1.426 million for the director general, $920,000 dollars for the chief operating officer, according to: www. ins idet hega mes.biz/ artic les/ 1141 368/ davidowenblogusdocum entiocfinan ces 18 P. Nally, an expert in the Olympic business, gives an estimate of 30% but without citing any sources. He also questions the failure to consolidate costs linked to the marketing company TMS (an IOCowned forprofit company that manages the IOC’s sponsorship and marketing contracts), to OBS, owned by the IOC, and to the Olympic Games. www. ins idet hega mes.biz/ artic les/ 1141 743/ patr icknallybigreadiocfinanc ial 19 Members receive €6,500 per year to cover administrative expenses and €418 for every day they work. The IOC’s president receives €225,000 per annum (Source: IOC report, 2022). 20 For a critical analysis of international sport’s codes of ethics and ethics commissions, see: Constandt and Willem (2021). 21 See McGillivray et al. (2019) for more on bidding, planning and delivering major sports events that lever human rights. 22 Francs Jeux (2023) Les Jeux des BRICS voient très grand. Available at: www.fra ncsj eux.com/ bre ves/ lesjeuxdesbricsvoi entgrand 23 The bidding process for hosting an edition of the Olympic Games leads candidate cities to overstate their cases by underestimating the cost of facilities and of staging the event. For the city that obtains the Games, this underestimation results in a substantial increase in the actual cost, which may be twice the amount originally indicated (Andreff, 2012). 24 Eleven years before the event, rather than the usual seven years. 25 In 2016, the European Olympic Committees designed a governance learning and assessment tool called SIGGS (Selfevaluation Tool on Good Governance for National Olympic Committees). www.siggs.eu/ index.html 26 Carbon offsetting is becoming increasingly controversial. A study by ETH Zurich and Cambridge University found that only 12% of carbonoffsetting projects fulfil their promises: www.resea rchcol lect ion.ethz.ch/ han dle/ 20.500.11850/ 620 307 27 After its double attribution of the 2030 and 2034 Winter Olympic Games, at the end of 2023 the IOC’s executive board announced it was looking into the idea of alternating the Winter Olympics between countries in Europe, North America and Asia with reliable climatic conditions. 28 See Chappelet, J.- L. (2023) on common theories applied to the Olympic Games, chapter 7, pp. 147– 163. 29 Dimaggio and Powell (1983) defined an organisational field as a group of organisations that belong to the same ‘area’ of institutional life. That is, an arena in which organisations recognise each other and share the same sense of reality and the same cognitive schemas and interact around institutionalised practices and forms. Thus, an organisational field comprises all the actors who help build and maintain institutions in that field. 30 The Swiss Association of Sport Managers plays this role in Switzerland. 31 Académie Internationale des Sciences et Techniques du Sport: an academic foundation set up by local universities, the IOC, the city of Lausanne and the Vaud canton. 32 Executive Masters in Sport Organisations Management, which Olympic Solidarity uses to train Olympic movement executives and managers. 33 Similarly, FIFA, in conjunction with the CIES, and the UEFA Academy offer ‘internal’ training courses for people involved in football. 34 The International Tennis Federation and World Rugby are limited partnership companies (registered in the Bahamas and Wales, respectively). World Sailing is a limited liability company (registered in the Isle of Man). 35 About 75% of the IFs based in Switzerland have their headquarters in the Vaud Canton, most frequently in Lausanne. Some IFs have relocated part of their headquarters to Olympic Governance under Pressure 71 other countries (e.g., FIFA opened an office in Paris in 2021) or have left Switzerland completely (e.g., World Aquatics announced its intention to move to Budapest in 2023). These moves can be attributed to Switzerland’s high cost of living and/ or geopolitical decisions and/ or opportunistic decisions taken by newly elected presidents. 36 Plus 40 salaried employees at the World Cycling Centre. 37 According to UCI president D. Lappartient (interview with L’Équipe on 16 May 2023), in 2022 the UCI spent $10 million of its $45 million budget on the fight against doping. Antidoping testing, carried out by the International Testing Agency since October 2020, consumes 30% of the International Weightlifting Federation’s budget. 38 This project, launched by the NGO Play the Game, with support from the Danish government and a consortium of partners, evaluates four areas of IF governance: transparency and public communication, democratic processes, internal accountability and control and societal responsibility. www.play theg ame.org/ proje cts/ spo rtsgov erna nceobser versgo/ . A version of this tool for NFs has also been drawn up: the ‘National Sports Governance Observer’. 39 ‘The main exception in Europe is Great Britain’s NOC (British Olympic Association), which is not an umbrella organisation of the United Kingdom’s NFs, as most sports have an NF for each of the United Kingdom’s ‘home nations’ (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland). It is also the case for most countries in the Commonwealth, where a ‘sport council’ regrouping all the country’s NFs exists alongside the NF (Chappelet, 2023). 40 For example, FIBA has attributed the last three men’s Basketball World Cups to countries in Asia: China in 2019, Japan/ Philippines/ Indonesia in 2023 and Qatar in 2027. Asia’s attractiveness is due to a combination of the potential for growing basketball in the region and Asian countries’ ability to pay the high fee FIBA demands for hosting the event. 41 Sheikh Talal replaced his elder brother, Sheikh Ahmad AlFahad AlSabah, who led the OCA for 30 years, until 2021. Sheikh Ahmad, an IOC member since 1992, a member of the FIFA Council, president of the Association of NOCs since 2012 and president of numerous sport organisations in Asia (handball, football, etc.) was long considered one of the most influential people in the Olympic movement. In July 2023, the IOC banned him for three years for having interfered in the recent election of the president of the Asian Olympic Council, in which his younger brother, Sheikh Talal, narrowly beat the president of World Aquatics, Husain AlMusallam. AlMusallam was himself implicated in a financial scandal that shook World Aquatics (then known as FINA) in 2017. The IOC annulled the election. See: www.ins idet hega mes.biz/ artic les/ 1138 711/ she ikhtalalelec tedocapresid ent 42 According to IOC rules, an OCOG’s executive body must include the country’s IOC member(s), the NOC’s president and general secretary and at least one member representing and chosen by the host city. 43 This organisation was established to ‘help newly independent countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, to develop their own bodies to promote the expansion of sport throughout the country’ (Source: https:// olymp ics.com/ ioc/ 1962creat ionofolym picsol idar ity#) 44 IOC (2022) Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance within the Olympic Movement. Available at: https:// still med.olymp ics.com/ media/ Docume nts/ Bey ondtheGames/ Integr ity/ BonneGouv erna nceEN.pdf 45 Experienced managers in developing countries often earn less than €1,000 dollars a month. 46 At the end of 2021 Carlos Nuzman, a former IOC member, head of the Rio Olympic Games and president of Brazil’s NOC, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for corruption relating to Rio’s winning bid to host the Olympic Games. Ireland’s Patrick Hickey, 72 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems a member of the IOC’s Executive Board and president of the European Olympic Committees, was accused of illegally selling tickets for the Rio Olympic. The president of Japan’s Olympic committee, an IOC member, was forced to resign in 2019 over suspicions of corruption with respect to the attribution of the Tokyo Olympics. Finally, a scandal involving several Japanese businessmen and Olympic Games’ sponsors resulted in two of these men receiving suspended prison sentences of several months in 2023. 47 Play the Game (2017) One in Seven Olympic Committees Are Directly Linked to Governments. Available at: www.play theg ame.org/ news/ oneinsevenolym piccom mitt eesaredirec tlylin kedtogove rnme nts/ 48 ‘Macao is a special case. This special administrative region of China has its own NOC (created in 1987), recognised by the OCA. It includes 20 NFs affiliated to Olympic IFs. Macao sends its own team to regional games in Asia through an agreement between China, Macao and the OCA. The appearance of this NOC has not posed a problem, at least on the continental level. On the other hand, its nonconformity with Olympic rules prevents it taking part in Olympic Games under its own colours’ (Chamerois, 2006). 49 Surveys conducted a year before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have produced contradictory results with only 20% of French people enthusiastic about the Olympic Games according to one survey (Les Echos – Institut Montaigne) and 72% support for Paris 2024 according to another (Toluna Harris Interactive conducted for the Paris 2024 OCOG). These results throw doubt on the survey methodologies used and the independence of the polling companies. A survey carried out by Odoxa for Winamax and RTL on 12 November 2023 found that 4% of people in the Greater Paris area intend to attend the Games, 32% of respondents looked forward to the Games’ atmosphere and 52% were either not interested or intended to leave Paris. About 15% of respondents intend to rent out their house or apartment. 50 This expression does not mean much other than that the Olympic Games will not exceed the agreed budget. And the Paris Olympics will also receive taxpayers’ money to build and renovate sports facilities, support certain projects and pay for security. The issue is whether the public funding associated with the Paris Olympics has been well used and to what it will contribute. 51 The most expensive tickets for the opening ceremony cost €2,700 and those for the finals of popular events such as swimming cost almost €1,000. On the other hand, 1 million tickets will be available at €24 and some outdoor events on the Seine will be free to watch, with no ticket required. 52 These Games came close to being cancelled and were opposed by most Japanese people. Nevertheless, the Japanese government held firm and staged a successful event, despite it being postponed for a year (while keeping the name Tokyo 2020) because of COVID 19. In light of this context, a Japanese TOP sponsor, Toyota, decided not to activate its Olympic marketing rights for the Tokyo Olympics. www.lemo nde.fr/ sport/ arti cle/ 2021/ 07/ 22/ lopp osit ionauxjeuxoly mpiq uesrev elelestirail leme ntsdujap on_ 6 0892 18_ 3 242.html 53 A massparticipation marathon during the Olympic Games and numerous cultural events bearing the Olympic label will contribute to this. 54 ‘Bring the nation together through sport’ (Faire nation par le sport) was the title of a report by Karl Olive, published on 22 February 2022. 55 IOC (2023) Brisbane 2032 Reveals 20Year Legacy Strategy Aiming for A Healthier, More Active and Inclusive Society. Available at: https:// olymp ics.com/ ioc/ news/ brisb ane2032reve als20yearleg acystrat egyaim ingforahealth iermoreact iveandinclus ivesoci ety Olympic Governance under Pressure 73 56 IOC (2017) IOC Actively Promoting Health and Physical Activity through the New International Global Active City Programme. Available at: https:// olymp ics.com/ ioc/ news/ iocactiv elypromot inghea lthandphysi calactiv itythro ughthenewintern atio nalglo balact ivecityprogra mme 57 FISU (2022) Healthy Campus Programme Passes 100 Universities Registered. Available at: www.fisu.net/ news/ fisuheal thycam pus/ fisuheal thycam pusprogra mmepas ses100unive rsit iesreg iste red 58 To avoid competition with its Men’s World Cup, FIFA allows each squad of 18 players to include only 3 players over the age of 23. This restriction does not apply to the women’s Olympic football tournament. 59 In an interview with L’Équipe published on 13 February 2024, the young Spaniard and world number 2 Carlos Alcaraz said: ‘If I had to choose for 2024, I’d rather win Olympic gold than Roland Garros’, even though the Olympic tournament does not give prize money or ATP points. 60 IFs and NFs of team sports have reached agreements with professional clubs over injury insurance for their players. 61 In France, this dates from the Act of 27 November 2015, which protects elite and professional athletes and defines their legal and social status. 62 Ingle, S. (2024) ‘Coe defends World Athletics’ move to award $50,000 to Olympic gold winners’, The Guardian, 10 April. Available at: www.theg uard ian.com/ sport/ 2024/ apr/ 10/ worldathlet icsint rodu ces50000dol larprizemoneyforolym picgoldmed alli sts (Accessed 26 April 2024). 63 Candidates must be proposed by their NOC, must have taken part in Olympic Games and must never have been sanctioned for doping. They will be elected by their peers during the Paris Olympic Games. 64 For more on athletes’ demands, see Chappelet (2023, pp. 63– 79). 65 Human Rights Watch, 16 December 2022: ‘The World Cup will come to an end without compensation for migrant workers’. 66 Alliance climatique suisse, Carbon Market Watch (Belgium), New Weather Institute (Great Britain) and Free Football and Reclame Fossietvrij (Netherlands). These organisations drew mostly on a report by the NGO Carbon Market Watch. 67 This issue was the subject of a conference involving international sport organisations, international governmental organisations and NGOs: Achieving SDGs through Sport: Partnerships and institutional responses for greater coherence and effectiveness, 5 October 2017 in Lausanne. 68 For example, Protect our Winters’ 2023 campaign called on the International Ski Federation to stop its greenwashing regarding the Alpine Ski World Cup events at Sölden (Austria) and Zermatt (Switzerland), where the use of mechanical diggers to prepare ski runs for World Cup competitions in late October and early November 2023 caused extensive damage to the areas’ glaciers (www.protec tour wint ers. ch/ fr/ ). 69 Olympic Refugee Foundation, established by the IOC in 2017 and which works with the United Nations high Commission for Refugees: https:// olymp ics.com/ cio/ news/ lolym picref ugefou ndat ionrenfo rcesonsout ienauxrefug iesdumondeent ier 70 FIFA Foundation, set up in 2018: www.fifa.com/ fr/ soc ialimp act/ fifafou ndat ion/ aboutus 71 UEFA Foundation for Children, created in 2014: https:// fondat ionu efa.org/ infor mati onsgenera les/ histo iredelafondat ion/ 72 See, for example, their highly critical report on Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing strategy, published in November 2023: www.play theg ame.org/ news/ thepowerplay ersbeh indsaudiarab iasspo rtsstrat egy/ 74 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 73 Play the Game (2023), ClearingSport: Almost 200 Experts Call for an Agency against Corruption and Crime in World Sport. Available at: www.play theg ame. org/ news/ cleari ngsp ortalm ost200expe rtscallforanage ncyagai nstcor rupt ionandcrimeinworldsport/ 74 For more on this subject, see Mangin, V. (2023), The IOC Is Under Pressure from the West, 5 July. Available at: www.swissi nfo.ch/ eng/ busin ess/ theiocisunderpress urefromthewest/ 48641 996 Bibliography Andreff, W. (2012) ‘Pourquoi le coût des Jeux Olympiques estil toujours sousestimé? La “malédiction du vainqueur de l’enchère” ’, Papeles de Europa, 25, pp. 3– 26. Bach, T. (2013) Statement on the occasion of the adoption of the resolution ‘Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal’, 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, New York, 6 November. Bayle, E. (2016) ‘Olympic social responsibility: A challenge for the future’, Sport in Society, 11, pp. 1– 15. Bayle, E. 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Some of these bodies, notably Transparency International (2016) and Play the Game, have set themselves up as counterweights to the power of the IFs and the IOC, and of the sport business in general (Geeraert, 2019). 2.1.3 Principles Underlying the Model The model presented here is founded on the idea that the mobilisation of one or more of these four types of regulation and their associated competencies can produce specific forms of regulation. Depending on a sport’s development stage (launch, growth, maturity, decline) and the internal and external crises it encounters, the actors will try to strengthen or conserve their positions to destabilise or create a new balance in the ecosystem via confrontation, negotiation and alliances requiring new compromises. The resulting configuration can affect the leadership of the entire Olympic system, as well as a specific ecosystem and its foundations. This occurred in 2015 when the American justice system’s allegations of corruption within the world football’ governing body (legal regulation, Bayle and Rayner, 2016) triggered what became known as the FIFAgate scandal. The resulting media and public outcry led to changes in the Olympic system’s political regulation via the introduction of selfevaluations of IFs, according to a protocol drawn up by the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) in 2016 (see Chapter 1). Previous scandals within FIFA had already impacted the legal regulation of sport by prompting the Swiss government to pass a new privatecorruption law (called the ‘FIFA Act’, promulgated on 12 December 2014) that imposes stricter rules on the heads of sport organisations and their entourages. Following the Festina affair at the 1998 Tour de France, which led people around the globe to view cycling as synonymous with doping, the French government played a leading role in the fight against doping by helping to create the World AntiDoping Agency in 1999 (legal and political regulation). As another example, the Bosman Ruling, published by the European Union in 1999, shook up the legal (and subsequently economic) regulation of European football, and of professional team sports in general (Garcia and Meier, 2016). These three examples illustrate the impact of external interventions on a sport’s ecosystem. More rarely, the sports movement takes steps internally to modify the prevailing paradigm to headoff the threat of changes being imposed from outside. For example, since 2013 the IOC under Thomas Bach has sought to modify the social and political regulation of international sport by adopting a new strategy (in 2014) called ‘Agenda 2020’. Moreover, the IOC has taken steps with respect to governance and ‘Olympic sustainability’ with the aim of inspiring the entire sports movement to adopt a new approach to sustainability (see Chapter 1). Using the SELP model to analyse the situations in individual sports shows how the actors in different sport ecosystems use their regulatory competencies and resources to achieve their objectives. Regulatory Systems within International Sport 85 To characterise a sport’s international ecosystem, it is necessary to identify the number and type of actors controlling the sport and determine the weight each of these actors has. Every sport’s ecosystem is either part of or directly or indirectly connected to the larger Olympic system, even in the case of nonOlympic sports. 