On 25 and 26 October 2022, the Asser Institute in The Hague will host the 2022 edition of the International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference. The ISLJ is the leading academic journal in transnational sports law and governance and is proud to provide a platform for transnational debates on the state of the field. 2022 has put a number of complex issues and disputes on the top of the transnational sports law agenda, which will be at the heart of the conference.

Sports governing bodies react to Russia's invasion of Ukraine
First, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February triggered a swift and decisive reaction by a wide range of international sports governing bodies (SGBs), leading in particular to the exclusion of Russian teams and athletes from many international sporting competitions, including most prominently the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. These reactions have shown, once again, that sport is far from immune from the turbulences of international relations and raise the question of its alleged neutrality and apolitical nature. To engage with these issues, we have invited Prof. Jonathan Grix (Metropolitan Manchester University) to deliver a keynote speech and will dedicate a specific panel to discussing the intersection between transnational sports law and international law/relations.

Monopoly of sports governing bodies
Second, the organization of international sports is also currently threatened by challenges to the traditional monopoly position of international SGBs raised under EU antitrust law. Early July 2022, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union heard two crucial cases (International Skating Union and Superleague) concerning the compatibility of the rules of international SGBs aimed at sanctioning athletes and clubs who participate in unauthorized third-party competitions. Dr. Van Rompuy (Leiden University), the driving force behind the ISU case, will be discussing with us the potential impact of competition law on the governance of sport and what to expect from the pending decisions of the CJEU. Additionally, we will host two panels dedicated to the application of competition law to sports governance, both at an international and national level.

Human rights and mega-sporting events
Third, with both Beijing and Qatar hosting mega-sporting events this year, it is difficult to ignore the human rights issues raised by international sporting competitions. A fast-growing social movement aimed at urging the SGBs to abide by their human rights responsibilities has been developing around the activism of some NGOs and the creation of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights (CSHR). The CEO of the CSHR, Mary Harvey, will be joining us to share her thoughts on the role of sports lawyers and sports law academics in this discussion. Her intervention will be followed by a panel dedicated to the intersections between human rights and transnational sports law and governance.

Trans and queer participation in sporting competitions
Finally, the question of the participation of transgender athletes in sporting competitions has become an extremely contentious issue of debate in recent years, especially in the United States. Furthermore, International SGBs, such as FINA recently, have started to impose specific requirements to the participation of trans athlete in international competitions. Our closing panel will take a fresh look at this question by foregrounding the way in which trans and queer participation in sporting competitions has been accommodated in South Asia.

Online participation available
For the first time this year, we will allow online participation to the conference for an affordable price. Our aim is to internationalise and diversify further our audience and to reach people who in light of the current challenges, be it Covid-19 or climate change, are not in a position to come in person to The Hague.

Programme
Download the full programme.

Register HERE! (Early Bird Registration is available only until 1 October, 23:59CET)

Editor’s note: Daniela Heerdt is a PhD candidate at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. Her PhD research deals with the establishment of responsibility and accountability for adverse human rights impacts of mega-sporting events, with a focus on FIFA World Cups and Olympic Games. She recently published an article in the International Sports Law Journal that discusses to what extent the revised bidding and hosting regulations by FIFA, the IOC and UEFA strengthen access to remedy for mega-sporting events-related human rights violations.

The 21^st FIFA World Cup is currently underway. Billions of people around the world follow the matches with much enthusiasm and support. For the time being, it almost seems forgotten that in the final weeks leading up to the events, critical reports on human rights issues related to the event piled up. This blog explains why addressing these issues has to start well in advance of the first ball being kicked and cannot end when the final match has been played.

The Warm-up: Preparing for the Game

Even though the recently published update by FIFA’s Human Rights Advisory Board compliments FIFA on its increased efforts for tackling human rights issues related to this year’s World Cup, it is no secret that thousands of workers were exposed to severe human rights violations while working on World Cup construction sites in Russia.[1] Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) extensively reported on the structural exploitation that workers were facing, including unsafe working conditions leading to numerous injuries and the death of 17 workers, forced illegal work due to lack of employment contracts, and cases of non-payment or serious delays in payment of wages.  Those workers that dared to file a complaint were threatened with retaliation and non-payment of wages.[2] Furthermore, journalists and human rights advocates that tried to report on these cases have been intimidated, denied entry into the country, or even arrested while carrying out their investigations.

