Editor's note: This report compiles the most relevant legal
news, events and materials on International and European Sports Law based on
the daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser.
The Headlines
International Sports Law
Journal (ISLJ) Conference 2019
The T.M.C. Asser Institute
and the Asser International Sports Law Centre held the third International
Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference on October 24-25. The Conference created a
forum for academics and practitioners to discuss, debate and share knowledge on
the latest developments of sports law. It featured six uniquely themed panels,
which included topics such as ‘Transfer systems in international sports’ and ‘Revisiting
the (in)dependence and transparency of the CAS’ to ‘The future of sports:
sports law of the future’. The ISLJ Conference was also honored to have two
exceptional keynote speakers: Moya Dodd and Ulrich Haas. To kick off the conference,
Moya Dodd shared her experiences from an athlete’s perspective in the various
boardrooms of FIFA. The second day was then launched by Ulrich Haas, who gave
an incredibly thorough and insightful lecture on the importance, function and legal
basis of association tribunals in international sport. For a detailed overview
of this year’s ISLJ Conference, click here for the official conference
report.
The Asser International
Sports Law Centre was delighted to have been able to host another great edition
of the ISLJ Conference and is thankful to all the participants and speakers who
made this edition such a success.
Moving towards greater
transparency: Launch of FIFA’s Legal Portal
On October 31, FIFA announced that it was introducing a
new legal portal on its website that will
give greater access to numerous documents that previously were kept private. FIFA
explains that this is in order to help increase its transparency, which was one
of the key ‘Guiding Principles’ highlighted in FIFA 2.0: The Vision for the Future released in 2016. This
development comes as many sport governing bodies face increasing criticism for
the opacity of its judicial bodies’ decisions, which can have tremendous
economic and societal impacts. The newly available documents will include: ‘decisions
rendered on the merits by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee and the FIFA Appeal
Committee (notified as of 1 January 2019); decisions rendered on the merits by
the FIFA Ethics Committee (notified since 1 January 2019); decisions rendered
on the merits by the FIFA Players’ Status Committee and the FIFA Dispute
Resolution Chamber; non-confidential CAS awards in proceedings to which FIFA is
a party (notified since 1 January 2019); list of CAS arbitrators proposed by
FIFA for appointment by ICAS, and the number of times they have been nominated
in CAS proceedings’. The list of decisions from all the aforementioned bodies
are updated every four months, according to their respective webpages. However,
time will ultimately tell how consistently decisions are published.
Nevertheless, this move is a major milestone in FIFA’s journey towards
increasing its transparency.
Hong Kong Protests, Human
Rights and (e)Sports Law: The Blizzard and NBA controversies
Both Blizzard, a major
video game developer, and the NBA received a flurry of criticism for their
responses to persons expressing support for the Hong Kong protests over the
past month. On October 8, Blizzard sanctioned Blitzchung, a professional
Hearthstone player who expressed support of the Hong Kong protest during a
post-match interview, by eliminating the prize money he had won and suspending him
for one year from any Hearthstone tournament. Additionally, Blizzard will cease
to work with the casters who conducted the interview. With mounting disapproval
over the sanctions, J. Allen Brack, the president
of Blizzard, restored the prize money and reduced
the period of ineligibility to 6 months.
The NBA controversy
started when Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted his support for the protests in Hong
Kong. The tweet garnered much attention, especially in China where it received
a lot of backlash, including an announcement from CCTV, the official state
broadcaster in China, that it was suspending all broadcasts of the NBA
preseason games. In attempts to appease its Chinese audience, which is a highly
profitable market for the NBA, Morey deleted the tweet and posted an apology, and the NBA responded by
saying that the initial tweet was ‘regrettable’. Many scolded these actions and
accused the NBA of censorship to which the NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, responded that the NBA remains
committed to freedom of expression.
Both cases highlighted how
(e)sport organizations may be faced with competing interests to either
guarantee greater protection of human rights or to pursue interests that
perhaps have certain financial motivations. More...