2.1.4 The Four Key Variables in a Sport’s International Ecosystem Every sport’s international ecosystem can be characterised via four variables: a The number of actors involved. b The uniformity of international rules of play. c Who controls the international competition calendar and world rankings. d Who owns/ controls hallmark events. (a) Number of actors involved The greater the number of actors involved in controlling a sport, the more complex regulation becomes, especially if there is no obvious hierarchy among these actors. Boxing is a good example of this, as the International Boxing Association (IBA) faces several commercial boxing competition operators and a multitude of small event organisers. Moreover, the IBA lost its IOC recognition in 2023 and saw the emergence of a rival (World Boxing) for its position as the sport’s IF. Tennis’s ecosystem is also fragmented with three major operators: the International Tennis Federation (ITF); the four Grand Slam tournaments, which are run independently from the ITF but by ITF members (except for Wimbledon); and the independent men’s (ATP) and women’s (WTA) professional circuits. Exhibitionstyle competitions such as the Laver Cup, set up by Roger Federer and his agent in 2017 along a similar model to the Ryder Cup, and Ultimate Tennis Showdown, launched in 2020 by Patrick Mouratoglou, who runs an international tennis academy, feature shorterformat matches to attract a younger audience. These events have now been joined by two more exhibition matches/ tournaments: The Netflix Slam, in Las Vegas (a match between Nadal and Alcaraz), and the Six Kings Slam, held in Saudi Arabia in October 2024. This progressive deregulation of the professional tennis calendar by commercial operators makes the creation of global tennis super league look more likely. Other sports with multiple controlling actors include cycling, basketball and swimming. Cycling has four major operators: the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI, cycling’s IF); the powerful press and events group Amaury Sport Organisation, which owns the Tour de France and (since 2014) the Vuelta a Espana; the RCS Sport publishing group, which owns the Giro d’Italia; and Flanders Classics, which owns several classic races in Belgium and the Netherlands. The International Basketball Federation (FIBA) faces two very powerful and hegemonic operators: North America’s NBA, which has adopted an increasingly global 86 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems marketing strategy, and Europe’s Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, a semiclosed league formed in 2000 by a private commercial organisation called the Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB). ULEB delivers Europe’s most prestigious club title, in contrast to football, where it is the sport’s European federation, UEFA, that owns the continent’s preeminent club competition (UEFA Champion’s League). Control over international swimming recently appeared to be evolving towards a duopoly between the International Swimming Federation (FINA) and the International Swimming League (ISL), founded in 2019 by a powerful Russian oligarch. However, COVID19 curtailed the ISL’s initial ambitions, and the competition could disappear after losing a lawsuit in the United States (Inside the Games, 9 January 2023). Control over football is dominated by two nonprofit bodies: the sport’s international federation (FIFA), which owns the highly lucrative Football World Cup, and UEFA, which owns and stages the Euro and Nations League tournaments for national sides and several European club competitions (Men’s and Women’s Champions Leagues, Europa League, etc.). Although private commercial operators have attempted on numerous occasions to make inroads into the professional football event ecosystem (including the European Super League, announced in 2021 but rapidly quashed by the media), none of these efforts has succeeded. Many other sports’ ecosystems have just one dominant actor, who holds a virtual monopoly over the sport. In many entirely amateur sports (e.g., rowing, canoeing, fencing, archery), this actor is the sport’s IF. However, there are also a few new sports that do not have an IF and where the single dominant actor is a commercial company. This was the case in freeride skiing until 2023, when the Swiss company Free Ride World Tour Management, which owned the sport’s biggest professional and junior events, was bought by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Thus, historical and cultural/ identity reasons (e.g., whether a sport is global or popular on just one or two continents), combined with economic opportunism (existence or absence of a market), have led to large differences between sports in terms of the number, type, economic weight, institutional influence, legal status and objectives of the actors involved. (b) Uniformity of international rules of play The number of controlling actors and their rivalries can determine whether a sport has a uniform set of rules for all competitions (as in football) or different rules for competitions with different owners. Sports in this latter situation include basketball, where FIBA and the NBA have different rules, and tennis, where the number of sets needed to win a match differs between competitions and where, until 2023, each Grand Slam tournament had its own rules for deciding the final set. Having a uniform set of rules for all competitions throughout the world provides clarity for all of an ecosystem’s stakeholders, but whether a sport is able to achieve Regulatory Systems within International Sport 87 consensus on this issue depends on the balance of power between its ecosystem’s main actors. (c) Control over the international competition calendar and world rankings Who controls the international competition calendar and world rankings is another key aspect of international sport ecosystems. In football, FIFA and its continental and national associations have complete control over the sport’s calendar, from international competitions to continental club competitions and national professional leagues and/ or championships. As a result, avoiding clashes between major competitions is easier for football than it is for sports without unified calendars, such as basketball and ice hockey. Control over the calendar generally goes handinhand with control over world rankings and awarding titles (world champion, continental champion, etc.) and sometimes with control over major professional competitions. The UCI is an exception to this rule. Despite not owning most of road cycling’s main competitions and despite having a powerful competitor in the form of Amaury Sport Organisation, during the 2000s the UCI managed to unify the international calendar and take control over world rankings of professional riders. Moreover, it managed to persuade event organisers and teams to pay fees to feature in its international circuit, the UCI World Tour (Aubel and Ohl, 2015). If control over a sport’s international competition calendar and world rankings is fragmented, the sport is likely to be less attractive to its fans and financial backers, who find it difficult to understand the sporting hierarchy. (d) Ownership and control of hallmark events by an IF Hallmark is the term used to describe a sport’s most prestigious and most lucrative competitions, capable of generating substantial revenues either directly or indirectly via media rights and sponsorship. The Olympic Games are the hallmark event for most Olympic sports, but there are Olympic sports in which a world championship or commercial event supersedes the Olympics. These events may be held every one, two, or four years. Football’s hallmark event is the World Cup, which is owned by the sport’s IF (FIFA) and is held every four years. Other sports’ hallmark events are owned by private operators, outside the IF’s control. This is the case in cycling and tennis, where the Tour de France and four Grand Slam tournaments are more important than the Olympic Games. 2.1.5 Resources and Competencies Needed for the Four Types of Regulation Each of the four areas of regulation (social, economic, legal and political) requires specific competencies that determine how the actors in an ecosystem use resources and how they use them. 88 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 2.1.5.1 Social Regulation Social regulation shapes the framework for developing sport and/ or promoting development through sport. These initiatives, which can benefit the general population as well as a sport’s participants, contribute to the social responsibility programmes implemented by actors in a sport’s ecosystem. Worldwide sport development programmes. Do a sport’s main actors run development programs to help national federations and their clubs develop the sport (e.g., building facilities, training coaches and umpires, supporting women’s sport, promoting sport for people with disabilities, etc.)? Development through sport programmes. Do a sport’s main actors run development through sport programs, either via a foundation or via partnerships with charities or NGOs? Such programs may cover international development issues ranging from improving public health to promoting social integration and combating racism and discrimination. Solidarity with least developed countries. Do a sport’s main actors offer solidarity and aid programs to help poorer countries or countries hit by natural disasters or war? Sustainability actions. Do a sport’s main actors have a clear sustainability strategy that is visible both internally and externally? Are sustainability initiatives just greenwashing or concrete, transformational actions? 2.1.5.2 Economic Regulation Economic regulation shapes the business model adopted for a sport’s competitions and determines who, if anyone, redistributes competition revenues, how much is redistributed and to whom. Size of the global economic sector. A sport’s global economic sector corresponds to the turnover generated by manufacturers and distributors of sporting goods, event organisers and members of the leisure sector in that sport. This sector may be substantial, as in horse riding (thanks to sports betting and the stud market) and in sailing (thanks to nautical tourism), or more modest, as in fencing and wrestling. The larger a sport’s economic sector, the easier it is for organisations in that sport to generate profitable business models. Economic value and profitability of a sport’s hallmark competitions. Does a sport have one or more hallmark competitions/ events outside the Olympic Games that generate sufficient income for the actors controlling the sport/ event(s) to help fund Regulatory Systems within International Sport 89 grassroots sport? These competitions may be world championships, private commercial events and/ or an international professional circuit. Redistribution of surpluses and effects for developing sport. Is part of the surplus/ profit from major sports events redistributed to help develop the sport? What are the effects of the sums redistributed? The sport’s image and externalities. Do the public and the authorities have a positive image of the sport? Having a positive and attractive image both legitimises government support for sport and sport events and helps attract volunteers. 2.1.5.3 Legal Regulation Legal regulation shapes a sport’s international regulatory framework and the way in which sport organisations and national and international judicial bodies apply this framework. Influence on national legislation. Is a sport’s IF or another major actor able to obtain direct or indirect legislative advantages in its host country by demonstrating the importance of its events and/ or its social utility? For example, depending on where its head office is located, an IF may be able to negotiate direct and indirect financial advantages (e.g., tax breaks). Influence on European law. Is the sport’s main actor able to influence European legislation by demonstrating the importance of its events (direct or indirect advantages recognised by European law) and/ or the effectiveness of its regulatory system (training, labourmarket rules, commercialisation of sport, etc.)? Number (and relative cost) of disputes submitted to the CAS. How often do a sport’s stakeholders submit grievances to the CAS? Such litigation can have substantial costs for a sport, both directly (procedural costs and lawyers’ fees) and indirectly (damage to the sport’s image). Is the sport impacted by litigation in national courts? Such litigation, especially criminal prosecutions, may receive extensive media coverage and damage the sport’s image.4 Policy on (and relative cost of) protecting sporting integrity. Does the IF and/ or another actor allocate legal and financial resources to combat, alone or collectively, problems impacting sporting integrity (match fixing, doping, corruption, violence, racism, psychological and sexual harassment of athletes and/ or other stakeholders, etc.)? How significant are any measures taken and how independent are they? How does the federation and its members address issues affecting integrity (e.g., via ethics and/ or disciplinary committees and/ or integrity units)? Does the federation act alone or in conjunction with other actors (public authorities, specific body, etc.)? How credible are its ethics policies? 90 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 2.1.5.4 Political Regulation Political regulation aims to shape the relationships between an ecosystem’s main actors and ensure these relationships are harmonious (partnerships on principles/ actions) and productive for developing the ecosystem. Ways of achieving this include setting up discussion forums and encouraging official and/ or unofficial exchanges. Political regulation can also be perceived as a way for sitting presidents to control a federation’s internal political system (to retain their positions), notably via economic regulation (prize money awarded to athletes, stipends and/ or travel expenses paid to leaders who vote in elections). Integrity policy (doping, match fixing, etc.). Has a sport’s main actor drawn up a sporting integrity policy, either internally and/ or in conjunction with other actors, notably the World AntiDoping Agency and the International Testing Agency? How effective are these policies? How do actors work together within the sport and with external stakeholders to implement truly effective and credible policies on this issue? Have they joined/ recognised national bodies such as the national antidoping and sports integrity agencies being set up in many countries? Quality of the main actor’s governance. How good is the governance of a sport’s main actor, such as an IF? ‘Good governance’ can be assessed via the indicators drawn up by the ASOIF or, better, via other independent sets of indicators (Geeraert, 2019). In addition, more qualitative external studies and investigations by experts and investigative journalists can reveal problems such as conflicts of interest and/ or scandals. Presence of dialogue and decisionmaking mechanisms in a sport’s governance. Have an ecosystem’s actors created discussion and decisionmaking mechanisms (official or unofficial) within the sport? Do these mechanisms encourage actors to reach consensuses on important issues and produce a shared vision of how to develop the sport that incorporates different stakeholders’ interests and expectations? Power of the main actor in the governance of international sport. Does a sport’s ecosystem have a clear leader? Is the main actor’s philosophy predominantly societal (development of sport and/ or through sport) or economic (maximise profits for event owners)? The themes/ issues included within the framework described above can be used to analyse each sport’s global ecosystem and to determine how the actors in this ecosystem use the four areas of regulation and the competencies associated with each area. Such analyses shed light on the ways in which organisations gain, maintain and lose control over a sport and on how both the compromises between actors and an ecosystem’s stability/ instability impact the evolution of the sport in question and of sport in general. Regulatory Systems within International Sport 91 2.2 Five Regulation Configurations for International Sport Whereas the notion of governance describes a system’s institutional framework and decisionmaking mechanisms, the concept of regulation refers to social, legal and political modes of interaction and coordination and the economic flows within an ecosystem. To facilitate comparisons of regulatory systems, Bayle (2023) used a qualitative analysis (FoxWolfgramm, 1997) of around 30 Olympic and nonOlympic sports to identify ‘ideal’, in the Weberian sense of the term, regulation configurations in world sport. The five configurations Bayle identified are: regulation dominated by an IF, regulation coordinated by an IF, parallel regulation by an IF and a commercial body, regulation dominated by a commercial operator(s) and totally private regulation by a commercial operator(s). 