Blaming the occurrence of these human rights violations on Russia being this year’s World Cup’s host would ignore the fact that these violations are recurring in the context of mega-sporting events (MSEs) like the Summer or Winter Olympic Games or the World Cup. To a certain extent, these events heighten pre-existing human rights risk in the host country and thereby increase the likelihood for violations to occur. Thus, numerous stories of exploitation of migrant workers have been documented in relation to the construction works for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Furthermore, worker’s rights are not the only rights that are at risk during the delivery of MSEs. Other common types of human rights abuses associated with hosting MSEs are cases of forced displacement, infringements of participatory rights, and infringements of freedom of expression and the right to protest.[3] Shortly before and during these events, reports on incidents of excessive use of force by local police and private security forces, as well as arbitrary arrest and criminalization of homeless people and street children are also commonplace.[4]

The First Half: Establishing Responsibility

The key challenge in addressing these cases is to identify the actor and actions responsible for these harmful outcomes. However, MSEs like the FIFA World Cup are jointly organized and staged by a mix of public, private, national, and international actors. International sports bodies, like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee (IOC), set the terms and conditions under which these events can be hosted. Host countries agree to these conditions by submitting government guarantees and declarations and by adopting special event-related legislation. Furthermore, local and regional authorities issue permits and give orders to enable and facilitate event-related operations. The local organizing committees are responsible for living up to the conditions set by the sports bodies and for hiring the necessary contractors. These range from local to international firms, from city planners and logistic experts, to food suppliers and construction firms.[5] Further companies that profit from the MSE-business are international broadcasting firms and recruitment agencies. The financing of these events is secured through national and international corporate sponsors, such as McDonald’s and Budweiser for this year’s FIFA World Cup.[6]

The intuitive thing to do from a human rights perspective would be to call upon the responsibility of Russia as the host country to address these abuses, since states are not only responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights but also for preventing third parties from abusing human rights on their territory. However, this would ignore the real issue at stake: the fact that MSE-related human rights abuses are the result of complex collaboration between multiple actors involved in delivering these events. In the case of exploitation of workers on World Cup construction sites in Russia, construction companies contribute by imposing abusive employment conditions; recruitment agencies by recruiting the workers under false promises; the state by failing to protect the workers and potentially even facilitating certain practices through its event-related policies; FIFA by requiring a certain number and standard of stadiums for the event; and finally also the sponsors by providing the necessary finances.

This rather simplified identification of the various contributing actors only presents a broad indication of how they contribute to these violations and share responsibility. The problem is that the entanglement of actors and their operations creates highly complex governance structures. In order to identify those actors responsible for the violations, victims first have to untangle these structures and retrace the chain of decisions taken, permits issued, orders given, and actions taken. Even if that succeeds, the key challenges are to identify which of the contributing acts would give rise to legal responsibility and to establish responsibility for those actors that have no direct obligations under international human rights law.

The Second Half:  Establishing Accountability

The entanglement of actors and their contributions does not only impede the identification of the responsible actors but also the identification of adequate accountability mechanisms. The business and human rights field knows a broad spectrum of mechanisms ranging from judicial to non-judicial, and from state-based to operational level mechanisms. Up to this point, the few attempts to hold certain actors accountable for MSE-related human rights violations either have been unsuccessful or only addressed a fraction of the actors or types of violations involved. For example, FIFA’s responsibility for World Cup-related human rights abuses has been the subject of a court case in Switzerland and two specific instances dealt with by the Swiss National Contact Point (NCP). The court in Zürich dismissed the case with unusual speed on mainly practical grounds (a more detailed discussion of the judgement can be found here).[7] The mediation procedure at the Swiss NCP led to the creation of a monitoring system for decent work and safety in the workplace for migrant construction workers in Qatar[8], but their living standards and the abuses of recruitment agencies were not addressed.

What these attempts highlight is that the main shortcomings of available mechanisms amount to a lack of access to these mechanisms for affected groups and individuals and a lack of human rights receptivity of existing mechanisms. In light of these shortcomings, new mechanisms are currently being developed and existing mechanisms are being tested in the MSE and human rights context. Just in time for the start of the World Cup, FIFA launched its new complaint mechanism for human rights defenders, which provides human rights defenders and media representatives with an avenue for complaints for situations “in which they consider that their rights have been unduly restricted when conducting work in relation to FIFA’s activities”.[9] Via an online platform, human rights defenders, journalists and other media representatives can submit a complaint and FIFA commits to ensure that it will apply an “appropriate follow-up processes” to it.[10] FIFA itself is supposed to assess these complaints and seek cooperation with third parties that are involved in the matter and relevant institutions that can support the complainant.[11] With regard to testing existing mechanisms, the possibilities for using arbitration as means to address MSE-related human rights issues opened up with the revised bidding and hosting regulations of FIFA and the IOC. Both entail provisions for human rights protection and arbitration clauses, referring to the Court of Arbitration for Sports, for challenging the performance of the host-city or -country under any of the provisions.

The Overtime: The Winner Takes its Share

One way of interpreting these recent efforts of international sports bodies to increase awareness and respect for human rights protection in connection with their events is to argue that they are increasingly becoming aware of their share of responsibility and accountability. Indeed, the increased awareness of adverse human rights impacts of MSEs triggered a number of initiatives that aim at raising human rights standards in the MSE business. In 2016, the MSE platform for human rights has been created, which is a multi-stakeholder coalition consisting of international and intergovernmental organisations, governments, sports governing bodies, athletes, unions, sponsors, broadcasters, and civil society groups, who are committed to take joint action to protect human rights throughout the MSE lifecycle. Recently, this multi-stakeholder initiative created the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, which is an independent center that connects stakeholders and affected groups to share knowledge, build capacity, and strengthen accountability for adverse human rights impacts of sports more generally. Concrete event-related examples of initiatives exist as well. In the run-up to this year’s World Cup, FIFA, Russian authorities and representatives of trade unions took a joint effort to set up a monitoring program for labour conditions on World Cup construction sites. Similar processes led to the establishment of a worker welfare monitoring system for workers on World Cup construction sites in Qatar.

Nevertheless, significant challenges remain in relation to concrete cases of MSE-related human rights abuses and it is important that these efforts do not fade after the final match has been played. MSE-related human rights violations do not automatically stop when the event is over. In some cases, for instance cases of forced evictions, violations continue as long as victims have not been compensated adequately. These challenges do not make it a hopeless endeavour, but they highlight that more work and change is needed before responsibility for MSE-related human rights violations can be established. Especially, most of the developments and efforts of sports governing bodies are rather recent and only apply to events that will take place in the future. Hence, it remains to be seen whether the revised bidding regulations can ensure that future World Cups will have a more positive human rights legacy and eventually avoid adverse human rights impacts altogether.

[1] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, ‘Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup’ <https://business-humanrights.org/en/russia-2018-fifa-world-cup> accessed 14 February 2018.

[2] ibid 27.

[3] Megan Corrarino, ‘“Law Exclusion Zones”: Mega-Events as Sites of Procedural and Substantive Human Rights Violations’ (2014) 17 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 180.

[4] Lucy Amis and John Morrison, ‘Mega-Sporting Events and Human Rights—A Time for More Teamwork?’ (2017) 2 Business and Human Rights Journal 135, 137.

[5] For a more elaborate overview of actors, see Amis and Morrison (n 5) at 136.

[6] Fédération Internationale de Football Association, ‘2018 FIFA World Cup Russia^TM - FIFA Partners’ (FIFA.com, 2017) <http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/partners/index.html> accessed 15 February 2018.

[7] FNV, Bangladeshi Free Trade Union Congress, BWI & Nadim Shariful Alam v FIFA Handelsgericht Kanton Zürich (3 January 2017).

[8] Specific Instance regarding the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) submitted by the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) - Final Statement Swiss National Contact Point (2 May 2017).

[9] FIFA, ‘FIFA Statement on Human Rights Defenders and Media Representatives’ (2018) 4, para 14 <https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/ejf1ecdku14lm2v9zc03.pdf> accessed 12 June 2018.

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid 5, para 15.

Editor's note: Marine Montejo is a graduate from the College of Europe in Bruges and is currently an intern at the ASSER International Sports Law Centre. 

Part 2. EU competition law and sports funding

The first analysed impact of Brexit on sport was the one regarding EU internal market rules and free movement. However, all sport areas that are of interest to the European Union will be impacted by the result of the future Brexit negotiations. This second part of the blog will focus on EU competition law and the media sector as well as direct funding opportunities keeping in mind that if the UK reaches for an EEA type agreement competition law and state aid rules will remain applicable as much as the funding programs.  

A) EU competition law and the media sector

As for the internal market rules, EU competition law applies to sport as long as an economic activity appears to have an impact on the European market. In the field of sport this is particularly true for the media sector, a key source of economic revenue for professional sport. 

EU competition law

It should be stated from the beginning that the UK, even completely outside of the EU, will not escape EU competition law (articles 101 and 102 TFEU). Indeed, if there is an economic activity within the European market EU law will continue to apply. The application of EU competition law leads to a convergence with national competition rules and most of the decisions relating to sport will probably remain enforceable through UK national law provisions unless there is an important change in their interpretation or a complete shift in competition law policy leading to a change of these rules. 