2.2.1 Regulation Dominated by an International Federation In this configuration, an IF (and its continental and national federations) controls a sport’s rules of play, calculates world rankings and owns the sport’s hallmark competitions. IFs in this position generally took control of their sport during its early days and then locked out possible competitors by sanctioning clubs that did not respect their rules on releasing players to represent national teams at the IF’s competitions. Dominant IFs activate their social regulation by redistributing a proportion of their revenues to national federations, which invest these sums in development programmes.5 In a new development, which began in the late 2000s, many dominant IFs have introduced forms of political regulation to stave off threats from within their ecosystems. UEFA, for example, has brought together key stakeholders in European football – players unions, clubs, leagues – within a Professional Football Strategy Council and has allocated two seats on its executive committee to the European Club Association and one seat to the European Professional Leagues Association. As FIFA did later, UEFA has also found new compromises with respect to economic regulation, notably by paying bonuses to national associations based on their rankings and performances in the Euro tournament (since 2004), compensating clubs who release players for international duties and providing insurance for players (who are under contract to and paid by clubs) who take part in the Euro (since 2008). IFs in this category receive all the international media and commercial rights to their sport’s major competitions while transferring the risks of organising these events to national/ local public actors, who provide most of the funding, mostly indirectly. This funding sometimes takes the form of paying a fee to host a sport’s world championship/ cup, providing public subsidies and tax breaks to organising committees and seconding public authority staff to help organise an event (especially transportation and security outside venues). 92 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems The key competency used by dominant IFs and their federal networks is legalpolitical, that is, the ability to prevent commercial operators from taking control of international and national competitions. FIFA and World Rugby provide good illustrations of this model. Their organisational capacity consists of marketing one or two fouryearly megaevents over which they have a monopoly (Rugby World Cup, FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro). As Figure 2.2 shows, FIFA’s business model is centred around selling international media rights and sponsorship, mostly related to its Men’s World Cup in Brazil ($4.8 billion for 2015– 2018). This income, which amounted to $7.6 billion for the 2019– 2023 cycle and which is expected to grow to $11 billion for the 2023– 2026 cycle (FIFA, 2022) finances FIFA’s head office operations, its governance, its other lossmaking international competitions (women’s and youth) and the sums it redistributes to NFs to develop football. To ensure the staging of the World Cup and control the commitment of its key stakeholders, FIFA sets aside large sums for the tournament host ($1.64 billion for the 2014 World Cup, see Figure 2.2, relating to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil) and for the teams that take part in the World Cup finals ($42 million for the winning team, $442 million in total, distributed according to each team’s performance and to help poorer NFs send a team to the competition). It also compensates (large) professional clubs that free players to take part in the tournament and continue to pay their wages while these players are on national team duty. Finally, FIFA covers the cost of insuring players against serious injury during the tournament and helps fund football development and football development projects within the host country’s legacy programme. However, FIFA’s socalled solidarity model raises several questions. Figure 2.2 The FIFA World Cup ‘Solidarity Model’. Note: The sums indicated are in $ million. Source: FIFA (2014). Regulatory Systems within International Sport 93 • The event’s organisers receive substantial exemptions from corporate income tax. Whether these exemptions are justified is highly debatable given the amount of commercial revenue FIFA extracts from the competition, a large percentage of which is transferred to Switzerland, home to FIFA’s head office. • Similarly, is it justifiable to invest huge sums of public money in building/ renovating stadiums and setting up fan zones, etc. for such a highly lucrative commercial event? • FIFA spends considerable sums on football’s ‘governance’. These costs (bonuses paid to FIFA executives, headoffice operating costs, salary costs, cost of holding congresses and executive committee meetings, compensation paid to executives, etc.) could be reduced or optimised. • Questions can be asked about the way NFs use the development funds they receive from FIFA – efficacy and effects on growing football. Nevertheless, the sums redistributed (between $3 million and $4 million for each NF for four years) have enabled small NFs in poor countries that are entirely dependent on the revenues FIFA redistributes to professionalise (recruit professional administrative directors, technical directors, marketing managers, etc.). This form of IFdominated regulation also occurs in athletics and volleyball. World Athletics’ hallmark event, outside the Olympic Games, is its world championships, created in 1983. As a complement to this event, in 2010 it launched the Diamond League,6 to supersede the Golden League (1998– 2009), which is run by stakeholders who belong to or who have close ties with World Athletics. However, World Athletics does not control either the roadrunning or trailrunning markets, which have grown massively since the 1980s, although it regained a large degree of control over marathon running by creating the ‘World Marathon Majors’ circuit.7 Thus, the configuration in the case of marathon running is close to the regulation coordinated by an IF category described in the following section. In volleyball, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) has joined forces with an investment fund (CVC) to draw up a strategy for marketing a rich (but confusing for fans) portfolio of events. World Table Tennis has set up a circuit similar to tennis’s ATP and WTA circuits, run by a commercial company that has been under World Table Tennis’s control since 2019. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) and the International Biathlon Union (IBU) also fall into this category because, in addition to being Olympic sports, they own international professional circuits and flagship world championship competitions. Although FIS has set up a commercial company (FIS Marketing AG) in conjunction with two sports marketing firms (Tridem SA and Infront SA) to manage media and commercial rights for its events, the powerful Austrian and Swiss ski federations have sold the rights to the World Cup events they host to Infront, which resells them to broadcasters and sponsors. FIS’s latest contract with Infront, negotiated in 2023 by the federation’s new president, gives FIS ‘total control’ over contracts, guaranteed minimum sales of €600 million (over 100 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems only the United States. The International Federation of American Football (IFAF), founded in 1998, organises world championships, but NFL players do not take part. In addition, the NFL does not follow WADA’s antidoping rules. Nevertheless, some NFL players have indicated their interest in competing at the 2028 Olympic Games in the flag football competition organised under the auspices of the IFAF. Flag football is a limitedcontact variant of American and Canadian football that is much easier to organise, as each team consists of 45 players with just 5 players on the pitch at any one time (versus 11 players in American football). Mixed Martial Arts’ (MMA) major events are controlled by a few private leagues. Currently, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the most powerful of these leagues, although several international organisations are vying to become the sport’s only governing body. To this end, the Global Association of Mixed Martial Arts, founded in 2017 and supported by Russia, has signed a multiyear contract with the International Testing Agency (organisation in charge of providing independent, international antidoping testing) to carry out doping controls in MMA. The International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) was founded in 2012 with support from the UFC with the aim of legalising MMA in countries that had banned MMA fights (by making the sport less violent through regulating which acts are permitted, as in amateur boxing and professional boxing).14 Following its merger with the World Mixed Martial Arts Association in 2020,15 the IMMAF claims, with strong support from the western bloc, to be MMA’s representative body. It sealed its position as the sport’s IF in 2024, by bringing together 139 NFs. It signed the World AntiDoping Code in 2021 and has partnered with the ITA since 2024 to carry out independent drugs testing. But the growing MMA business remains in the hands of powerful commercial operators such as the UFC (notably in the United States) and One Championship (especially in Asia), who apply different rules for their fights. In the mid2010s, the UFC signed an agreement with America’s antidoping agency (USADA), but it has since withdrawn from this partnership, which it considered too restrictive for certain fighters, notably the Irish MMA star Conor McGregor. MMA, which is rapidly growing in popularity throughout the world, is characterised by the presence of numerous regional commercial operators (e.g., Bellator, Bahrain’s Brave Combat Federation), as is the case for professional boxing. Commercial operators pay fees to the IMMAF, in its role as the sport’s regulator and for its contribution to training upcoming fighters. The IMMAF holds a lowpaying world championship and even aspires to join the Olympic programme, something that appeared unconceivable just a few years ago due to the virulent opposition of other Olympic combat sports, which felt MMA was too violent. In breakdancing, the sport’s most prestigious competition – the Red Bull BC One – is owned by a private company (Red Bull). However, on the IOC’s advice, the World DanceSport Federation incorporated breaking in 2018 so it can be a demonstration sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Similarly, the International Roller Sports Federation (known as World Skate since 2017) took over skateboarding so it could be included as a demonstration sport at the 2020+ 1 Olympics and Regulatory Systems within International Sport 101 subsequently join the official Olympic programme (as of 2028). Yet, skateboarding is historically a counterculture sport that has been part of the X Games since their foundation in 1994 and whose competitions are run by commercial operators, notably the Street League, created in 2010. IFs that find themselves in this configuration have no real control over the rules applied in international competitions, the competition calendar, or the world rankings. Nor do they have a business model that allows them to engage in an ambitious development and solidarity policy with respect to their national federations. These IFs’ key competency is politicosocial because they must convince other actors in the ecosystem to contribute to developing the sport (social regulation), which frequently involves calling on the sport’s dominant commercial actors (major events, major sponsors) and star athletes to show their social responsibility by taking part in the IF’s competitions (even if they are not very lucrative) and/ or using their image or personal foundations. An IF can also play a role in regulating or legitimising a circuit. A complementary strategy is to obtain Olympic status for the sport, as achieved by the IFs for tennis (1988), triathlon (2000) and golf (2016). After being invited to sports at the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games, surfing and skateboarding will be on the official Olympic programme for 2028. Padel hopes to follow in their footsteps in 2032. Achieving Olympic status allows IFs to globalise their development strategies by enabling their NFs to claim the public subsidies most governments allocate to Olympic sports. The Olympic label also gives an IF greater legitimacy as its sport’s governing body and thereby helps it protect its position from powerful and dominant commercial operators and their ecosystems. 2.2.5 Totally Private Regulation by the Commercial Sector The final configuration, regulation by a commercial organisation, occurs when a sport does not have a clearly legitimate IF or when an IF is just beginning to emerge. Sports in this category include freeride skiing, trail running, esports and parkour. It was also the case for MMA and breaking, which are dominated by commercial operators but which now have an IF recognised by the international system. These relatively new sports now receive extensive media coverage and have become very popular. Their rise began when private operators created major events (Xtreme Verbier for freeride skiing in 1986 and UltraTrail du MontBlanc for trail running in 2003) that became their sport’s flagship events and formed launch pads for international circuits.16 By failing to quickly embrace these new disciplines, even though they arose from their traditional sports, the established IFs for skiing, athletics and mountaineering allowed opportunistic private commercial actors to capture their market value and internationalise their appeal. These private actors have become quasifederations outside the Olympic system, as they control the sport’s international calendar, rules of play and world rankings. Freeride skiing has even begun holding junior competitions for upcoming elite athletes hoping to join the main circuit, as well as setting up academies in partnership with ski schools to bring through the next generation of athletes. 102 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems In 2007, the American company Ruff Magic Entertainment and eight toplevel parkour athletes came together to establish the World Freerunning Parkour Federation (WFPF) with the aim of holding the first international parkour competitions (sport in which athletes try to complete a course involving numerous obstacles as quickly and as stylishly as possible). The year 2014 saw the creation of another, noncommercial federation, the International Parkour Federation (IPF), rooted in the Global South. National Olympic committees and sports ministries have recognised numerous national parkour federations. In light of parkour’s growing popularity, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), with support from the IOC, also recognised parkour and integrated two of its disciplines, SpeedRun (Sprint) and Freestyle. In 2018 it signed an agreement with the IPF. Prior to this, the FIG had worked with two commercial parkour event operators (APEX and JUMP Freerun for `the International Festival of Extreme Sports) to increase its legitimacy in the eyes of parkour athletes and familiarise itself with the sport’s codes. It held its first world championship in 2022, but the IOC rejected the FIG’s bid to include parkour in the programme for the 2024 Paris Olympics.17 Another international parkour, free running and ‘art du déplacement’ federation (Parkour Earth) was established in 2017 at the instigation of Parkour UK to counter the FIG’s attempt to ‘take over’ parkour. But parkour’s flagship event is still ‘Art of Motion’, created by Redbull in 2007. Thus, the institutionalisation of this sport is very recent, ongoing, and particularly complex in terms of the different stakeholders involved. Parkour may be moving toward a digitally mediated, communitybased regulation model (Brodmann, 2022), as shown by the emergence of Storror as a potential regulating power. Founded in southern England in 2010, Storror is a collective of seven professional athletes with more than 10 million YouTube subscribers, 1.7 million Instagram followers, and almost 60,000 TikTok followers. As a result, it has become extremely influential within the world of parkour, which it would like to remain independent from the IOC. Trail running’s most prestigious race is still the pioneering UltraTrail du MontBlanc (UTMB), which has been held in Chamonix since 2003. In 2021 the UTMB Group built on the success of this race to create a global trailrunning circuit, called the UTMB World Series, in conjunction with Ironman Group (the leader in longdistance triathlons). Trial running’s other international circuit, the Golden Trail Series, is supported by the outdoor equipment company Salomon. Created in 2018, Eurosport races has provided live TV broadcasts of races since 2023 (in contrast to the UTMB, which is broadcast by OTT). The Golden Trail Series consists of six trail races (eight as of 2024) courses de trail plus a final. When an IF for trail running, the International Trail Running Association (ITRA), came into being in July 2013, it was largely under the sway of the UTMB (the UTMB withdrew from ITRA in 2020). ITRA defined race classifications (competitions) and race distances, but most competitions and the regulation of the sport remained in the hands of independent operators. World trailrunning and mountainrunning championships have been held under the auspices of the ITRA, the World Mountain Running Regulatory Systems within International Sport 103 Association and the International Association of Ultrarunners, with support from World Athletics, since 2022. However, these championships remain low down the hierarchy of international trailrunning races and rest in the shadows of major events such as the UTMB. But the increasing commercialisation of the UTMB (60% increase in entrance fees in 2013) between 2023 and the race’s controversial sponsorship and sustainability practices led the sport’s biggest star, Killian Jornet, to call for a boycott of the race in 2024 (he subsequently entered negotiations with the organisers). At the end of 2022, Jornet and several other leading trail runners founded the Pro Trail Runners Association, a sort of union to defend professional trail runners’ interests against event organisers, who are globalising the marketing of trail running. Esports also falls into this configuration because video games publishers still own and organise all major competitions. Moreover, until 2020 the IOC considered esports to be a business, not a sport. Although some countries’ sports ministries and/ or NOCs have been persuaded to recognise esports as a separate sport, such cases remain rare. Games publishers have invested heavily in regulating professional competition ecosystems because they are sure to have a return on their investments, but this is not the case for amateur esports, for which publishers have not yet found a profitable business model. Several bodies have sought to fill this vacuum by setting themselves up as (national or international) esports ‘federations’, although the absence of games publishers means that these federations have little weight and do not regulate any esports. In addition, conflicts arise whenever these federations stray onto the publishers’ turf. There are currently three esports federations around the world. Two of them stand out: • The International Esports Federation (IESF), founded in 2008, is the oldest esports federation. It is supported by South Korea and has always tried to meet the Olympic movement’s criteria for obtaining GAISF/ Sport Accord recognition. It has run the World Esports Championship since 2011. • The Global Esports Federation (GEF) was founded in 2019 by stakeholders close to the Olympic movement with support from Singapore and China. Since 2021, it has held the annual Global Esports Games, a multisport esports competition. Both these federations are now under Saudi control because the IESF’s new president, Prince Faisal ben Bandar, is also vicepresident of the GEF and a member of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. This Saudi domination explains why these two bodies’ 2024 international competitions will take place in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. In December 2023, the two federations signed a memorandum of understanding to pave the way for closer collaboration between them. However, neither federation has great legitimacy within the esports sector, even though they have managed to work their way into Olympic circles. Given esports’ rapidly growing popularity among young people, especially in Asia, the IOC finally decided to enter the market by holding the first Olympic 104 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems Esports Week, in Singapore, in June 2023. This event combines a video games festival, a ‘global virtual and simulated sports competition’, discussions and competitions in esports using platforms associated with IFs (e.g., Zwift in cycling, Virtual Taekwondo). In 2023, the IOC’s president even announced plans to examine the possibility of holding an esports Olympic Games. The key competency for nascent IFs in this configuration is political. They must also have the organisational capacity needed to achieve institutional legitimacy. Their priorities must be to gain SportAccord recognition (SportAccord took over this role from the GAISF in 2023) – the first step towards joining the Olympic system – and/ or to sign the World AntiDoping Code and/ or to persuade national bodies (e.g., sports ministries, national Olympic committees, existing national federations) to recognise their members. All the sports in this configuration are new and sometimes criticised for being violent and dangerous, but they are attractive to young people, an important target group for the IOC and Olympic Games. 