The main impact for the UK regarding the applicability of EU competition law appears to be in the media sector. With regard to the collective selling of media rights, for the time being national provisions should maintain the system in force which is derived from the Commission’s decisional practice (Football Association Premier League for a British example). Collective selling of media rights is compatible with EU competition law if the selling procedure is organised in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner, the contractual exclusivity runs for no more than three years and the rights are sold in several packages. The “no-single buyer” clause that was first imposed upon the Premier League to avoid the risk of monopolisation given the specific structure of the British sport media market (and now also applied by the German competition authority for the Bundesliga rights) might be questioned. This clause, providing that all the rights should not be sold to a single broadcaster, combined with the possibilities offered by EU free movement and impressive marketing skills from the Football Association, has made the Premier League the most valuable football competition in the world (6.9 billion euros for 2016-2019). It is highly probable that the UK national competition authority will keep that clause and the obligations for all sport media rights unless there is a major shift in national competition law policy. Remaining or leaving, in any case EU competition law will have left an important imprint on the British sport media rights landscape.

Other media related questions

In relation to media rights, two more points are interesting. Firstly, the question concerning multi-territory licensing of media rights in sport may arise. Sport rights are sold on a territorial basis. One of the many reasons for it are linguistic borders. However, the ECJ concluded that territorial exclusivity agreements relating to the transmission (using satellite decoders from broadcast providers based on another Member State) of football matches were a breach of competition law and the free movement of provision of services (Football Association Premier League v QC Leisure and Karen Murphy v. Media Protection Services Limited, joined cases C-403/08 and C-429/08). This important judgement caused great despair among sport organisers but it gave the opportunity to consumers to access a broader list of sport media providers around the EU. Depending on the position of the UK towards the EU, this possibility may vanish in the future. This judgment is also important for EU protection of property rights. The Court held that sport events cannot be considered intellectual creations, and, as such, cannot be protected by copyright. However, a clear distinction was made between private residence watching and public screening. The latter could amount to copyright infringement if some part of the event can be considered as unique and original and are duly protected (i.e. songs, slow motion extracts, etc.). In that case, it is for the Members States to regulate such a protection, but the EU is also developing a specific protection at the European level. Sport rights holders are exposed to financial damages due to breach of intellectual property rights with high economic value. This is the case for media rights but also for sport merchandising. The enforcement of those rights is conjointly overlooked by the Commission for harmonization of national legislations as well as the European Union Intellectual property Office (EUIPO) and Europol. In a situation where cross-border piracy and counterfeiting is difficult to tackle alone, the UK might consider to secure some kind of cooperation with the EU on that matter.

Secondly, also concerning the sports media industry, albeit with less ties to competition law provisions, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (better known as the “Television Without Frontiers directive”) might not be applied to the UK in the future or at least as it stands at the moment. This directive regulates cross-border television broadcasting and allows EU Member States to establish a list of sport events of major importance for society that are offered on subscription-free TV channels (article 14 of the directive). The protected events list is then transmitted to the Commission in order to check its compliance with EU law and published in the EU Official Journal. Members States are entitled to create such a list but may choose not to. The UK is amongst the Members States that choose to set up such a list. Consequently, the 1996 Broadcasting Act lists those events for the UK (for example the Olympic Games, the Wimbledon Tennis Finals, the FA Cup Final, or the FIFA World Cup Finals Tournament). The national law relies on the directive which means that after Brexit, if the UK wants to keep with that requirement it should integrate the list into its national law. In a country where the subscriptions for premium sports pay television are the most expensive in Europe, it is quite doubtful whether this is good news for the British consumer and that might be an incentive to maintain a similar system. The directive also provides for a system of mutual recognition meaning that a provider of an audiovisual media services is subject to the law of its country of origin. Another Member State cannot impose other requirements than the one provided for by the directive. This principle, in case of Brexit, will surely disappear which is a potential problem for sports broadcasters seated in the UK and engaged in cross-border activities.  

EU State aid policy

Public funding and financial support is often used in sport and is a highly sensitive issue. Infrastructure and individual sport clubs are the main beneficiaries of public funds, which can make them subject to EU State aid provisions (article 107 TFEU). The Commission has closely monitored the application of State aid law in the field of sport, drawing a big line between professional and grassroots sports subsidies. Financial support to professional clubs is sometimes found incompatible with EU law as it distorts competition. An exception to this is where the objectives pursued are non-economic (subsidies for young training centres have been considered compatible as the main goal is to meet education obligations). Subsidies to amateur clubs are less likely to constitute State aid as they are not pursuing an economic activity. For sport infrastructures, only the ones pursuing economic activities and in competition at the European level are likely to be subject to State aid rules. A consequence of a complete Brexit might end the application of EU State aid rules in the UK. Anyway, given the expected negative economic consequences related to Brexit, it is rather unlikely that British public authorities will have the financial capacity to intensively fund professional clubs and sports infrastructures even if it they would have the freedom to do so. 