2.3 Conclusion The regulation configurations presented in the previous sections are ideal categories whose boundaries are porous and flexible. Some IFs may govern disciplines whose regulation configuration differs from that of the sport’s other disciplines. For example, World Athletics is the dominant actor in most athletics disciplines, but it is in a coordinated regulation configuration in the case of marathon running. Similarly, FIBA is in a separate regulation configuration for most forms of basketball, but it is the dominant actor for 3X3 basketball. In addition, the regulation configuration in some sports has changed in recent years. This is the case for freeride skiing, which moved from commercial regulation without an IF to regulation by a dominant IF in December 2022, when FIS bought the Freeride World Tour. The aim of this deal is to obtain Olympic status for freeride skiing in time for the 2030 Games and thereby increase both the sport’s popularity and its earning power by incorporating it into FIS’s events portfolio. Similarly, after being taken over by the World DanceSport Federation and included in the 2024 Olympic Games as a demonstration sport, breaking’s regulation configuration has changed from totally private regulation by commercial operators to regulation dominated by commercial operators. The five archetypal configurations shed light onto the relative power of the actors involved and the way they use their social, economic, legal and political regulation competencies to further their interests. The dynamics of this regulation can be analysed in terms of its: • Scale: Control may be macro (global – the focus of this chapter – continental or national), meso (i.e., within organisations such as professional leagues or clubs) or micro (based on analyses of individual behaviours: athletes, agents, executives, etc.). These aspects are discussed further in Chapters 5 and 6. Regulatory Systems within International Sport 105 • Form: Control may be bottomup or topdown (as in federal pyramids) or horizontal (as in the bior multilateral relationships between an IF and actors outside the federal system). • Intensity: Depends on the presence of political/ economic opportunities, tensions, dysfunctions or crises within a given ecosystem. • Rhythm: Rapidity/ continuity/ discontinuity. • Modalities: Institutional control by the IOC and other international sport organisations, independent control by specific commercial actors, shared control through partnerships between the IOC/ international sport movement and international public bodies to protect the integrity of sport. • Balance of power: Within the international sport system (IOC/ FIFA/ UEFA) or between these organisations and private commercial leagues or athlete associations. The SELP model also shows how regulation configurations can evolve and how sports can learn from and draw on other sports’ experiences when negotiating changes in their control configurations. For example, since rugby union became professional in the mid1990s, its IF has benefited greatly from the example set by football, notably in terms of adopting a business model based on a quadrennial World Cup. At the same, it has seen both the value and limitations for national professional championships of the tools used to regulate spectator sport. In a context of elections, uncertainty and the desire to globalise rugby, in 2020 the president of rugby’s governing body (World Rugby) outlined five challenges for the governance of international rugby: • Create a world championship for national sides between World Cups. • Draw up a global calendar covering both hemispheres. • Examine the possibility of creating a world club championship. • Give players a seat at the negotiating table. • Grow rugby in the United States and Canada (with the 2027 or 2031 Rugby World Cup held in these countries). Given the numerous problems facing world sport (integrity, governance, hypercommercialisation, sustainability, etc.), IFs are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate their ability to regulate their sport while doing more to satisfy their stakeholders and meet the challenges posed by commercial competitors. To do this, they must define a coherent regulation strategy and use their business models to serve the development of sport and development through sport. Only by achieving these goals can they justify the financial and legal advantages they receive compared with the evergrowing number of commercial actors involved in international sport. Notes 1 The term configuration refers to all the elements composing a system. 2 Some of the information and analyses presented in this section were first published in Bayle, E. (2023) ‘A model for the multicentered regulation of world sport’, 106 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 15(2), 309– 327. doi: https:// doi.org/ 10.1080/ 19406 940.2023.2205 868 3 Some governments have invested heavily in certain sports, so they can play a central role in their development. For example, the South Korean government has adopted this approach in taekwondo. 4 The Nassar scandal, in which the American Olympic gymnastics team’s doctor, Larry Nassar, was sentenced to life imprisonment for sexually abusing several hundred gymnasts, including Olympic champion Simone Biles. Sex abuse scandals in French figure skating, American soccer, and Canadian ice hockey in the early 2020s, which encouraged several hundred victims to speak out. These widely reported scandals forced national governments to address these issues, some federation heads to resign, and the federations to set up mechanisms to prevent similar problems reoccurring. They also shredded the credibility of the federations concerned. 5 Examples in football include FIFA’s ‘Forward’ programme and UEFA’s ‘HatTrick’ programme, founded in 2004. HatTrick 6, covering the 2024– 2028 cycle, allows each UEFAmember national association to receive up to €2.4 million to support operational projects (growing women’s football, protecting integrity within football, etc.) and up to €4.5 million for infrastructure projects (building a head office, football pitches, etc.). 6 After signing a tenyear sponsorship deal with the Chinese company Wanda in 2020, the event will be known as the ‘Wanda Diamond League’ until 2030. 7 This circuit, launched in 2006, includes some of the world’s largest marathon events (Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, etc.). The calendar includes two other races: the world championship, every two years, and the Olympic games, every four years. Runners are ranked according to their results in these races, and the highest ranked athletes at the end of the season win cash prizes ($500,000 for the winners of the men’s and women’s rankings). 8 Leman Bleu (2023) Accord entre la FIS et l'agence Infront, www.lemanb leu.ch/ fr/ Actual ite/ Sport/ Acc ordentrelaFISetlage nceInfr ont.html (Accessed: 24 July 2023). 9 Business Today Desk (2023) Olympic Broadcast Rights in India may Fetch Rs 1,550 Cr as Cricket Set to Return: Report, 10 October. Available at: www.busine ssto day.in/ spo rts/ story/ olym picbroadc astrig htsinindiamayfetchrs1550crascric ketsettoret urnrep ort401 45920231010 10 For example, FIBA covered the cost of insuring NBA players who took part in its 2023 Basketball World Cup. 11 NHL players did not take part in the Beijing 2022 Olympics because they had to play domestic games postponed because of the COVID19 crisis. 12 The ATP tour and Grand Slam tournaments have annual turnovers of more than $1 billion, whereas the ITF had an annual income of around $70 million before changing the format of the Davis Cup in 2018. It now has revenues of around $100 million, ten times less than the sport’s two main economic actors. 13 After making accusations against a senior Chinese leader at the end of November 2021, the professional tennis player Peng Shuai found herself at the centre of an international media storm that raised the wider issue of China’s human rights record. The WTA cancelled its competitions in China, but the ATP did not. 14 Notably in France, which legalised MMA in 2020. 15 IMMAF (2020) The Tale of IMMAF & WMMAA: How Two Global MMA Federations Merged to Create a Super Organisation. Available at: https:// immaf.org/ 2020/ 08/ 05/ thetaleofimmafwmmaahowtwoglo balmmafede rati onsmer gedtocre ateasuperorgan isat ion/ 16 The Freeride World Tour (launched in 2008) comprises five events on three continents. The UltraTrail World Tour (created in 2014) involved 28 races in 22 countries on five continents. It has now been replaced by the UTMB World Series, run by the UTMB Regulatory Systems within International Sport 107 Group in association with the Ironman Group, which is owned by Advance Publications, which bought the group from the Chinese company Wanda in 2020. 17 The IOC said it would accept parkour only if the FIG reduced its quota of athletes in other disciplines. Bibliography Andreff, W. 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(2019) ‘International sports regulation: An evolving privatepublic partnership’, Monash University Law Review, 45(2), pp. 298– 332. doi: https:// doi.org/ 10.26180/ 5e151a 9c34 90e DOI: 10.4324/9781003462118-5 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Chapter 3 Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations Analysing national sports systems is key to understanding the governance framework, resource potential (financial, human, material) and degree of professionalisation that international sports organisations can call upon at the national level. Indeed, policies drawn up within national sports systems shape the way the IOC, IFs and commercial organisers position their events and their actions to increase participation in sport. The quality of a country’s sports system has a profound impact on its sporting success, whether it is measured in terms of sport participation rates, elite athletes’ performances, or the public’s general interest in sport. Finally, the evergrowing number of countries using sport to project their soft power (e.g., China, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) is shaking up the way world sport functions and threatening Europe’s and the United States’ historical dominance. This chapter describes the main organisational models of sport found around the world (Section 3.1) and the different national sports system configurations in Europe (Section 3.2) and elsewhere around the globe (Section 3.3). Whether a country’s sports system promotes success in international competitions depends on ten key variables, as described by the SPLISS model, as well as the country’s strategic choices (Section 3.4). 3.1 The Main Organisational Models of Sport Until the 1990s there were just three main organisational models within world sport: the American model, the European model and the staterun model, mostly found in communist countries (Section 3.1.1). However, the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), Gulf States and MINT countries (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey) have led to the emergence of new models and other ways of using sport (Section 3.1.2). 116 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems The Gulf States have very centralised sports systems overseen by an NOC, but the NOC is often presided over by a member of the country’s royal family and final decisionmaking powers remain in the hands of a sheikh or emir. Moreover, these countries’ sports ministries do little more than supervise the construction and management of sports facilities. Although NFs hold elections to choose their leaders, the emir or sheikh, or his representative at the head of the NOC, holds ultimate power and can dismiss an NF’s president if he is unhappy with their policies or results. The state funds the NOC’s and NFs’ sports policies, while royal families have begun investing in foreign clubs through their sovereign wealth funds. These investments sometimes project interstate rivalries onto the field of play, as when Manchester City, owned by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour, plays Newcastle United, owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Indeed, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have been rivals with respect to sporting soft power since the early 2000s, with Saudi Arabia joining the competition in 2016 when it launched its ‘Vision Saudi 2030’ sports strategy. Saudi Arabia’s longterm ambition, as stated by Sports Minister Prince Abdulaziz ben Turki AlFaisal in 2022, is to build on the experience gained by staging the 2029 Asian Winter Games to one day host the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.4 Obtaining the 2034 Men’s Football World Cup will be another step towards realising this goal (see the Introduction for an overview of the Gulf State’s sport strategies). Nevertheless, the massive sums Gulf States’ sovereign wealth funds and royal families are investing in Europe’s biggest football clubs5 and in record transfer fees to attract star players to their domestic professional leagues are sometimes contested in Europe. For example, Spain’s football league has lodged a complaint with the European Commission against alleged Qatari state aid to ParisSaint German, which, according to La Liga, distorts the European Union market by allowing the club to pay abovemarket sums for players. Emerging countries’ huge investments in sport, especially in football – buying major European clubs, improving their domestic leagues and clubs, hosting major events, playing official and unofficial roles in continental (Asian) and global (within the Olympic movement) governance – could lead to the development of new forms of regulation, under the influence of new actors (e.g., establishing new competitions, taking control of the governance of world sport, privatising professional football). 3.1.3 Fragility and Instability in LeastDeveloped Countries The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs defines leastdeveloped countries as ‘lowincome countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development’.6 Although sport is sometimes cited as a means for development and a source of hope for young people, the world’s poorest countries (Sierra Leone, Somalia, Niger, etc.) are unable to capitalise on sport’s potential benefits due to a chronic lack of sports facilities and the virtual absence Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 117 of school sport. Poverty also prevents leastdeveloped countries from holding on to their most talented athletes, who are enticed abroad by the prospect of a better life (emigration7 and naturalisation by other countries). These factors explain the growing gulf in sport between richer nations and leastdeveloped countries. States, via their sports ministries, often have strained or even conflictual relationships with the local Olympic movement, due to the local sports movement and NOC’s sometimeslimited political autonomy and low level of professionalisation. Football is by far the biggest sport in many leastdeveloped countries, especially in Africa, and it is largely disconnected from the Olympic movement. Most funding for other Olympic sports comes from the limited resources allocated by the state (notably to help cover travel expenses for athletes competing in major international competitions) and, most importantly, international solidarity programmes run by bodies such as Olympic Solidarity (IOC), together with aid from partner countries (e.g., the Commonwealth, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, China) and partner organisations (e.g., powerful foreign IFs and NFs). Some sports obtain additional funding through donations from professional footballers who made their fortunes abroad and investments by public and private bodies, including foreign multinationals that obtain contracts within these countries. In the case of financial aid, Lopez (2022) used the term ‘stadium diplomacy’ to describe China’s investments in building more than one hundred stadiums in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa (Vondracek, 2019). China’s policy of investing in major sports facilities in Africa is aimed at countering the former colonial powers’ historic influence on the continent and at accessing new markets and audiences. Ivory Coast is just one of the policy’s beneficiaries, having received new stadiums in Korhogo, San Pedro and Abidjan (whose Alassane Ouattara Stadium cost €130 million). In addition to financial aid, leastdeveloped countries also receive support in the form of training, expertise and the provision of sports equipment, facilities and infrastructure. In these countries, the NOC and the sports movement may play a very modest role, centred round sending teams to major international competitions. Hence, sport in leastdeveloped countries is poorly structured, reliant on international aid and sometimes barely alive, notably in countries blighted by armed conflict (e.g., Somalia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo). It often suffers from the effects of political instability and the weakness of the state, despite its symbolic importance and the role it is expected to play in controlling society, especially young people. The sporting cultures and sports systems of many former colonial countries still bear the stamp of Europe’s imperial powers, which dominated the world in the late nineteenth/ early twentieth century, when modern sport began to develop. Cricket’s immense popularity in the Indian subcontinent, for example, is a legacy of British rule, while many former colonies continue to follow a Frenchor Britishstyle model of sport and/ or legal framework. The main organisational models of sport, outlined above, differ in terms of the way sport is organised and funded and the dominant actors in a country’s sports 118 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems system. These models shed light on the internal and external objectives countries aim to achieve through sport (nation building, promoting the country and its image, nation branding, projecting soft power, diplomacy, growing tourism). In both cases, sport may be used for political ends to legitimize the ruling regime. However, there is great variation within these models, as shown by the following description of national sports systems within Europe. 3.2 National Sport Configurations in Europe 3.2.1 The Characteristics of National Sport Configurations Camy et al. (2004, p. 50) defined a configuration as ‘a set of interacting elements in a relatively sustainable format’, but which may evolve under the influence of internal forces and environmental factors. They suggested that national sports systems can be characterised with respect to four key parameters: • ‘The role played by the public authorities in the regulation of the system, particularly the State as represented by the Ministry in charge’. • ‘The degree and form of coordination of those involved in the national system’. • ‘The distribution between the three types of providers: public, voluntary or commercial’. • ‘The suitability of the supply to the changes in demand’. (Camy et al., 2004, p. 52) The title given to the government department in charge of sport and the ministry to which it belongs differ between European countries. Most European countries include sport within a larger ministry (e.g., education, culture, interior), with France being an exception in having a separate ministry for sport, whose remit is sometimes expanded to cover youth and charities. A sports ministry’s influence on the regulation of sport depends on its size and the country’s political system. Some sports ministries define sport’s mission within the country and structure the national sports system by defining each actor’s role and responsibilities. For example, Spain’s and France’s sport ministries require their country’s NFs to carry out public service missions in return for the public support they receive. The sports ministry may impose conditions federations must fulfil to benefit from financial support, publicly funded sports facilities and personnel provided by the state. It may go as far as setting frameworks that clubs/ NFs must follow, including requirements for sport instructors/ supervisors (e.g., mandatory qualifications and training for professional or highlevel coaches). Analyses of national sports strategies show that governments try to orient sports organisations towards certain objectives, notably increasing participation in sport and achieving success in elite competitions. However, these objectives are generally intended to contribute to wider goals, such as increasing national prestige and diplomatic influence, improving education, Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 119 health and national cohesion, reducing inequality, boosting the economy and tourism, increasing employment, facilitating socialprofessional integration and improving quality of life in general. Whether a country’s government is centralised (as in France) or decentralised (as in Germany and Switzerland) may explain different modes of public intervention. In the case of federal states (e.g., Germany, UK, Italy, Spain), the national authorities may focus on key parts of the country’s sports policy (e.g., supporting elite sport and general national strategy) but not interfere in the sports movement’s managerial role, even when the state allocates large sums of public money to sport (as in Germany and Switzerland). The second parameter is the degree and form of coordination between actors within the national system. Some countries’ sports systems have no formal structure and no organised coordination between actors, each of which is totally autonomous. Other countries have highly coordinated sports systems. The form this coordination takes is also important. Coordination may be accomplished by a supervising authority or an adhoc regulatory body. Many European countries have specific and sometimes very detailed sports legislation. This coordination function may be accomplished by a specific actor or according to a shared model of governance, that is, a consensus reached following detailed discussions between all the actors concerned. Camy et al.’s (2004) third parameter is the distribution of roles and forms of collaboration between public, voluntary (nonprofit sports movement) and commercial sport providers (ranging from professional sports event organisers to forprofit leisure sport providers). In fact, it is the relative weights of these three components that characterise a national sport configuration. The fourth parameter is that the sport offers the ability to adapt to changes in demand. What is the level of inertia when new demands appear? Are there mechanisms that allow the system to respond quickly and effectively? How do public, nonprofit and commercial actors react? What are their respective market shares? 3.2.2 The Four Most Typical Configurations in Europe8 Camy et al. (2004) used these parameters to identify four ‘basic’ national sports configurations found in Europe, which they labelled bureaucratic, missionary, entrepreneurial and social. A bureaucratic sports system is one in which the public authorities take a leading role in regulating sport and sport is governed by specific legislation. Consequently, the nonprofit sports movement acts by ‘delegation’ and is subject to explicit government oversight. Social partners (employer organisations and trade unions) are often weak or nonexistent, and users/ consumers and private entrepreneurs have little impact on the implementation of sport policies. The state intervenes heavily in elite sport and assists sports that do not have large enough economies to professionalise fully (by providing financial aid and expert staff). Elite athletes may be given financial security through employment contracts with state services (e.g., in education or the armed forces) or public companies. The bureaucratic configuration is the 120 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems most common configuration in Europe, especially since the mid2000s, when the EU admitted 12 new member states, most of which have bureaucratic sports systems. Many of these new EU members are former members of the Soviet Bloc, and their sports systems retain many of the characteristics they had under communist rule when the state and the public sector were the only actors in what were ‘pure’ bureaucratic sports systems. The missionary configuration is characterised by the dominant presence of a nonprofit sports movement with great autonomy to make decisions. The state and local authorities delegate responsibility for sport policy to the nonprofit sports movement, although the public authorities are increasingly requiring sports organisations to pursue public policy objectives in return for the substantial public funding they receive. Social partners play little or no role in the system, and power is concentrated in the hands of unpaid, elected officials. Users are rarely considered as consumers, and private enterprises remain on the margins of the dominant system, with the importance of their role depending on the extent to which sport contributes to the country’s tourist industry. The nonprofit sports movement oversees most elite sport. Elite athletes in individual sports are responsible for managing their careers, even if they receive public support. Culturally, they are not considered products of the state, but as individual entrepreneurs or products of society. The former perspective typifies Great Britain and Switzerland, where elite athletes are seen as ‘selfmade men and women’, whereas the latter perspective is typical of Germany, where people view sporting excellence as a facet of social excellence (Faure and Suaud, 2015). A sports system has an entrepreneurial configuration when regulation emanates from the social or economic ‘demand’ for sport, and there are few obstacles preventing the market from regulating the offer– demand relationship. The public authorities’ main role is to provide a framework in which market forces can operate. The nonprofit sports movement must adapt to the market’s requirements, as set by private entrepreneurs, and try to maintain its position in this context by systematically rationalising and adjusting its offer to the demand. This demand is not exclusively, or even primarily, commercial, but whatever its source the demand compels providers to reconstruct their offer. Nevertheless, the authorities may use public and semipublic money (from a lottery and/ or online betting) to fund nonprofessional elite sport. Governments are increasingly adopting this approach to win medals and ensure the country has a good international ranking. The social configuration is characterised by the presence of social partners within a multifaceted system in which no single actor is dominant. Rather, there is cohabitation/ collaboration between public, nonprofit and commercial actors. Unions and employer organisations play a leading role in the system’s governance. Although there may be major disagreements between sport’s main actors, their shared aim is to maximise the ‘common good’ that sport brings. These configurations are ideal types, and most countries’ sports systems have characteristics of two or more configurations, even if one configuration is dominant. In addition, some countries, especially those in Eastern and Central Europe, Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 121 have seen profound changes, if not revolutions, in their national sports systems’ configurations. The bureaucratic configuration, in which the state (or a public agency highly dependent on the state) plays a key role, appears to be the most common type of sport system across Europe. As Camy et al. (2004, p. 56) noted, ‘the arrival of ten new member states in the European Union, all with a bureaucratic configuration, makes this domination particularly evident’. This is partly because, during the Soviet era, all Eastern and Central European countries had pure bureaucratic configurations in which ‘the State was the nighexclusive player in sport’ (Camy et al., 2004, p. 56). Despite the quasigeneralised dismantling of these Sovietera sports systems and the development of an everlarger commercial leisuresports sector, the state continues to play an important role in these countries’ sports systems. The changes occurring within Western Europe’s sports systems are more complex (Camy et al., 2004). Commercial actors are growing in importance in all these countries’ sports systems, whatever their configuration. In countries with a missionary configuration and a very strong nonprofit sporting culture, such as Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, the nonprofit sports movement is putting up stiff resistance. These countries have a long history of opposing the ‘commercialisation’ and professionalisation of sport (marked by an increase in the number of paid staff carrying out important tasks). Nonprofit sport and its volunteer culture have such a strong hold on society that there is currently little risk of the nonprofit sector losing its position, although the transformation and digitalisation of societies could change the situation. Western European countries with bureaucratic configurations are seeing different changes. Some countries are evolving towards a hybrid socialbureaucratic configuration. In France, for example, social partners have had a greater say in the decisionmaking process since 2006, thanks to a national collective agreement for sport and the sports ministry’s desire to give them an important role in organising sport, especially in the field of professional training and in finding a more consensual governance involving all the main actors in French sport. These moves have altered the balance within France’s sports system, even though it is still dominated by the sports ministry. According to Camy et al. (2004, p. 57), in other countries like Spain, Greece or Belgium, the growing scale of the commercial sector is not without impact on the way that traditional players perceive their situation, as a ‘fortress under siege’. However, we cannot really talk about a drift towards an entrepreneurial configuration – quite the opposite, in fact. The State or autonomous communities in federal countries seem to be consolidating their positions and streamlining the operation of a sector which, through lack of resources, had been administrated ‘minimally’ … The arrival of the social partners is very limited at present, even though this is becoming more marked through the signing of collective agreements in professional sport and the commercial leisure sector, in particular. 122 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems There are also a few specific cases, especially Italy, whose sports system has a mostly missionary configuration, albeit with similarities with the bureaucratic configuration. Here, the nonprofit sport movement’s supervisory body, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), was a public body until 2004. In contrast to other countries with missionary configurations, such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries, Italy’s nonprofit network has tended to be lesswell organised, less powerful and less autonomous. In addition, commercial and semicommercial bodies are highly present, although the state and regional authorities continue to play a major role. For example, in 2018 the government passed a law that would have taken away CONI’s control over the public resources it receives to carry out its Olympic missions.9 The ensuing row between CONI and the Italian government was eventually resolved in CONI’s favour when the IOC threatened to withdraw the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games from MilanCortina if the Italian government did not back down. Europe’s first national sports systems had missionary configurations because they were controlled by the federated nonprofit sports movement. The bureaucratic system was the second configuration to appear, emerging when Western European governments, followed by Europe’s communist states, began using sport for nationalist purposes (win medals). In addition, many countries have incorporated ‘entrepreneurial’ (privatisation and commercialisation of leisure activities and spectator sport) or ‘social’ (growing importance given to social dialogue between employers’ organisations and trade unions) positions into their sports systems. However, the absence of extremely large organisations in the sports sector, which comprises mostly very small organisations (fewer than ten staff), means that union membership is low, and employers have little organised representation and therefore little collective power. The United States is probably the only country to have adopted a predominantly entrepreneurial configuration, which has given rise to a flourishing professional sector and a weak nonprofitfederation sector centred round competition. The United Kingdom, as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, has also left a lot of space for private entrepreneurs to develop a sports services market. When Camy et al. (2004) conducted their study, the social configuration was a very recent development, because it requires either social partners who are sufficiently powerful within sport to impose their presence or the public authorities to give social partners a central role in the sports movement. Social partners do not need to be the dominant actors in a sports system for it to have a social configuration, rather they work alongside other actors including the nonprofit sports movement, the public authorities and the representatives of professional and commercial sports organisations (Camy et al., 2004). This move from a hierarchical approach to national sports system governance to a morehorizontal approach is also becoming perceptible, albeit to a lesser extent, in the other three configurations. The EU’s adoption of a specific sport policy and the publication of numerous studies on European sport (Vocasport programme, Erasmus+ Sport programme, etc.) has triggered a gradual convergence between Europe’s national sports Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 123 systems, driven both by mimicry (comparing and sharing experiences) and by the EU’s efforts to promote the European model of sport (e.g., quest for harmonisation and shared operating principles with respect to organising professional branches, social dialogue, professional training and inclusion and education through sport). Nevertheless, some singular configurations remain due to the weight of historical factors and the importance a country’s government attaches to physical and sporting activities. 