B) The money: securing sports funding

Finally, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU developed a more proactive policy in sport via funding opportunities. These are also going to be impacted by Brexit and adverse consequences will specifically target amateur sport.  

EU funding for sport

The introduction of article 165 TFEU allowed the EU to create a specific funding programme for sport. Before that, sport related projects were indirectly funded through other EU programmes. The 2014-2020 Erasmus + Sport programme provides grants for a broad range of actions and activities in the field of sport. The aim of the programme is to promote the positive values of sport and physical activity and good governance in the sector as well as support dual careers of athletes and projects against match-fixing, doping, violence, racism and intolerance. These funds are directly targeted to grassroots sports through collaborative partnerships, not-for-profit European sport events, dialogue with European sport stakeholders as well as studies and conferences. British sport and sport-related organisations as well as public authorities can benefit from funding. However, these possibilities may disappear following Brexit. Erasmus + Sport is a European programme and, as such, helps to finance projects contributing to the development of a European dimension of sport. Consequently, it is difficult to give an exact number of projects financed through the programme in the UK. However, to give an illustration, in 2015, just for Erasmus + Sport projects for which a UK sport organisations was the lead coordinator, the EU funding amounted up to 1.1 million euros. It should be kept in mind that other British organizations are simple partners to many other projects and are entitled to be funded as well (the 2015 budget for the Erasmus + Sports programme was 18,8 million euros). Will the UK be entitled to keep some funding? If it secures an EEA type agreement, Erasmus + Sport will still apply but the UK will have to financially contribute to it. 

The financial participation from the EU in UK sports is also possible through other EU programmes. It is worth mentioning the European Structural and Investment funds which promotes the socio-economic development of European regions (10.7 billion euros were awarded to the UK for 2014-2020). The EU also provides funding for sport related studies to which several UK-based academics and think tanks have already participated. One should not forget that the EU is also actively supporting academic and PhD research through several programmes (the main one being Horizon 2020) and that in case of Brexit it will have a negative impact on the UK’s capacity to produce academic output on sport (think about anti-doping, sports law and governance, economics studies, etc…). 

Gambling and sport betting

The British market for gambling and sports betting generated 12.6 billion pounds last year. It is one of the biggest markets in Europe and British betting operators seized the opportunities offered by the EU’s freedom to provide services to develop their activities in other EU Members States as the EU pushed for the opening of gambling and online betting to competition. As a consequence of Brexit, Gibraltar-based online betting firms (let’s face it, due to a favourable taxation system) might lose their access to the European market. The Gibraltar betting and gambling authority tried to put on a brave face in the aftermath of the Brexit vote but, in the case of Brexit, the best solution for the operators will be to leave Gibraltar for an EU Member State and secure its access to the European market (for example Malta, a very popular host for betting operators).

The economic impact for the gambling sector is sure to be important, but it is just as important for the sport sector as part of the betting industry’s revenue constitutes an important source of income for sport, and in particular grassroots sport via taxes. Furthermore, betting operators are active in sponsorship for professional club and athletes. If the financial stability of these companies is undermined, it will probably have an impact on both their participation in the financing of sport and their marketing strategy. 

Another problem that might arise for the UK in that area concerns the fight against corruption and match fixing that threatens the integrity of sport and its economic value. The UK cannot handle this problem alone and the EU, given the sector’s inherent cross-border nature, is encouraging cooperation between Members States and sport organisations to tackle the issue. Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, provides assistance to EU Member States and sport organisers (collaborating for example with UEFA). Brexit might imply that the UK will leave that organisation, yet it could also maintain a cooperation via operational or/and strategic agreements. In any event, the UK remains a member of Interpol also very active in the fight against match-fixing and illegal gambling. 

Conclusion

Just about everything is going to change between the EU and the UK and it is the same for sport. At this stage, a lot of guesswork is involved in trying to elucidate a picture of the impact of Brexit on sport. Whether with a direct positive action through its funding policy or because of the rules on the internal market and competition having an indirect impact, the EU had an influence on the whole of British sport. This blog tackled the main issues at stake in sport for the EU and the UK before the latter starts its negotiations to formally rescind its membership. But it also should be noted that the EU is an important arena for formal and informal discussion on subject that interest sport in general. For example the EU Work Plan for sport for 2014-2017 sets up EU expert groups to work on topical issues in the field of sport. The European Parliament also hosts a sport-intergroup. By leaving the EU, the UK is also leaving behind an opportunity to deepen its cooperation at the EU level.