3.2.3 Four Examples: England, France, Lithuania, Switzerland The following sections present four European countries with different characteristics and configurations, as well as with very different relationships with the EU: France, a founding member and historic pillar of the EU; Lithuania, a former Soviet republic that joined the EU in 2004, after becoming an independent country; the United Kingdom, which left the EU in 2021 and whose economic and social crisis has worsened since then; and Switzerland, which remains outside the EU but cooperates strongly with it. Switzerland is also home to most of the world’s IFs. 3.2.3.1 France: A Bureaucratic Configuration in Transition The ‘French model’ of sport has historically been characterised by extensive intervention by the public authorities and the sports ministry. The National Agency for Sport (ANS), created in 2019, brings together the sports ministry, the sports movement (France’s NOC and NFs), regional and local authorities and the business and social worlds. It decides the orientations and rules of the agency’s intervention in French sport and coordinates funding for grassroots and elite sport. The ANS is funded by a 5% levy on sport broadcasting rights (85% of which come from professional football) and a levy on all forms of sports betting in France. Local authorities, especially municipalities, are key actors in sport because they own 80% of France’s sport facilities and provide more than 90% of public support to sport. Despite the complexity (heterogeneity of actors) and limitations of French sport governance (notably its highly centralised system and the public authorities’ inability to bring together different actors in the sport and physical activity sector), the French model has evolved significantly. The professionalisation of sports clubs has accelerated over the last three decades, partly due to a law requiring paid instructors/ coaches to have a recognised qualification and to numerous publicly funded programmes to help sports organisations, especially nonprofit organisations, hire professional staff. The number of sports companies almost doubled between 2008 and 2017, and more than 160,000 people now work in the private sector, which has 23,000 employers, 80% of which are nonprofit associations. A third of the people who work in this sector (58,000) are nonsalaried (e.g., ski instructors); the remaining twothirds (102,500) are salaried (Lepetit and Rougier, 2022). The creation of a national collective agreement 124 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems for sport in 2005 led to a general social dialogue in the nonprofit private and commercial sectors. Although these changes were accompanied by the introduction of a moreshared governance model and move to professionalise sports clubs, the French system remains very bureaucratic with strong state control over the sports movement (Scelles, 2017). French institutional and Olympic sport still obtains most of its funding from public and semipublic sources (€20 billion invested and 102,000 state employees according to a 2022 study by BPCE). During the 2010s the state improved its socialeconomic aid for elite athletes, especially in terms of vocational guidance (easier access to certain higher education programmes, help finding work with flexible hours, etc.) and protection against the risks associated with a toplevel sporting career (better social protection for elite athletes in individual sports since 201610). As well as being home to some of the world’s biggest annual sports events, including the Roland Garros tennis tournament, the Tour de France and the Six Nations rugby tournament, France has a longstanding strategy of bidding for prestigious oneoff events, beginning with the 1992 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Since then, the country has hosted, among others, the 1998 Men’s Football World Cup; 2003 Athletics World Championships; 2007, 2014 and 2023 Rugby World Cups; 2016 Men’s European Football Championship; 2018 Ryder Cup; 2019 Women’s Football World Cup; and many world and European championships. It intends to continue hosting international events, notably the 2030 Winter Olympics (to be shared between the Auvergne RhôneAlpes and ProvenceAlpesCôte d’Azur regions). At the same time, France has developed major events in several new sports, including the UltraTrail du Mont Blanc, Nice Ironman and Montpellier International Festival of Extreme Sports. Host cities/ regions are keen to support these events as a way of boosting their tourism profiles in a country that is already the world’s most popular tourist destination. France draws on its statesupported model of elite sport, established in the 1960s, to strengthen its position in the world sporting hierarchy. To help achieve this goal, the government employs 1,600 ‘technical sport advisors’ to work within France’s NFs (79 NFs benefit from this support). In addition, six of these NFs (football, rugby, basketball, volleyball, handball and ice hockey) run professional leagues whose clubs operate their own training centres, many of which are of the highest international standard. Consequently, French clubs are able to export players to Europe’s biggest clubs, a trade that has grown massively since the 1995 Bosman Ruling on the free movement of athletes within the EU and become a major source of revenue for clubs. France’s training expertise has also made it one of the world’s top nations in most major team sports, especially football, rugby union and rugby sevens, basketball, handball and volleyball. In individual sports, France’s eliteoriented statesponsored sport model and elite athlete training institute (National Institute for Sport, Expertise and Performance – INSEP) ensure it wins international medals in traditional Olympic sports, many of which have low levels of professionalisation (e.g., canoeing, fencing, swimming, track cycling, mountain biking and Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 125 judo for the Summer Olympics; downhill skiing, figure skating and, particularly, biathlon for the Winter Olympics). For example, France won 42 medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics and was ranked seventh in the medals table. The country’s relatively poor performance at Tokyo 2020 (33 medals, including 10 golds, and eighth place in the medals table) led the government to change its objective for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games from winning 80 medals, as the sports minister announced when France has attributed the Games, to finishing fifth or higher in the medals table. At the start of 2024, the French government announced its aim of turning France into a ‘sporting nation’ by convincing another 3 million people to take up sport, on top of the 3 million people who started doing sport between 2017 and 2024. Around 1.5 million young people have benefited from the ‘Pass’Sport’ scheme, which pays the first €50 of sports club membership fees for all young people below the age of 18. 3.2.3.2 Lithuania: A ‘EuropeCompatible’ Bureaucratic Configuration11 Lithuania, a republic with a population of three million people, gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. In April of that year, it set up the Department for Physical Education and Sport (DPES) but the government changed the DPES’s status from an independent department to a component of the Ministry of the Interior in 2010. A new Law on Sport, passed in 2018, transferred responsibility for formulating, coordinating and implementing sport policy to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, which now oversees physical education in all educational establishments. The law also defines the roles and competencies of the various actors within Lithuania’s sports system. Lithuania is currently implementing a sport development programme for 2022– 2030, with the objective of improving the country’s performance in major competitions. The total government budget for sport is €68.8 million, divided between highlevel sport (€29.3 million), physical activity (€10.5 million), sport infrastructure investment and maintenance (€25.2 million) and ‘other’ (€3.8 million). The National Sport Agency (NSA), created in July 2022, has a budget of €60 million that it uses to implement the government’s sport and physical activity policy, which has four main objectives: (1) Create the conditions for effective athlete training; (2) Increase physical activity among Lithuanians; (3) Improve and expand Lithuania’s sport infrastructure; and (4) Create the conditions needed to allow sports organisations to improve the quality of their activities. The NSA also distributes public funding to 66 NFs (the amount each NF receives depends on several criteria) and to physical activity projects and programmes. Another of its roles is to develop cooperation between Lithuania’s NOC, the Lithuanian Union of Sport Federations and the Association of Lithuanian Municipal Sports Managers. It also maintains links with the country’s 78 NFs and 1,164 sports clubs (2022). Lithuania’s NFs are run by elected volunteers, and volunteers run most of the country’s sports events, although sports clubs currently have insufficient volunteers. 132 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems cases, sponsors, pay these athletes’ wages, bonuses and pensions. Elite athletes earn, on average, approximately €400 per month, but stars can earn several hundred thousand euros a year in bonuses. Since China created its elite sports system in the 1980s, all sports schools have had excellent training facilities (gymnasiums, football pitches, basketball courts, swimming pools and table tennis courts). Historically, these facilities were the fruit of investments by local sports commissions, so members of the public also had access to them, even if priority was always given to training young athletes. Every province provided its sports teams with a training camp, usually in the provincial capital. There are also several national training centres in Beijing, and each national team has its own training camp outside the capital. These training camps have firstclass facilities, funded jointly by the local government and the general sports administration. Universities also provide training venues and facilities for national teams, such as the training centre created by Beijing Sport University in 2006. China has long been proud of its elite sport administration system, training methods and stance on gender equality, which have been very successful in bringing through elite athletes of both sexes. The goal of China’s strategy is to demonstrate the superiority of socialist ideology by ‘producing’ exceptional male and female athletes capable of winning gold medals at the Olympic Games and world championships. However, China’s elite sports system has seen two major changes since the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games: the development of commercial professional championships and the naturalisation of elite athletes. The Chinese Football Association launched a new professional league in 2004. Modelled on England’s Premier League, the league’s clubs are owned by Chinese companies and funded by rich Chinese entrepreneurs, who attracted a large amount of foreign talent (the league has now set limits on the number of foreign players). China’s professional basketball league, created in 1995 and known as the Chinese Basketball Association, is run according to NBA rules. China’s third professional sport is table tennis, which has deep roots in China’s sporting culture (between 30 million and 50 million competitors). The country’s professional table tennis league, created in 1995, has included several foreign players since the late 2000s. Its clubs are wellfunded by public bodies and public companies. For many years, China’s national teams included only athletes who had been born in China. This changed in 2016, when the government decided to grant, under certain circumstances, citizenship to foreignborn footballers (China’s president, Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2013, strongly supports football) and athletes capable of ensuring success for China in the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This policy had the greatest impact on ice hockey, as 15 players in China’s men’s team and 13 players in its women’s team for the 2022 Olympics were born outside China. In figure skating, Zhu Yi gave up his American citizenship to compete for China in Beijing 2022, and the Chinese American freestyle skier Gu Ailing became a superstar at these Games by winning two gold medals and a silver medal for China. China won a total of nine gold medals, four silver medals and two bronze Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 133 medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics to finish in third place, just ahead of the United States. A policy document published by China’s sports ministry in 2019 set out five areas the country had to prioritise for it to become a sporting superpower: fitness for all, elite sport, commercialising sport, developing a sports culture and sports diplomacy. China’s determination to top the Olympic medals table has played an important role in the country’s political life by demonstrating its ambition to be not only one of the world’s economic and political superpowers but also a sporting superpower. 3.3.3 Tunisia: A Bureaucratic Model Weakened by Crisis17 Tunisia, a country of 12 million people, gained its independence from France in 1956. It has a governmentcontrolled, authoritarian, bureaucratic sports system with strict rules, regulations and procedures (Zaoui and Bayle, 2018). The Ministry for Youth and Sport implements government policy on youth, sport and physical education and draws up plans and programmes to promote these sectors. Following a 5.63% increase compared with 2022, its budget for 2023 accounted for 1.61% of the government’s total spending. It allocated 22.11% of this budget to youth, 22.29% to sport, 48.88% to physical education and 6.70% to leadership and support. In terms of expenditure, wage costs take up 66% of the budget and administration costs account for a further 7%, with just 11% allocated to interventions and 16% allocated to investments. This centralised control gives the government extensive influence over decisions relating to sport and resource attribution, allowing it to stifle innovation and restrict sports organisations’ autonomy. It also enables the government to concentrate resources on sports or development programmes aligned with national objectives, which means lesspopular sports and grassroots sport are neglected. Moreover, budgetary procedures can create obstacles and delays in allocating resources. Although this model can promote a feeling of unity and stability in sport governance, it can also smother other opinions and new ideas that could contribute to a more inclusive and innovative development of sport. Tunisia’s sports system has a hierarchical structure with several levels of implementation via regional directorates, which represent the ministry in the country’s 24 governorates. The ministry supervises and coordinates Tunisia’s 51 NFs, which manage and regulate sport at the national level. These NFs oversee 1,906 regional and local sport bodies that look after 190,000 athletes, including 54,000 women athletes. This hierarchical structure provides a clear chain of command, but it can lead to bureaucratic delays and communication problems. Today, the government faces a pressing need to draw up a sports policy that will change perceptions of sport and the way sport is run. Indeed, a 2022 study by Tunisia’s National Sport Observatory showed that 83% of Tunisians do no physical activity. Hiking is the most popular activity, but more could be done to develop its health and tourism aspects. 134 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems Supporting Tunisia’s NFs is one of the ministry’s main priorities. As part of the country’s sports strategy, some projects have begun conditioning grant allocations on NFs’ and sport associations’ good governance practices: create an information platform to monitor NFs’ administrative, financial and technical activities (set up a computerised management system within sports organisations); regulate the sports betting sector, notably by passing a law on Games of chance, gambling and betting (clamp down on illegal money and its impact on the development of sport); create a category of sport companies that will provide professional teams with the supplementary resources they need to become financially independent and adopt good management practices, especially in terms of transparency and governance. Given Tunisia’s poor economic situation, the ministry provides targeted support, through the NFs, to around 20 individual athletes with the potential to win medals or finish in the top 10 at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. A joint ministryNOC commission monitors these athletes closely. Despite this difficult context, Tunisia continues to produce Olympic, Paralympic and world champions in some sports, including taekwondo (Mohamed Jendoubi), tennis (Ons Jabeur), swimming (Ahmed Hafnaoui, gold medalist at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and double gold medalist at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships) and athletics (e.g., Raoua Tlili and Walid Ktila, gold medalists at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games). 3.3.4 Uganda: A Neglected but Evolving Sports System Uganda has a population of around 49 million people, approximately 60% of whom are below the age of 16. President Yoweri Museveni has been in office since 1986 and runs a unitary dominant party system of governance. Percapita income – $1,163 – is one of the lowest (163rd) in the world. Although sport is done in schools, academic performance is a much higher priority, so most schools have inadequate sports facilities. Moreover, the interface between national sports organisations and the school system is limited. In fact, sport has been one of the most neglected sectors in Uganda since the country gained its independence in 1962, and national sports organisations have received little or no guidance from either the National Council of Sports (NCS) or the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES). Sports in Uganda are regulated by the National Sports Act 2023 which superseded the longstanding National Council of Sports Act of 1964. Of the 50 national sports associations registered with the NCS, 33 are affiliated to the Uganda Olympic Committee/ Commonwealth Games Uganda. The Uganda Olympic Committee’s primary responsibilities are to represent the IOC in Uganda, enter teams for the Olympic Games and promote Olympism. It relies on the IOC/ Olympic Solidarity for about 90% of its funding (approx. $600,000 over four years) and receives almost no support from government, except for small sums for athletes taking part in Olympic Games. For many years, the UOC’s relationship with the NCS/ MOES was quite ‘frosty’, but relations have become more collaborative in recent years. Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 135 As sport’s regulator, the NCS is mandated to provide support to national sports associations. However, a long history of inadequate funding resulted in national sports associations receiving very little, if any, funding. Consequently, they had to seek support from their members, their IFs and corporate partners and sometimes relied on inputs of personal funding from their administrators. This situation has evolved since the end of the 2010s when the government began recognising sport’s ability to galvanize youth. Hence, the budget allocated to sports through the NCS has progressively increased, rising from 3.1 billion Uganda shillings ($785,000) in 2015 to 48 billion Uganda shillings ($12.1 million) in 2023. This budget covers all national sports activities and programmes across the country. Football receives the largest share of this funding (approx. 17.5 billion Uganda shillings, $4.4 million), while many other sports must still fend for themselves. In terms of professional sport, Uganda has professional football, basketball and rugby leagues, and a few elite runners and boxers have managers. Some netball, football, basketball and rugby players have joined professional leagues in the United Kingdom, United States of America and France. Uganda’s colonialera sports system and structure collapsed between 1970 and 1985 when the country went through a period of political instability that led to governance problems such as a decline in skilled manpower and infrastructure. Patronage, nepotism, ethnicity, conflict of interest, abuse of office and bad governance resulted in Ugandan sport lacking effective sports governance structures and policies for many years. However, steps are now being taken to restore and rehabilitate the sports system, with recent developments hinting at a new dawn for sport in Uganda. For example. Uganda achieved its highestever medal tally at the 2020 Olympic Games, with two gold medals (Joshua Cheptegei in the 5000 m and Peruth Chemutai in the 3000 m steeplechase), one silver medal (Joshua Cheptegei in the 10,000 m) and one bronze medal (Jacob Kiplimo in the 10,000 m). Uganda finished 36th in the medals table, as the second African nation behind Kenya. 3.3.5 South Korea: A Bureaucratic Model at the Service of Nation Branding18 South Korea is a young democracy (since 1987) with a population of 51 million people. The public authorities play a very active role in South Korean sport, which is regulated by the National Sports Promotion Act, first passed in 1962 and subject to several revisions (the latest in 2023). The Ministry for Culture, Sports and Tourism defines South Korea’s sports policy, which is implemented mostly by partner sports organisations. The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC) and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation (KSPO) play pivotal roles in the system. The KSOC is the umbrella body for the country’s NFs. In addition to its 64 members and 7 associate members, it recognises a further 12 sports organisations (on 8 May 2023) and supports Korea’s 17 provincial sport councils (e.g., Seoul Sports Council, Incheon Sports Council). In the past, its sole focus was international sports competitions, supporting NFs and training athletes with the aim 136 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems of keeping the country in the top ten in the Olympic medals table. Nevertheless, Korea finished just 16th at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and 14th at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Since 2016, when it absorbed the Korean Council of Sport for All, the KSOC has also been officially responsible for developing grassroots sport, as required by the National Sports Promotion Act. Founded to perpetuate the legacy of the Seoul 1988 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the KSPO plays an essential role in obtaining and distributing funds for promoting sport. Its main activities are: (1) running commemorative projects for the 1988 Olympic Games; (2) managing sport promotion funding, most of which comes from the government and fundraising activities such as cycling races, speedboat racing, betting on cycling and speedboat racing and Korea’s ‘Sports Toto’ gambling game; (3) managing sports facilities and real estate acquisitions and leases; (4) conducting sports science research; and (5) implementing other actions recognised by the Ministry for Culture, Sports and Tourism. The Korean Foundation for Next Generation Sports Talent, established in 2007 and attached to the KSPO in 2016, provides education programmes for future nationalteam athletes and sports administrators. The Ministry for Culture, Sports and Tourism oversees many more public sports institutions and organisations, including the Korea Sports Association for the Disabled, the Korea AntiDoping Agency and the Taekwondo Promotion Foundation. In the commercial sector, Korea’s four professional leagues (football, baseball, basketball, volleyball) have grown considerably since the 1980s. Although these leagues can be categorised as suborganisations of their respective NFs, the government has limited control over the most popular leagues. Following a change of government in the late 1980s, South Korea has adopted a strategy of selling the country’s image abroad by hosting major international events, notably the 1988 Summer Olympics (Seoul), 2002 Men’s Football World Cup (Korea and Japan), 2011 Athletics World Championships (Daegu), 2018 Winter Olympics (PyeongChang) and 2024 Youth Winter Olympic Games (Gangwon). 3.3.6 Sri Lanka: A NonIntegrated and Failing Model in an Emerging Country Sri Lanka is a country of 22 million people with a complex social, ethnic and religious structure. It gained its independence in 1948 but remained a dominion within the British Commonwealth until 1972 when it became a democratic socialist republic. It subsequently went through a 30year civil war that finally came to an end in 2009. Although Sri Lanka’s education and health systems are well organised and very professional, this is not the case for its national sports system, which is highly fragmented and poorly professionalised. A law passed in 1973 and revised in 1993 and 2017 sets out the national sports framework, but there is no clear division between the roles of the state and of the sport and Olympic movement, especially in terms Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 137 of organising elite sport. Nor is there an overall strategic vision or any structured and institutionalised cooperation and partnership between the sports ministry and Sri Lanka’s NOC and sport federations. Nevertheless, the ministry helps finance travel for national teams competing in international competitions and the staging of international competitions. Sri Lanka hosted the South East Asian Games in 2006 and the Asian Beach Games in 2011, but its bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games was unsuccessful. Moreover, sport appears to be highly politicised in a very unstable political context (crisis in 2022, when the country’s president resigned in the face of massive demonstrations, especially by young people). In line with Garcia and Meier’s (2022) observation that sports organisation leaders in developing countries often have close ties with political parties and the public authorities, the president of Sri Lanka’s NOC until 2018 also held important political and ministerial positions. A major area of contention with the current law on sports is that it gives the sports minister the power to dissolve a national sport federation and replace its elected president and executive committee. Indeed, FIFA suspended Sri Lanka’s NF in 2023 because of political interference. The IOC did not take similar action, although it has done so for other countries. Given the fragility of Sri Lanka’s system, its NOC and NFs are mostly selffinanced and have few resources. Nevertheless, the NOC’s annual revenues have enabled it to recruit around ten young employees, although overall coordination remains in the hands of its elected leaders, particularly its secretary general (who has held the office for almost 20 years). Sri Lanka’s NOC maximises its income from Olympic Solidarity by responding to all its calls for projects, whereas state aid provides just 5% of its income. It remains more focused on its Olympic education missions and leadership training than on elite sport and has recently begun paying considerable attention to sports integrity policies. For example, it has created, with state support, a very professional antidoping agency. International cooperation agreements with countries such as Australia and South Korea provide support in the form of equipment donations, training for coaches and athlete scholarships and so on. Football is the only Sri Lankan NF that has managed to professionalise effectively, thanks to substantial help from FIFA, although Sri Lanka remains near the bottom of FIFA’s ranking (204th out of 210 NFs in 2023). Olympic and elite sport have few resources in terms of infrastructure and staff, and this has undoubtedly contributed to Sri Lanka’s lack of success at the Olympic Games, where it has won just two medals, both silver (in 1984 and 2000). The Armed Forces Ministry provides support for central Olympic sports, especially athletics, by providing training facilities and coaches and recruiting former military elite athletes, and a few elite athletes train in Australia and the United States via these countries’ university systems. Cricket, which is not an Olympic sport or integrated into the NOC, is by far the most popular sport in Sri Lanka, where it is a veritable religion and more important than any Olympic sport. In fact, Sri Lanka is one of the world’s top nations in cricket, the country’s only truly professional and economically developed sport. 138 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems The current national sports system still makes insufficient use of the links with cricket and its economy, and it does little to build upon the networks abroad offered by the Sri Lankan diaspora to develop and support elite sport. Similarly, it has not exploited possible interfaces between sport/ Olympism and its education system (school sport, youth competitions), health system (highly professionalised sports medicine sector) and tourism, even though the country has greater potential in these areas. A country’s national sports system impacts its ability to implement ambitious policies promoting elite sport and its success in major international competitions (especially the Olympic Games and world championships). However, sporting results are not always related to a country’s sports system, as elite athletes may train in other countries (e.g., through the United States’ university sports system) or through organisations unconnected with sports federations or public bodies (e.g., private academies). 3.4 A Nation’s Sporting Success The Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success (SPLISS) model, first drawn up in 2006 and subsequently improved (De Bosscher et al., 2015), outlines the main factors that determine a nation’s sporting success (Section 3.4.1). However, countries must also make strategic choices based on their strengths in terms of sporting culture and expertise (Section 3.4.2). 3.4.1 The SPLISS Model According to the SPLISS model, a country’s elite sport performance is built on ten pillars (Figure 3.1): 1. Financial support 2. Organisation and structure of sport policies 3. Foundation and participation 4. Talent identification and development system 5. Athletic and postcareer support 6. Training facilities 7. Coaching provision and coaching development 8. International and national competitions 9. Scientific research 10. Elite sport environment, media and sponsoring These ten pillars contribute to a nation’s sporting performance through a process that combines injecting resources into a given environment, which may or may not be favourable (input), and using these resources to produce good results in major international competitions. This process involves a country’s NOC, NFs and the Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 139 state. Its ultimate aim is to generate positive impacts for the nation, such as raising its profile and/ or improving its image, increasing participation in sport, building a sporting culture, instilling national pride and creating a feeling of belonging. The following paragraphs present each of these ten pillars, as set out by the authors of the SPLISS actionresearch programme on steering national elite sport policies, conducted in collaboration with experts in elite sport. 3.4.1.1 Pillar No. 1: Financial Support for Elite Sport This pillar describes a country’s ability to fund sport in general and elite sport in particular (see Grix, 2024). Support may be public or private and direct (subsidies, provision of facilities and staff) or indirect (fiscal arrangements – e.g., tax exemptions for federations or for grants to elite athletes, providing elite athletes with jobs in the armed forces or public companies, etc.). Public subsidies include government and local authority funding and injecting lottery funding into elite sport (very common in Europe). Some sports also receive private funding in the form of media rights and sponsorship revenues. Analyses must consider the ways sports bodies (sports ministry, sports federations, NOCs, academies, private bodies) distribute and use this funding to train athletes. Figure 3.1 The SPLISS Model. Source: De Bosscher et al. (2015). 140 Three Interconnected Regulatory Systems 3.4.1.2 Pillar No. 2: Organisation and Structure of Sport Policies Pillar 2 concerns the way a country organises elite sport. Analyses of this pillar must include aspects such as regional policies and bodies for spotting talent (building the elite sports sector), the roles played by different actors, mechanisms for pooling competencies and resources, decisionmaking processes, the influence these processes have on policy, and whether operational policies are compatible with achieving strategic objectives. The presence of appropriate mechanisms to ensure elite sport bodies collaborate effectively with sponsors and the media is a key indicator of whether a country has an integrated approach. 3.4.1.3 Pillar No. 3: Foundation and Participation Pillar 3 covers the extent and intensity of participation in sport by the population as a whole and especially by children through school sport and extracurricular sport. What is the place of school sport and how much sport (frequency and length of physical education sessions) do children do at school? Do clubs provide conducive environments for trying and playing a sport and for developing talent? A key factor in producing elite athletes is to give young people the chance to try numerous sports, without pressuring them to specialise at too young an age. Hence, it is important to analyse the diversity of the school sport offered and the number of clubs in each discipline and for each type of sport practice (competition, leisure, etc.). The percentage of people in each age group and each socioprofessional category who do sport and the regularity with which they do sport are good indicators of a country’s sporting culture. These data also indicate which sports are the most attractive to different categories of people and whether a country has a general or more specialised sporting culture. 3.4.1.4 Pillar No. 4: Talent Identification and Development Elite athletes must be supported by an elite sports sector and a system that provides advice and assistance throughout their sporting careers. It must be possible to offer talented young athletes school programmes (special sections for young athletes in schools, sportstudy systems, adapted timetables, etc.) and personal development that are compatible with the demands of training and competitions. Pathways to the top level must be individualised according to each young athlete’s situation and sporting objectives. 3.4.1.5 Pillar No. 5: Athletic and PostCareer Support To enable athletes to perform at their best, the sports organisations looking after them (federation, private academy, educational establishment, etc.) must provide suitable support before, during and after their sporting careers (career transition). Global Regulation Dependent on National Sport Configurations 141 Do sporting, family and school support mechanisms exist and are they coordinated effectively? Support may take various forms, including adapted study programmes, nutrition advice, medical supervision, mental preparation, legal and financial advice, media training, foreign language training and individualised exam preparation. Are people with these skills available to help young people successfully manage the three aspects of an athlete’s life (sport, school and family) while coping with the demands of highlevel competition (travel and time)? Are athletes offered support to facilitate their career transitions, notably retraining and help finding work? Is psychological support available to athletes when they retire from elite sport, a transition many athletes find extremely difficult? Being able to draw on the experience of former elite athletes to help future generations is a great advantage in terms of providing support. 3.4.1.6 Pillar No. 6: Training Facilities A comprehensive, nationwide network of sport facilities is essential for countries wishing to fully realise their elitelevel sporting potential. Having such a network allows athletes of all levels to train properly wherever they live. In addition, specialist elite training centres combining sports facilities with schools, medical services, accommodation and catering services enable elite athletes both to train effectively and efficiently (no time wasted travelling) and to benefit from the effects of peer emulation. Most major sporting nations have concentrated knowledge and expertise in highperformance training structures such as national training centres (e.g., INSEP in France, Macolin in Switzerland) or networks of national performance centres (United Kingdom). Sport infrastructure investment programmes must cover renovation work on existing amenities as well as the construction of new facilities. Care must be taken to calculate the operating costs of topclass facilities as accurately as possible to ensure they can function correctly. National and regional centres for specific sports must be part of an overall training policy. 3.4.1.7 Pillar No. 7: Coaching Provision and Coaching Development Pillar 7 is whether a country has enough coaches to provide effective training for a sport’s elite athletes. It includes training systems for elitelevel coaches and refresher course and continuing training mechanisms. Coaches’ profiles, competencies and experience are key for understanding their ability to accompany athletes from the highest regional level to the international level. Is the work done by coaches sufficiently recognised by employers? Are there possibilities for career progression? Do coaches have secure employment contracts? Is there a union to represent them and defend their interests in cases of conflict? These human resources issues are key for understanding a country’s ability to attract, develop and retain talented coaches. 244 New Governance Challenges for International Sport Organisations and sportsmanship remain sources of inspiration and excitement. Circuit owners protect their sport’s integrity by setting rules of play and codes of conduct/ ethics (behaviour on the field of play, respecting opponents, referees and other fans, etc.) and imposing sanctions on athletes who break these rules (from fines to exclusion from competitions). Efforts to combat threats such as doping, match fixing, violence, racism, harassment and abuse include selfregulation measures (e.g., educating athletes about the need to respect the rules of play and codes of ethics), setting up international watchdogs (e.g., World AntiDoping Agency, International Testing Agency, Court of Arbitration for Sport; see Chapter 1) and passing national legislation. National antidoping and sport integrity agencies also play a role. In addition, some sports have set up their own international integrity systems, such as the Athletics Integrity Unit, created by World Athletics in 2017, and the International Tennis Integrity Agency, established by the ATP/ WTA, ITF and Grand Slam Board in 2008. The physical safety of athletes, officials and spectators is another important aspect of protecting the game. Providing safe conditions in which to compete, officiate and spectate is becoming increasingly expensive for competition organisers. In addition, sports must protect athletes’ mental and physical health by monitoring the number of matches/ competitions they take part in, scheduling events at times of the year with appropriate weather conditions, factoring recovery times into competition calendars and providing medical supervision to prevent and treat specific pathologies. A more recent concern, triggered by a series of major scandals, is the need to protect young athletes (especially young women) from potentially harmful relationships with coaches or other members of their entourage (risk of psychological and sexual abuse). National governments have begun passing legislation on these issues, while circuit operators and federations have up portals for whistleblowers, provide information and training, and ensure young athletes have separate accommodation from coaches during training camps. Cyberbullying, via aggressive or violent socialmedia posts or via sports gamblers threatening and pressuring athletes, is another potential source of distress. A final aspect of protecting the game involves taking measures to ensure athletes do not suffer from social precarity and vulnerability during or after their careers. One way that sports can do this is by providing athletes with training that will help them with their career transitions when they can no longer compete at the highest level (social security). For example, in 2023 the ATP, in conjunction with LaLiga (Spain’s topflight football league), launched a Business Education Programme ‘to build ATP players’ knowledge of the sports industry and open professional opportunities following their playing careers’. 6.1.2.4 Finance and Marketing Finance and marketing must be at the heart of a sport’s regulation if it is to generate the economy and media coverage needed to make professionalism viable. Private Circuits vs. Federation Events in Individual Sports 245 A circuit’s attractiveness to the media, spectators, sponsors and fans, which is a key factor in obtaining revenues from these stakeholders depends on the sport’s renown, the reputation of its events and athletes (ranking, personality, fame/ image, etc.) and whether events are exciting (which is, by definition, uncertain, as no one knows what will happen during a match/ competition). A sport’s appeal is an essential criterion for circuits and their component events to consider when designing their business models, which generally revolve around centralised marketing strategies (as in team sports), and negotiating with stakeholders. In addition, having a monopoly over a sport’s major competitions gives circuit owners greater bargaining power and allows them to generate larger revenues. Circuit owners/ managers generally negotiate media rights and major sponsorship deals for all the events on their circuit and then redistribute a proportion of these revenues to event organisers. For example, in 2023 the ATP redistributed $300,000 to each ATP 250 tournament organiser and paid them $325,000 for the rights to player and match statistics, which the ATP could then sell to online betting companies. Local event organisers must work within this framework to develop a business model that allows them to attain their objectives (make a profit, attract partners, grow the sport, etc.). Another aim of circuits’ commercial and marketing strategies is to expand their businesses internationally by entering new markets and attracting new fans. The number of events, the level of each tournament and the amount of prize money available must be chosen with the aim of making professionalism viable. To this end, the ATP has raised the prize money available to professional players by increasing the number of ATP 500 events for the 2024 season from 13 to 16 (by merging ATP 250 tournaments). Media coverage, via either classic media or the internet and social networks, and globalisation are key to boosting a circuit’s fame and enhancing its image, while better quality images and data capture systems explaining differences in athletes’ performances give fans a more immersive experience. Having wellknown and wellrespected champions makes it easier to market a sports event, which is why sports such as Formula 1, cycling and tennis cooperated with Netflix to produce documentaries16 showcasing their best and most bankable athletes so they become known to a wider audience (especially young people and women). By providing glimpses into top athletes’ lives, streaming companies are following cinema’s tradition of marketing and glamourising its biggest stars. Circuit owners and event organisers must create ‘fan experiences’ that do not rely solely on the sporting spectacle, which is, by its nature, uncertain. Moments of sporting drama remain an important part of fan experiences, but owners/ organisers also use nonsporting attractions such as music shows, opportunities to win prizes (cash, memorabilia, nonfungible tokens, etc.) and behindthescenes visits to create fan loyalty. How the money a circuit generates is redistributed is a key issue for the circuit owneroperator to negotiate with event organisers and players, as is the distribution of revenues between athletes (from stars to more modest athletes). Events must also decide whether to redistribute (usually via sport federations) some of 246 New Governance Challenges for International Sport Organisations their revenues to grassroots sport as the source of the next generation of athletes, referees and volunteers. Athletes redistribute a proportion of their revenues to their ‘team’ (coach, physical trainer, mental trainer, agent), unless they belong to an academy (sometimes the case in tennis) or have a manager/ agent (often the case in athletics). What is the right balance to achieve between these actors and what compromises should each actor be prepared to make? IFs tend to keep a large proportion of the revenues their competitions generate and redistribute relatively small amounts to athletes and local organisers. They justify this by pointing out that they use this money to finance international competitions for young athletes, which are by their nature lossmaking, and to grow the sport around the world. However, athletes may contest this distribution given the luxurious working conditions of some international sport executives (e.g., VIP treatment at events), which raises questions about whether development and solidarity funds redistributed to NFs are used well. Event organisers and athletes are better able to defend their interests in the case of commercial circuits because they control their events’ governance. In tennis, the ATP, after taking its share, redistributes revenues 50/ 50 between players and tournament organisers. And tennis players have forced the Grand Slam tournaments to redistribute more of their revenues to players, resulting in a 14fold increase in prize money between 2000 and 2023.17 Nevertheless, the tournament owners (the Australian, French and American Opens are owned by their host country’s NF; Wimbledon is owned by a club) still take a much larger share of the profits than the players (ratio of approx. 6 to 1). Grand Slam tournaments now have equal prize pools for men and women and allocate more prize money to players who finish lower down the tournament rankings (qualifiers and first round) to help them finance their season. Players have several options when it comes to redistributing revenues to their entourage. Generally, this redistribution is aligned with the athlete’s revenues. For example, a player’s coach may receive a fixed weekly, monthly or annual salary or 10% of prize money (plus expenses and performancelinked bonuses) and the player’s agent may receive 20% of the sponsorship contracts the agent negotiates. In some cases, these sums are not fixed and may vary within maximum and minimum limits set by the sport’s governing body or national legislation. This is the case in athletics, where the managers of African longdistance runners may take more than 50% of the athletes’ revenues (from marathons and road races). Some tennis players in the ATP Top 100 travel with a physical trainer and physiotherapist/ osteopath, as well as a coach, and must therefore cover these extra staff members’ travel expenses.18 In this case, the dominant actors’ ability to concentrate a circuit’s revenues is explained by a combination of the ‘winnertakesall’ and ‘superstars’ economic theories. Feuillet, Scelles and Durand (2018) found that the imbalance in players’ revenues is greater in men’s tennis than it is in men’s golf, but this is not due to differences in the way these sports distribute prize money. Rather, it is a result of tennis having a lower turnover in sporting rankings than golf. Consequently, a small number of tennis players earn a particularly high proportion of the sport’s prize money over several seasons. More specifically, during the 2010s the lion’s share of Private Circuits vs. Federation Events in Individual Sports 247 prize money, guarantees,19 exhibition fees and worldwide individual sponsorship went to just four players: Djokovic, Federer, Murray and Nadal. Even though each of these players won more than €100 million in prize money during their careers, most of their revenues came from sponsorship (between €20 million and €70 million a year). Federer was particularly successful in monetising his image, earning almost three times as much from sponsorship as Nadal and Djokovic in 2020. These sums made him the world’s highestpaid athlete that year, with total earnings of more than $100 million. 6.1.2.5 Social Responsibility Social responsibility actions enable professional sport to justify its place in society and in host territories and to show that it can be a responsible business. The International Standards Organisation defines organisational social responsibility as an organisation’s contribution to sustainable development and its willingness to take responsibility for and report its activities’ impacts on society and the environment (ISO 26000). For sport organisations’ social responsibility to be truly effective, it must involve and be shared with other stakeholders, including athletes (some of whom have their own societal foundations), sponsors (e.g., via ecoresponsible partnerships) and suppliers (choosing suppliers with responsible management practices, such as companies who use/ provide organic and local products). The National Basketball Association – probably the most advanced sport organisation in terms of social responsibility (François and Bayle, 2011) – has created an integrated and consolidated social responsibility strategy called NBA Cares. Professional individual sports can draw up similar strategies, as the PGA did in 1978 when it founded the PGA Foundation to run its social responsibility actions. However, the PGA Foundation operates on a much smaller scale and is less professionalised than NBA Cares. Social responsibility has three dimensions: societal, economic and environmental. In terms of the societal dimension, circuit owners must develop an international strategy and promote their event organisers’ initiatives and good practices. Event organisers can undertake civic and solidarity actions (e.g., make their events easily accessible to people with disabilities, provide free tickets for young people in difficulty, support and promote charities, etc.), promote and encourage amateur sport (encourage volunteerism, organise sports demonstrations for young athletes, etc.). Many of these actions can be carried out with public and private partners, who can use sport and sport events to showcase their policies and social responsibility. Economic social responsibility involves demonstrating an event’s beneficial effect on its host territory, often by conducting economic and media impact studies whose results can be used to justify public investment in the event (economic and social returns on investment). The economic dimension also involves developing more responsible eventmanagement practices, such as building partnerships 248 New Governance Challenges for International Sport Organisations focused on solidarity and environmental responsibility, adopting a human resources policy based on diversity, integration and inclusion (social diversity, percentages of women, people with disabilities, young people, older people) and adopting responsible purchasing practices. Sports events/ circuits can demonstrate their environmental social responsibility by reducing their carbon footprints, notably by encouraging spectators, staff and players to use moresustainable means of transport (public transport, nonpolluting vehicles, etc.), recycling waste, reducing water, electricity and gas consumption, avoiding plastics and cardboard, and using digital communication rather than paper. Organisers can also review the lifecycles of the buildings, materials and products they use. Sport organisations can seek certification for their social responsibility actions by meeting standards such as ISO 20121, which was conceived specifically for sports events. They can also formalise their social responsibility actions by setting up a foundation or similar mechanism. Partner organisations may contribute to a sport’s social responsibility actions, as BNP Paribas has done in the case of tennis. Its ‘Aces du Cœur’ initiative20 enables the bank to present itself as a ‘partner for the whole of tennis’ from the global to the local level (elite tennis, professional tennis, amateur tennis, women’s tennis, youth tennis, adaptive tennis, socially responsible tennis, etc.). Athletes, especially a sport’s biggest stars, must also demonstrate their social responsibility. Many of the world’s most famous athletes have set up foundations to carry out social and solidarity actions – e.g., Tiger Woods Foundation (created in 1996), Roger Federer Foundation (2003), Nadal Foundation (2007), Kelly Slater Foundation (2007), Ignite Foundation (created by Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes in 2021) and so on – and/ or become an ambassador for local, national or international causes (UNICEF, WWF, etc.). Table 6.1 summarises the domains, subdomains, success factors and success indicators for the regulation of professional individual sports. Circuit owners must negotiate and adapt their actions within these five domains in accordance with the interests and expectations of its sport’s key stakeholders (IF, event organisers, athletes, referees, agents, TV, sponsors, fans). Thus, they must regulate their circuits on three levels: macrolevel regulation concerns the sport’s entire ecosystem; mesolevel regulation focuses on the circuit’s events, whether they are organised by commercial operators or by associative bodies; and microlevel regulation considers a circuit’s individual components (athletes, agents, referees, event organisers) and detailed rules (e.g., eligibility rights/ conditions for circuits). Some issues, such as combatting the socioeconomic precarity of players outside the world’s top 100,21 require circuit owners to take action on all three levels of regulation. On the macro level, circuit owners could change the way they distribute revenues so more money goes to players lower down the world rankings. For example, the ATP could put aside 10% of the prize pool for its largest tournaments (ATP 1000, 500 and 250) to fund a system guaranteeing players ranked Private Circuits vs. Federation Events in Individual Sports 249 (Continued) Table 6.1 Summary of the Success Factors and Key Indicators for the Governance of Professional Individual Sports Domain Subdomain Success factors Key indicators Governance Systemic Involve stakeholders in decisions Dialogue (federation, circuit owner, event organisers, representatives of players, referees, commercial stakeholders, etc.) Absence of conflicts Political International legal framework Partnerships with and funding from public bodies (cities/ regions) Absence of controversies Public support (services/ subsidies) for professional sport Organisational Strategic vision Longterm strategic plan Leadership Experience and expertise of the leader and board Management systems Quality of strategic, marketing and financial information systems Professionalism Number of staff and level of expertise Evaluation of success and ability to explain success to stakeholders Publication of performance indicators (media/ economic results and impacts) Competition structure and rules Rules Clarity, unity and innovations Unity and international recognition Absence of contestation by stakeholders Calendar Clarity and internationalisation Number and hierarchy of tournaments Geographical distribution Harmonisation with the world championships and Olympic Games calendar Ranking Sporting importance of each tournament and during the season Uncertainty of outcomes and rankings Easy to understand by all Rankings published regularly Facilities/ stadiums Number and types of facilities Quality of stadiums and infrastructure Logistics and security Organiser’s specification Quality control to ensure specification is met [Document text truncated for crawler view.]